Saul Bass: On Film

Unless you're a paid-up film buff, his name probably won't mean much to you, but his work assuredly will.

One of the greatest graphic designers of the last century, Bronxborn Saul Bass is the king of filmtitle design.

Before Bass, cast and crew lists were simply projected on to the closed cinema curtains, but he transformed this drab medium into an art form in its own right.

In a career spanning some 50 years, he worked with the likes of Hitchcock, Kubrick and Scorsese, who said of him, 'When his work comes up on the screen, the movie itself truly begins.'

'Symbolise' and 'summarise' were the words he lived by, and he applied them to film posters, too, replacing star portraits with a single, unforgettable image that captured the film's essence.

Sat 17 Jul-Sun 31 Oct, Design Museum, Shad Thames, SE1 (0870 833 9955).