Final Posters.

Inspiration

Roughs

Thumbnails.

Base in the column collage grid and designer.

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Slogans.

1. Don't bug out.
2. Take a pick and Discover.
3. Dig to it.
4. Discover it's motif.
5. Inquire It's blue Print.
6. Swagged out Style.
7. Swagged out Pattern.

Vocabulary

Design.- to prepare the preliminary sketch or the plans for (a work tobe executed), esp. to plan the form and structure of: todesign a new bridge.


sinonym.- idea, plan, style, motif, illustration, motive.


Motif. a recurring subject, theme, idea, etc., esp. in a literary,artistic, or musical work.


Sinonym. pattern, logo, structure.


Blue Print.- a process of photographic printing, used chiefly in copyingarchitectural and mechanical drawings, which produces awhite line on a blue background


Insect.- any animal of the class Insecta, comprising small, air-breathing arthropods having the body divided into three parts(head, thorax, and abdomen), and having three pairs of legsand usually two pairs of wings.


style.- a particular kind, sort, or type, as with reference to form,appearance, or character: the baroque style; The style ofthe house was too austere for their liking.


Zoo.- Also called zoological garden. a parklike area in which liveanimals are kept in cages or large enclosures for publicexhibition.

His Work.

Great Designer: Saul Bass

SAUL BASS (1920-1996) was not only one of the great graphic designers of the mid-20th century but the undisputed master of film title design thanks to his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Scorsese.

When the reels of film for Otto Preminger’s controversial new drugs movie, The Man with the Golden Arm, arrived at US movie theatres in 1955, a note was stuck on the cans - "Projectionists – pull curtain before titles".

Until then, the lists of cast and crew members which passed for movie titles were so dull that projectionists only pulled back the curtains to reveal the screen once they’d finished. But Preminger wanted his audience to see The Man with the Golden Arm’s titles as an integral part of the film.

The movie’s theme was the struggle of its hero - a jazz musician played by Frank Sinatra - to overcome his heroin addiction. Designed by the graphic designer Saul Bass the titles featured an animated black paper-cut-out of a heroin addict’s arm. Knowing that the arm was a powerful image of addiction, Bass had chosen it – rather than Frank Sinatra’s famous face - as the symbol of both the movie’s titles and its promotional poster.

That cut-out arm caused a sensation and Saul Bass reinvented the movie title as an art form. By the end of his life, he had created over 50 title sequences for Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, John Frankenheimer and Martin Scorsese. Although he later claimed that he found the Man with the Golden Arm sequence "a little disappointing now, because it was so imitated".

Even before he made his cinematic debut, Bass was a celebrated graphic designer. Born in the Bronx district of New York in 1920 to an emigré furrier and his wife, he was a creative child who drew constantly. Bass studied at the Art Students League in New York and Brooklyn College under Gyorgy Kepes, an Hungarian graphic designer who had worked with László Moholy-Nagy in 1930s Berlin and fled with him to the US. Kepes introduced Bass to Moholy’s Bauhaus style and to Russian Constructivism.

After apprenticeships with Manhattan design firms, Bass worked as a freelance graphic designer or "commercial artist" as they were called. Chafing at the creative constraints imposed on him in New York, he moved to Los Angeles in 1946. After freelancing, he opened his own studio in 1950 working mostly in advertising until Preminger invited him to design the poster for his 1954 movie, Carmen Jones. Impressed by the result, Preminger asked Bass to create the film’s title sequence too.

Now over-shadowed by Bass’ later work, Carmen Jones elicited commissions for titles for two 1955 movies: Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife, and Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch. But it was his next Preminger project, The Man with the Golden Arm, which established Bass as the doyen of film title design.

Over the next decade he honed his skill by creating an animated mini-movie for Mike Todd’s 1956 Around The World In 80 Days and a tearful eye for Preminger’s 1958 Bonjour Tristesse. Blessed with the gift of identifying the one image which symbolised the movie, Bass then recreated it in a strikingly modern style. Martin Scorsese once described his approach as creating: "an emblematic image, instantly recognisable and immediately tied to the film".

In 1958’s Vertigo, his first title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock, Bass shot an extreme close-up of a woman’s face and then her eye before spinning it into a sinister spiral as a bloody red soaks the screen. For his next Hitchcock commission, 1959’s North by Northwest, the credits swoop up and down a grid of vertical and diagonal lines like passengers stepping off elevators. It is only a few minutes after the movie has begun - with Cary Grant stepping out of an elevator - that we realise the grid is actually the façade of a skyscraper.

Equally haunting are the vertical bars sweeping across the screen in a manic, mirrored helter-skelter motif at the beginning of Hitchcock’s 1960 Psycho. This staccato sequence is an inspired symbol of Norman Bates’ fractured psyche. Hitchcock also allowed Bass to work on the film itself, notably on its dramatic highpoint, the famous shower scene with Janet Leigh.

Assisted by his second wife, Elaine, Bass created brilliant titles for other directors - from the animated alley cat in 1961’s Walk on the Wild Side, to the adrenalin-laced motor racing sequence in 1966’s Grand Prix. He then directed a series of shorts culminating in 1968’s Oscar-winning Why Man Creates and finally realised his ambition to direct a feature with 1974’s Phase IV.

When Phase IV flopped, Bass returned to commercial graphic design. His corporate work included devising highly successful corporate identities for United Airlines, AT&T, Minolta, Bell Telephone System and Warner Communications. He also designed the poster for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games.

To younger film directors, Saul Bass was a cinema legend with whom they longed to work. In 1987, he was persuaded to create the titles for James Brooks’ Broadcast News and then for Penny Marshall’s 1988 Big. In 1990, Bass found a new long term collaborator in Martin Scorsese who had grown up with – and idolised - his 1950s and 1960s titles. After 1990’s Goodfellas and 1991’s Cape Fear, Bass created a sequence of blossoming rose petals for Scorcese’s 1993’s The Age of Innocence and a hauntingly macabre one of Robert De Niro falling through the sinister neons of the Las Vegas Strip for the director’s 1995’s Casino to symbolise his character’s descent into hell.

Saul Bass died the next year. His New York Times obituary hailed him as "the minimalist auteur who put a jagged arm in motion in 1955 and created an entire film genre…and elevated it into an art."

Exhibition: Insect Zoo.

Did you know that if you lined up one each of all the animals and plants in the world side by side, every fifth specimen would be a beetle — not just an insect, but specifically a beetle? There are approximately 1.5 million separate species of known insects on the planet and there are still millions more that have yet to be found and catalogued. And that doesn’t include all the other critters we also group into the informal category known as “bugs," to which people add all sorts of other invertebrates including spiders, centipedes, crabs, slugs and even worms, plus all the many relatives of those creatures. Bugs are all around us and they are an integral part of our world, yet most of us know very little about them. So leave the can of bug spray at home, and come and learn about the mind-boggling diversity of bugs at the Museum’s Insect Zoo. The Insect Zoo has been a permanent, year-round fixture at the Museum since 1992. Its mission: to educate and inspire wonder about the world of insects and other bugs. With 30 terrariums and aquariums that are frequently updated with new specimens, there’s always some new and fascinating creature at the Insect Zoo with an intriguing story waiting to be told. Learn about spiders that can spin silk so strong that humans could produce bulletproof vests from the material and meet beetles that create their own waterproof barriers out of wax. Seek out our knowledgeable staff to answer questions. They can introduce you to some of these magnificent bugs up close and in person. You may even get to touch a bug! Or two!

Natural History Museum

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

• protects over 35 million specimens, dating back 4.5 billion years.
• is a resource for Southern California teachers.
• is an authority on the "big picture" of the planet, the natural and the cultural world.
• tracks the Earth's biodiversity, because knowing what is out there is the first step to conservation. 

Mission and Vision Statements

Mission Statement

The mission of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is to inspire wonder, discovery and responsibility for our natural and cultural worlds.

Vision Statement

Human beings are connected — to each other, to communities, to other species, and to the Earth. As humans increasingly influence natural systems, it is critical that we understand these relationships. This understanding, in the context of the history of the Earth and its inhabitants, guides our approach to investigation and interpretation. By integrating our global research and extensive collections with engaging learning experiences that reveal all aspects of our work, we provoke curiosity and deepen understanding of our natural and cultural worlds. This dynamic learning laboratory and forum for the exchange of ideas is a new model that sets the standard for museums of the future. We inspire the widest possible audience to enjoy, value and become stewards of the living Earth.