Search engine major Google on Wednesday commemorated Amercian graphic designer Saul Bass’ 93rd birth anniversary with a doodle.

The over-a-minute long (nearly 1.30 min) >doodle is a video of various works carried out by Bass.

Bass, apart from being a graphic designer, is best known for his popular designs of film titles and coporate logos. He is also credited with directing a short documentary film called ‘Why Man Creates’ for which he won the Oscar in 1968.

During his 40-year long career, Bass worked with some of the best names of Hollywood that included Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Martin Sorcese among others.

In fact, it was Otto Preminger’s ‘Man with the Golden Arm’ – a movie that deals with a Jazz musician’s struggle to overcome heroine addiction – that saw Bass design the title sequences that went on to gain popularity. The sequences were animated to look like the arm of an heroine addict.

Credits racing up and down of screen of what eventually turns out to be shot of a skyscraper in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘North by Northwest’ and the disjointed texts that come together and go apart in ‘Psycho’ are some of his best remembered sequences.

Amongst his other famous title sequences that have been used in the over-a-minute long >Google video , is his poster for ‘Anatomy of a Murder’. The 1959-film that deals with court-room drama, featured the silhouette of a corpse dissected into seven pieces.

Google’s video, also features the classic animated title sequence that Saul had made for the 1956-Oscar winning classic ‘Around the World in 80 Days’. While the original title credits were a seven-minute sequence, the video replicated the same in a few seconds.

Apart from movie credits, Saul Bass is also credited with various company logos. Some of the famous ones include the “Globe” logo for AT&T in 1983 and the Quaker Oats logo (1969), among others.

Saul Bass breathed his last in April 1996.

>abhishek.l@thehindu.co.in

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