Long before the era of skippable intros and motion-graphic overload, Saul Bass turned movie credits into an art form you actually wanted to watch. Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design, the definitive monograph by Jennifer Bass (his daughter) and Pat Kirkham, is more than a tribute — it’s a reminder that great design doesn’t just decorate a story; it tells it.

More than a designer, Bass told stories using scissors and ink. The book’s pages flicker through the iconic visuals we still carry in our cultural subconscious: that jagged, menacing arm from The Man with the Golden Arm, the swirling vortex pulling us into Vertigo, the bold, minimal lines of Anatomy of a Murder. Every frame is so immediately Bass — graphic yet alive, simple yet full of tension.

One thing I love about this book is how it doesn’t just stick to his film work. It opens up the whole Bass universe — his posters, corporate logos, print ads, even postage stamps. Seeing them side by side, you realize just how much Bass shaped the visual language we live with today. Next time you pass a bell-shaped AT&T logo or catch that minimalist Quaker Oats silhouette in the grocery aisle, you’re glimpsing Bass’s quiet legacy.

The heart of Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design isn’t just nostalgia for an era when designers ruled the title card. It’s a lesson in creative bravery. Bass believed in stripping visuals down to their essence — a radical move when Hollywood wanted splashy spectacle. He made bold lines dance, typefaces pulse, and shapes hint at danger, desire, or suspense, all before the first line of dialogue even hit the screen.

What stands out to me is how current his work still feels. Modern filmmakers and designers — from Wes Anderson to contemporary motion-graphics artists — owe a debt to Bass’s playbook of visual wit and economy. Even TikTok edits and YouTube intro cards echo that same instinct: hook the eye, set the mood, tell a story before the story.

Reading through this book, I kept thinking about how design shapes the way we feel about a film before we’ve seen a single scene. The best opening credits — the ones Bass perfected — feel like an invitation. They prime you for suspense, laughter, unease. They make you lean in, not just sit back.

If you ever need a reminder that design is more than decoration — that it’s an invisible language that sets the tone for how we watch, listen, and remember — this book is it. Flip through it and you’ll see how one man’s paper cut-outs and hand-lettered titles still echo in our screens and streets, decades later.

So next time you catch yourself hovering over that “Skip Intro” button, maybe let it roll instead. Somewhere in those first frames lives a bit of Saul Bass — the master of making us see what a story could be before it even begins.