A Saul Bass-inspired poster starts with a strong visual idea: simple shapes and lettering that complements them. My Hitchcock font supplies the cut paper characters. The rest comes down to what you choose to design, how you arrange it, and what your imagination can come up with.
This tutorial uses an original poster concept to explore those decisions without borrowing an existing film’s artwork.
We’ll build a poster for an imaginary thriller called The Last Look. The premise is simple: someone is watching. There’s no cast, no release date, and mercifully no hammy acting.
An original poster study using Hitchcut. The eye and keyhole suggest watching and secrecy.
What gives a poster that Saul Bass feel?
Bass’s work varied enormously, so there isn’t one formula that covers it all. For this exercise, we’re exploring the bold shapes, limited colour and cut-paper character associated with some of his best-known graphic work.
Think about what you want the image to tell people. In this case, the eye suggests someone is watching. You could spend ages making the edges look hand-cut, but you need an idea that suits the story first.
The Criterion Collection’s tribute to Bass includes title designers discussing his use of graphic ideas, lettering and film-specific approaches.
Who was Saul Bass?
Saul Bass was an American graphic designer and filmmaker, born in the Bronx, New York, in 1920. He died in 1996, leaving behind film posters, opening titles and company logos that many people recognise without knowing his name. His career covered more than five decades, and his work reached well beyond the cut-paper style we’re exploring here.
He did study art. In New York, he studied with Howard Trafton at the Art Students League, then with the artist and designer György Kepes at Brooklyn College. Kepes introduced him to ideas associated with the Bauhaus and Russian Constructivism, including the use of simple forms, composition and typography. Bass moved to Los Angeles in 1946 after working as a graphic artist in New York.
So typography was part of his design education. His training brought together drawing, lettering and visual communication. You can see those interests meeting in his film work: the words, images and movement often feel as though they were conceived together. RIT’s Saul Bass archive gives a useful overview of his background and influences.
His work with director Otto Preminger helped establish his reputation. He designed the poster for Carmen Jones in 1954, followed by the poster and titles for The Man with the Golden Arm in 1955. The jagged arm became a memorable symbol for a story about addiction. It showed how a simple graphic could suggest the subject of a film without presenting a montage of its actors.
His best-known work includes Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). The spirals of Vertigo and the fractured lettering of Psycho helped establish the mood before the story began. Later, Saul and Elaine Bass created titles for Martin Scorsese’s films, including Goodfellas and Casino. Elaine, his wife and creative partner, deserves credit here too. The BFI’s overview discusses her substantial contribution to their work.
Outside cinema, Bass designed identities for companies including AT&T, United Airlines, Quaker Oats and Warner Communications. He also made films himself. His short film Why Man Creates (1968) explored creativity through humour, animation and live action, and won an Academy Award. If you know him only through posters, there’s quite a bit more to discover.
For all that success, he described himself as a working man who found satisfaction in making useful work. I like that. His designs could be striking, funny or unsettling, but they still had a job to do. That’s a useful thing to remember when taking inspiration from him: think about the story you’re telling as well as the shapes you’re drawing.
What you’ll need
- Hitchcut, installed on your computer.
- Adobe Illustrator for the workflow below.
- A short title and a subject you can express through one main image.
I created Hitchcut as an homage to the graphic world of Saul Bass and Hitchcock’s Vertigo. For the background to the typeface, read Hitchcut Font: When Less Says More. Here, we’re concentrating on using it.
1. Decide what the poster is about
Before choosing colours or opening the font menu, write down the central idea. For The Last Look, it’s being watched.
An eye is an obvious starting point. Adding a keyhole inside the pupil brings in secrecy: someone may be looking through something they shouldn’t.
Try several rough sketches. For a different subject, you might use a broken telephone, an empty chair or a pair of scissors. Choose something that carries meaning for that particular story.
2. Set up a portrait layout and a small colour palette
Create a 1080 × 1620-pixel artboard in Illustrator for a digital example. This is a working format for the tutorial, rather than a universal movie-poster size.
Use burnt red #C9472E, white #FFFFFF and near-black #211E1B. Reserve warm cream #F7EAD2 for the eye graphic. Draw a red rectangle covering the artboard and lock its layer.
The red creates the field, white makes the title clear, cream distinguishes the eye and black gives the pupil weight. Each colour has a job. Resist adding another one just because the swatches panel is open.
3. Build the image from angular shapes
On a new layer, use the Pen tool to draw a wide cream eye shape. Keep the outline angular, with relatively few points. Add an irregular black pupil, then a red keyhole shape over its centre.
Use the background red for the keyhole so it appears to open through the eye. Make the symbol large enough to dominate the upper half of the poster.
You can also cut the shapes from real paper, photograph or scan them, and bring them into your layout. Both approaches can work. Judge the silhouette rather than how convincingly you’ve simulated a pair of scissors.
The symbol, lettering and final composition. Each stage contributes to the same idea.
4. Set the title in Hitchcut
Add the title below the eye using Hitchcut. In the finished example, THE, LAST and LOOK sit on three centred lines, with large lettering and tight line spacing.
Scale the words until they have enough presence to balance the symbol. Leave a clear margin at both sides and adjust the line spacing by eye.
Hitchcut already has irregular edges and proportions. You don’t need to rotate every letter or distort the whole word. Start with the font’s shapes and see how much character is already there.
5. Turn on contextual alternates
Repeated letters can expose how mechanically a word has been set. LOOK is a useful test because its two O characters sit next to each other.
In Illustrator:
- Select your Hitchcut text.
- Open Window → Type → OpenType.
- Enable Contextual Alternates, using the panel’s additional options if needed.
- Compare the lettering with the feature switched off and on.
Contextual alternates substitute letter shapes according to rules built into the font. They aren’t a random effect. The example below uses the same text and type size in both rows; the change comes from enabling the feature.
Contextual alternates change the repeated letter shapes while keeping the words editable.
If you want to choose a particular alternate yourself, explore Window → Type → Glyphs. Adobe’s contextual alternates guide explains the OpenType controls.
6. Add supporting text and check the balance
The example uses a plain sans serif for the small line Someone is always watching. That keeps the supporting information readable and lets Hitchcut carry the title.
Place the smaller copy beneath the title. Step back and check the relationship between the eye, headline and surrounding space. Try moving the title up or down before adding anything else.
Keep a copy of an earlier version. It’s surprisingly easy to spend half an hour improving something into a worse poster.
7. Check the poster at different sizes
View the design large, then reduce it to a thumbnail. Can you still recognise the eye? Can you read the title? Does the keyhole remain visible?
Export an sRGB JPEG or PNG for online use, keeping the editable Illustrator file. For a printed poster, get the final dimensions, bleed and PDF requirements from your printer before preparing the artwork.
A successful result should have a clear relationship between subject, image and lettering. The font helps establish the character, but your composition makes it a poster.
Try it with your own subject
Use the process with a film concept, book cover, gig poster or event. Change the symbol, palette and arrangement to suit the subject rather than repeating this example every time.
Explore Hitchcut if you want bold, cut-paper lettering with contextual alternates for your next design.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hitchcut the original font used by Saul Bass?
No. Hitchcut is my own display typeface, inspired by that graphic world. It isn’t an official Saul Bass font or a claim to reproduce the original lettering from a particular film.
Do I need to cut the letters out of paper?
No. Hitchcut supplies the cut-out letterforms. You can combine it with digitally drawn shapes or physical paper artwork.
How do I get different versions of repeated letters?
Enable contextual alternates in compatible software. In Illustrator, select the text and use the OpenType panel. You can also explore the Glyphs panel to choose available alternates manually.
Do I have to use the same colours?
No. Those colours suit this example. Choose a palette that supports your own subject, and check the contrast between the lettering, symbol and background.
Can I make this in Photoshop?
Yes. Use shape layers or imported artwork for the illustration and live text for the title. The Illustrator menu instructions above won’t apply, so use Photoshop’s type controls for the font’s OpenType features.
Can Hitchcut work for book covers or music posters?
Yes. Its bold display lettering can suit those formats. Test your actual title, particularly at the smallest size where the finished design will appear.
Written by Simon Stratford, type designer and graphic designer. These are my opinions, reached after too little sleep and too much coffee. You can also follow my antics on @itsmesimonok, or leave a comment below. Despite all the opinions, I’m actually quite nice.