Hitchcock’s graphic designer

As a teenager I avidly watched all the Hitchcock films as they were regularly aired on television. The narrative drive and suspense obviously captured my attention, but as I looked closer I began to appreciate all of Hitchcock’s collaborators – from the actors James Stewart and Cary Grant, to name but a few, to composers such as Bernard Herrmann, responsible for so many of the classic scores.

It was only in later years that I began to take more notice of Hitchcock’s title sequences and the work of Saul Bass. From the grid and darting titles of North by North West, as it dematerialises into the glazed curtain wall of a high rise office building, to the spirogram across Kim Novak’s striking eyes in Vertigo, Saul Bass was master of the psychology and power of graphic design.