Bass worked for years as a free-lance designer after his studies with New York's Art Students League and at Brooklyn College. In 1946, he founded Saul Bass & Associates in Los Angeles, and several years later began designing graphics for publicity for such films as Joseph L Mankiewicz's "No Way Out" (1950). He soon established his most important career collaboration with a director, and did his first work as a titles designer, on Otto Preminger's "Carmen Jones" (1954). His regular collaboration with Preminger would last for 25 years, until the director's last film, "The Human Factor" (1979), and included the likes of "Bonjour Tristesse" (1958), "Advise and Consent" (1962), "Bunny Lake Is Missing" (1965) and "Such Good Friends" (1971). Early highlights of their collaboration include the memorable use of stark drawings of fragmented bodies to suggest the drug addiction theme of "The Man with the Golden Arm" (1955) and the homicide case of "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959). His work on the latter got Bass considerable press attention years later when the similarities to publicity for Spike Lee's "Clockers" (1995) were noted.
Bass pioneered the use of animation techniques to achieve a range of psychological and emotional effects unobtainable with conventional straight type. A splendid, seemingly simple and much-studied example was his use of intermeshing yet parallel lines, zooming in and out from every direction, to bring in and wipe out the credits for Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" (1960), suggesting the lead character's mental imbalance by the final cracking of the pattern. Bass' collaboration with Hitchcock was much shorter than his with Preminger, but it yielded the striking introduction of "North by Northwest" (1959) and the unforgettably disturbing, appropriately voyeuristic examination of a woman's face in "Vertigo" (1958). Bass also deserves considerable credit for the storyboarding and actual execution of the brilliant shower murder sequence in "Psycho".
Through the mid-60s Bass continued working on films such as "West Side Story" (1961), "The Victors" (1963) and "Seconds" (1966); his use of a stalking cat for the steamy "Walk on the Wild Side" (1962) is particularly well-remembered. From the late 60s until the late 80s, Bass' feature film credits diminished and other projects took precedence. His range in design is highly impressive; in the mid-90s, Bass designed a series of gas stations in Japan. His only title sequences in this period included two for Preminger, and the especially delightful introduction of stars peopling the vintage clips comprising "That's Entertainment, Part 2" (1976). Greta Garbo's name, for example, appeared with a rose pressed between the pages of leather-bound antique book. Over the years, Bass has produced and directed several documentary shorts, winning an Oscar for "Why Man Creates" (1968). He also took his one stab at feature directing with the visually impressive, but murkily scripted and somewhat unexciting sci-fi flick, "Phase IV" (1974).
Bass resumed regular work on film titles when James L Brooks snagged him to do the credits for the satirical "Broadcast News" (1987). Shortly thereafter, a collaboration arose with another noted filmmaker, Martin Scorsese. Beginning with "GoodFellas" (1990), Bass has regularly helped introduce Scorsese's highly personal epics, with title sequences ranging from the lovely images of flowers for the highly structured, genteel and romantic world of "The Age of Innocence" (1993) to the use of hellish fires for the harsh vortex of "Casino" (1995).