You know Saul Bass, even if you've never heard of him

4. Saul Bass inspired a generation of designers – and a lot of copy cats...

They say that imitation is the best form of flattery.

It’s not surprising that many people wanted to emulate the great Saul Bass. After, his work with posters, type, film sequences, and storyboards brought him accolades from many fields. When director Martin Scorsese “re-discovered” Bass in the 80’s, a new generation of designers found that they wanted to copy the great designer. But how much Bass is too much Bass? Apparently, we’ve already hit that point.

Enough with Saul Bass Already, a Tumblr dedicated to ridiculing the copycats, points out that the style is getting old.

“Let me guess, you have a 'project' where you make 'Saul Bass inspired' or otherwise 'retro minimalist' movie posters for a recently hyped or classic movie, which you want to sell on your Etsy account despite having absolutely no licensing rights, as hopeful promotion for your fledgling 'design business' you run from your dorm room. You and everyone else, buddy,” says the introduction to the Tumblr blog.

From there on out, it’s a sea of Bass-imitation posters. They range from recent movies such as "Inception" and "Harry Potter" to older films like "The Graduate" and "E.T." However, these designers-in-training have nothing on the great maestro of design.

While the imitation posters may not be of the highest quality, they are a testament to the man, the myth, and the legend – Saul Bass. Happy Birthday, ol’ boy. 

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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