Waldemar Swierzy is a polish designer and professor. He was born on September 9th, 1931 in Katowice.

He studied at the academy of fine arts in Cracow and then became the head of the design studio at the higher school of fine arts in Poznan. After this he was the chairman of the international poster biennial and the head of the poster studio in Warsaw. Aside from his professional design career he also lectured at many universities (Culture.Pl,n.d).

He is most known for his poster work. He was won many awards such as the Grand Prix Toulouse-Lautrec award for his poster the Red Inn or Czerwona Oberża as shown below.

Swierzy has created over 1500 posters in his career for films, records, and icons in pop culture. His poster work was extremely successful, the Mazowsze poster for example has been printed over a million times.

As his career developed so did his techniques on his posters. He developed a painting-like style. He had a fluid expression in his work that was easily identifiable. He then moved on to following art nouveau and gestural influences in his work.

His portraiture work was where he made a big name for himself. The hyperrealism combined with his personal flair developed into the style that is is most associated with. He designed over 250 portraits though his career. A lot of these pieces were for record sleeves or printed posters. He used a combination of mash-ups of different elements and colors to create his expressionistic style.

Images from:https://culture.pl/en/artist/waldemar-swierzy

Culture.pl. 2022. Waldemar Świerzy. [online] Available at: <https://culture.pl/en/artist/waldemar-swierzy> [Accessed 17 February 2022].

Saul Bass was born May 8th, 1920 in New York. He is most known for his graphic design work and his work as a filmmaker. He created new and imaginative film title sequences that were fresh expressive to audiences (Brittannica,2021). 

His career started with him drawing as a child and then at the Art Students League in New York. He then went on to Brooklyn College where he studied under George Kepes a well-known designer. After his education, he continued to work in graphic design, specifically in advertising. He slowly began to integrate his work into Hollywood by designing posters for upcoming movies. His most notable piece was the poster he designed for Carmen Jones. The director was so taken back by his work he immediately asked him to design the opening credits for the film. This was the first instance of him designing credits that would become his signature. He received his big break with The Man with the Golden Arm when he animated the opening sequence that secured his reputation and launched his career. He worked alongside many famous filmmakers notably Alfred Hichocks films, he designed almost all of the titles for those films (Brittanica,2021).

His style is characterized by his use of simple geometric shapes. He utilized a lot of symbolism in his work as well. His work was often hand-rendered, there were hand-cut and drawn elements that contributed to his style (Miller, 2019). This hand-cut quality is shown in his piece Anatomy of a Murder.

His filmmaking career was equally successful he received an academy award for best documentary (short subject) in 1969 for his film Why Man Creates. He also received around 8+ awards and nominations for his fieldwork (IMDb).  

Works cited:

Bauer, Patricia. “Saul Bass”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 May. 2021, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saul-Bass. Accessed 1 February 2022.Copy Citation

IMDb. 2022. Saul Bass – IMDb. [online] Available at: <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000866/awards> [Accessed 1 February 2022].

Miller, E., 2022. Saul Bass: Graphic Designer Profile. [online] Lifewire. Available at: <https://www.lifewire.com/profile-of-graphic-designer-saul-bass-1697483#:~:text=Saul%20Bass’%20Style,packed%20with%20a%20sophisticated%20message.> [Accessed 1 February 2022].

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