AT&T Tech Channel
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2022–2024
27:00 · 417K views · Nov 30, 2011
The 1969 pitch film in which Saul Bass presents the Bell System logo redesign to AT&T, part of the largest corporate re-identity program in U.S. history.
HN holds it up as a masterclass in explaining and selling a design.
5 comments from Hacker News
I always go back to the Saul Bass presentation to AT&T over their 1970 logo redesign. He takes 30 minutes to explain the thought process and sell this design hard . By the end you're convinced it's the natural thing to do. I'm sure every executive in the room felt the same way. this video (Bass would return a mere 13 years later to do the AT&T "Death Star" logo after the breakup)
Bell has a great historical material just watch the redesign presentation of Saul Basso in the 70s! [0] I had so many marketing meetings with worse presentations just a week ago. [0] this video
Then I'm sure you've seen Saul Bass' original proposal for the logo redesign. It's a 30 minute movie : this video And this is the same Saul Bass that designed other iconic logos (he name drops a bunch at 7m30s) and well as doing credit sequences for directors like Hitchcock and Scorcese: [LINK]
I agree that design is far more complicated than most developers realize, but I'd be careful to avoid mistaking detailed explanations for accurate explanations, and heavily discussed topics for usefully discussed topics. Most of my BFA is in graphic design and it's not my only art and design education, so I'm pretty well-versed in artsy fartsy Bauhausian high-concept visual communication. From the very first days as a Freshmen you start with exercises like finding as many ways as you can to create a palpable sense of tension with only two black squares on a white background by changing the scale and placement, or making two identically colored swatches look like two different colors by placing them on a field of a different color. Professors deliberately don't give you a set guidelines in these exercises because the artistic roots of design don't work that way— you have to understand the way visual components work together on a visceral level before you can effectively reason about them... even pretty straightforward things like effectively setting paragraphs of text or kerning letters can be pretty nebulous, and that's much more straightforward than at abstract logo design. Could you imagine the pressure of being the art director wielding those nebulous and subjective processes revamp a worldwide household name in one of the most image-focused markets to ever exist? Or being the executive with zero domain knowledge tasked with evaluating the work of this firm? And while the
> I suppose there were so many that it made no sense to make one seem "preeminent" over others. Also, a good way to prevent leaks, even if inadvertent. Vendors working on something for "Alpha Bell" have no idea what it is. Granted, leaks in the 1960s weren't what they are today Also, there was a video version of the pitch you referred to: this video This design system was designed by Saul Bass