A few weeks back I went visited the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA here in Los Angeles. The show has been travelling the world so I was extremely excited to finally see it. Wandering around the exhibit is filled with so many amazing objects from the history of Kubrick’s films – things like Jack Nicholson’s type writer and the space suit from 2001.

One of the coolest parts, especially for a designer like myself, was these sketches by Saul Bass for the film poster of The Shining. Previously I had no idea that Saul Bass had created the original poster (which you can see at the top) so this was a really cool surprise. I’ve read online that Kubrick made Bass go through at least 300 versions of the poster until finally ending on the extremely alien looking version we now know.

The other gem was getting to see Saul Bass’ signature, which absolutely made me laugh. It’s the body of a bass, with Bass’ face. Too genius. You can see more of the pieces from the exhibit by clicking the images below.