Paul Rand Book

“Without aesthetic, design is either the humdrum repetition of familiar clichés or a wild scramble for novelty.

Without the aesthetic, the computer is but a mindless speed machine, producing effects without substance.

Form without relevant content, or content without meaningful form.”

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The name Paul Rand is not a stranger to many people, especially when it comes to the graphic design community as he was a legend in the history of print. According to Tony Seddon, the author of Twentieth Century Graphic Design: A Decade-byDecade Exploration of Graphic Styles, Rand is also known as the “Picasso of Graphic Design� to many of his admirers as he was one of the most important figures in the introduction of modernist style (a style that departs from the traditions in the nineteenth and twentieth century by using innovative forms of expression to create abstractions and fantasies) to American graphic design. In his biography, it is written that his fame mostly came from the fact that he had a thriving career from starting out as a designer in media promotion and cover design at Esquire magazine, to directing art for famous ad campaigns, and finally to designing some of the timeless and most well-known logos for high-profile companies of the twentieth century that are still used until today.

Awards AND Recognitions Awards AND Recognitions Awards AND Recognitions

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AIGA, 1968

On top of that, he had an abundance of achievements throughout his career, such as being titled as one of the ten best art directors in history by the Museum of Modern Art, and getting awards from the oldest and most renowned graphic design membership organization known as the AIGA, the New York Art Directors Club, and the Type Directors Club. Not to mention, he was also a champion of the International Typographic Style. Paul Rand, in his brilliant mind, has influenced

countless of designers. Moreover, not only that he designed things that are out of this world, but also wrote several books in his early years. As described by László Moholy-Nagy, a famous Hungarian painter and photographer, Paul Rand is “an idealist and a realist, using the language of the poet and the businessman.” By being balanced in his practicality and creativity, it is indubitable that his sphere of influence is still very much present and appreciated to this day.

Gebrauchsgraphik Magazine, International Advertising Art, March 1970.

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Paul Rand was originally born as Peretz Rosenbaum in New York in 1914 and like any other experts in their fields, he started out practicing his passion for graphic design when he was little. As the son of a store owner, he began painting signs for his dad’s business and for his school events. Unfortunately, his father did not believe that his son could make a decent living by being a graphic designer. Hence, he insisted that Rand takes classes in Manhattan’s Harren High School while taking night classes at the Pratt Institute.

However, neither of the schools gave him enough stimulations, which was why he took classes from other institutions in New York like Parsons School of Design and the Art Students League. Despite his classes from those institutions, Rand was mostly a self-taught designer. He learned the works of Cassandre (a French painter, artist, and typeface designer) and Moholy Nagy from European Magazines like the Gebrauchsgraphik by himself.

Perspectives USA 3, Spring 1953

Interfaith Day, 1953

At the beginning of his career,

Rand started out by faithfully doing small assignments that he got from his part-time job. His work was to create stock images for an organization that supplied graphics to different newspaper and magazine companies. At the same time, he was carefully creating a large portfolio in between his classes and his work.

His designs at the moment were mostly inspired by the German advertising style known as the Sachplakat (ornamental poster) and the works of Gustave Jensen (Danish industrial designer, artist, and letterer.

Moreover, it was around this time that he changed his name from Peretz Rosenbaum to Paul Rand to camouflage his Jewish identity and to shorten his name. He got Paul from foreshortening his first name and Rand from one of his uncles. In response to his decision, one of his friends commented that his new name made a nice and symmetrical symbol since both the first and the last name each has four letters. As a result, Paul Rand became his new persona and served as his brand name in many of his works.

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RAN D’S JOURNE Y TO TH E TOP

11 By his early twenties, he was already producing works that were internationally known. He did that by creating magazine covers for Direction Magazine for no charge in exchange for full artistic freedom. By doing that, he was able to establish his own style, which was a mixture of European modernism and American twist that produced unique and playful designs. His decision to do the covers at no cost was also to boost his reputation among his clients. He was, however, reimbursed with watercolor paintings done by the infamous Le Corbusier (a Swiss-French architect, designer, painter, urban planner, and one of the pioneers of Modern Architecture). Around that time too, he was offered a full-time position at Esquire as their art director and was asked to design a special anniversary page layout for Apparel magazine, which he both turned down at first because he felt that he was not ready to take so many responsibilities. Nevertheless, a year later, when he was twenty-three, Rand decided that he would go with the job at Esquire. Later on in his life, Rand became an educator at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

RAND’S JOURNE Y TO THE TO P

Yale Bulls Eye, 1992

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Left: Thoughts on Design

by Paul Rand with a new foreword written by the world famous graphic designer, Michael Bierut.

Not only that his career in the design field was becoming greater and greater every day, but also his job as a writer.

He was only thirty-three when he sat down and thought of writing what turned out to be one of his best books; Thoughts on Design. Even though he was young at the moment and he had not achieved all the great successes that he had later in his life, he was ready to write the book.

Rand admitted, however, that he was insecure as a writer, but that his passion for the subject was the only thing that kept him going. At the same time, he was learning so much from his day job on Madison Avenue ­­­— the importance to say more with fewer words. He then took what he learned and incorporated it into his book. As a result, the book is like a children’s book in a way that it is very short, clear, playful and illustrative. The book is divided into nine sections and it covers interesting subjects like how Rand thought design should be like. The book also displays a list of examples of his projects that he only got to do later in his life. Additionally, digging a little into the book, it talks about the important differences between commercialism of American graphic design with the radical design style that came from Europe. Rand, as a writer, felt that the creativity put into many works are often overlooked by clients in favor of simply creating pleasing layouts. All in all, the most important thing Rand said in the book was his free verse that begins his essay “The Beautiful and the Useful.” To that, he said that “Graphic Design, no matter what else it achieves, ‘is not good design if it is irrelevant.’”

Graphic Desig no matter what else it achieves, “is not good d if it is irreleva

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Subway Advertising, 1947

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In the 1950s and the 1960s, his fame rose even more as he began receiving jobs from highprofile companies to either create or rebrand their corporate identities.

Nevertheless, his journey to the top was not as smooth as people would like to think. For instance, there was this one incident that happened in the 1960s when Ford appointed Rand to redesign their company’s logo, which turned out to be an unfortunate project because they chose not to use his too modernized design. Contrary to the previous occurrence, Rand had his moment to shine when he received the project to design IBM’s logo in 1956.

In response to Rand’s solution for the logo, Mark Favermann, a landscape designer in Boston, commented that the logo “was not just an identity, but a basic design philosophy that permeated corporate consciousness and public awareness.”

While designing the IBM logo, Rand knew exactly what to do for the high-tech company that looked so old school. He immediately saw the need to create a logo that visually progresses, which he did by recreating the existing slab-serif logotype and replacing the company’s boring annual reports with photography and drawings.

Both the solid colored IBM logo and the striped one were modified afterwards by Rand; the first in the 1960s and the latter in 1972. Around that time, he also designed packaging and marketing materials for the company from the early 1970s until the early 1980s.

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International Business Machines (IBM), 8-bar variation, 1972

REbus = “a fo of dra matiza making an ide more memora

orm ation ea able”

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Eye-Bee-M (IBM) Golden Circle Award announcement, 1981

Within that time frame, Rand came up with the infamous Eye-Bee-M poster. Ironically, IBM did not want to publish the logo at first because they fear that it might cause misconception for the people working for them and lead them into misusing or misinterpreting the meaning of their logo. However, they changed their minds afterwards when they realized that a rebus, which is “a form of dramatization making an idea more memorable” works best in design.

Since then, Paul Rand not only changed the identity of the corporation, but also their fortunes.

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Another one of his most famous designs was a logo that he did for the electric conglomerate Westinghouse. For this project, Rand successfully modernized the existing logo by creating a design that symbolizes the interlinked points of a circuit board. Since then, the logo has remained untouched even after 50 years of using it.

Top: Westinghouse Advertisement Right: Westinghouse logo, 1960

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ABC logo, 1962

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Yale logo, 1985

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Later in his life, Paul Rand continued to design famous logos like the UPS logo, ABC logo, Yale University Press logo, Enron Logo, and the NeXT logo. In one of the interviews he had in 1990 with Steven Heller (an American art director, journalist, critic, author, and editor who specialized on graphic design), Paul Rand spoke a little about the UPS logo and how he wanted to tweak a few things about it. For instance, he mentioned that the bow is “unharmonious with the letterform” and that the “counter of the p is incompatible with the other two letters”. He also admitted that the design was based on humor and that his original idea was to poke fun at something so chivalrous as a shield by placing a box on top of it with a hand-drawn bow. While he saw it as a playful gesture, the client saw it as something meaningful because of the lighthearted intent.

United Parcel Service (UPS), 1961

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In the same interview with Steve Heller, Rand explained why the NeXT logo was done the way it is. Rand said that he thought that the owner of the company, Steve Jobs, loved cutesy things based on his choice of colorful apple logo. So, using the adjectives that Steve Jobs threw at Rand during their meeting on what he planned on doing with the device, Rand came up with two sketches of the cube design; one that is parallel to the picture plane and one that is angled to match the back of an envelope. So the story goes, the verdict was to use the second design because someone said that the askew version printed on everything would be better than the other one. What is more, Rand was labeled as “the greatest living graphic designer�

by Steve Jobs himself.

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“ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting.”

Graphic Art of Paul Rand, 1957

Being a master of his field, Rand pointed out that “ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting.” His company, American Broadcasting Company trademark that was created in 1962, does two things – it represents the idea of minimalism while at the same time proving Rand’s opinion that a logo “cannot survive unless it is designed with the utmost simplicity and restraint.” Rand then continued to produce important logos throughout his life, building his fame and reputation as he goes. He went on to become one of the world’s greatest designers and was rumored to have cost his customers $100,000 price per solution. Unfortunately, he died shortly after his NeXT project in 1996.

Aspen Design Conference, 1966

“Don’t try to be original; just try to be good.”

Even though it has been decades since his death, the name Paul Rand is still very much respected in the design committee.

Not only that he introduced modernism to America, but also brought freedom into the nation’s graphic design committee — freedom to express humor in one’s design. His designs use a lot of collage, photography, artwork, and unique type of sets to engage his audience. His works challenge his viewers to think, interact, and interpret his works by using fun, modern, and risky ways to use shapes, space, and contrast. As written by Rand himself in Thoughts on Design, “it is a designer’s job to manipulate ingredients in a given space – to manipulate symbols through juxtaposition, association, and analogy”. Additionally, Rand emphasized the importance of play in his designs, which he believed can really engage the

designer and help him or her to think more out of the box. He stressed the importance of play so much that he wrote another of his best-selling books called the Design and the Play Instinct. Another combination that Rand loved is repetition and simplicity. He unified, simplified and eliminated any noise in his designs. He symbolized, abstracted the forms of his subjects through association and analogy.

In brief, his designs are indubitably out of the box. It is unquestionable why Paul Rand was able to be the great designer he was.

Rand quoted that everything is design and that “Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.” However, the most important thing that everyone can take home today from Paul Rand is his tips on how to be a good designer: “Don’t try to be original; just try to be good.”

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“Design can be art.

Design can be aesthetics.

paul rand

paul rand

Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.�

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R e f e r e n c e s Heller, Steven. “Paul-Rand.com” Paul Rand on the Play Insticts | Paul Rand, American Modernist (1914-1996), Allworth Press, www.paul-rand.com/foundation/thoughts_playInstinct/#.WdPfDROPLMY. Miller, Eric. “How Did Paul Rand ‘Think Differently’ and Influence Modern Design?” ThoughtCo, www.thoughtco.com/profile-of-graphic-designer-paulrand-1697482.

“Paul Rand: A Brief Biography.” Biography | Paul Rand, American Modernist (19141996), www.paul-rand.com/foundation/biography/#.WcnWDccm_dk.

“Paul Rand | Biography, Designs and Facts.” Famous Graphic Designers, www. famousgraphicdesigners.org/paul-rand. Accessed 26 Sept. 2017.

“Paul Rand’s greatest hits | | Agenda.” Phaidon, www.phaidon.com/agenda/graphic-design/articles/2012/november/13/paul-rands-greatest-hits/.

“Paul Rand Quotes.” Paul Rand Quotes (Author of Thoughts on Design), www. goodreads.com/author/quotes/27278.Paul_Rand.

Popova, Maria. “Thoughts on Design: Paul Rand on Beauty, Simplicity, the Power of Symbols, and Why Idealism Is Essential in Creative Work.” Brain Pickings, 17 Sept. 2015, www.brainpickings.org/2014/08/19/paul-rand-thoughts-ondesign/.

Rand, Paul, and Michael Bierut. Thoughts on Design. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, 2014.

Seddon, Tony. Twentieth Century Design: A Decade-by-Decade Exploration of Graphic Style. Blue Ash, OH, Print, 2014.

Stein, Amelia. “Everything is Design: The Work of Paul Rand review – short survey of a master.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 27 Feb. 2015, www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/feb/27/everything-is-design-thework-of-paul-rand-review-short-survey-of-a-master.

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Sparkle and Spin, 1957

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Paul Rand’s Life Story Written & designed by: Fiona Liem Kansas State University 2017 For further reading, visit paul-rand.com.

Also, check out his books: • This ... Is the Stafford Stallion (1944) • Thoughts on Design (1947) • Trademark Design (1951, unpublished) • I Know a Lot of Things (1956) • Sparkle and Spin (1957) • The Trademarks of Paul Rand — A Selection (1960) • Little 1 (1962) • Listen! Listen (1970) • A Paul Rand Miscellany (1984) • A Designer’s Art (1985) • Good Design is Good Will (1987) • Some Thoughts Some Logos (1991) • Some Thoughts... and Some Tribulations about the Design of a Logo (1991) • From Cassandre to Chaos (1992) • Failure by Design (1993) • Design Form and Chaos (1993) • From Lascaux to Brooklyn (1996)