Paul Rand: Conversations With Students

Paul Rand Conversations with Students

Michael Kroeger

Foreword by Wolfgang Weingart

Texts by Philip Burton Steff Geissbuhler Jessica Helfand Armin Hofmann Gordon Salchow

Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Conversation One

“Design is relationships.

Design is a relationship between form and content.�

18

Paul Rand

Conversation One

19

Michael Kroeger I brought in a couple of the books that you recommended the other night at the lecture.

Paul Rand Oh yes, this book is familiar.

Kroeger I started reading the first chapter of Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934).

Rand You did? That is pretty good? How long did it take?

Kroeger Well a couple of pages each night. It does not go very fast. This is the other one we talked about, Doren’s A History of Knowledge (1991).

2

Rand This is very good, a summary, and very knowledgeable. It is not just a

equivalent. You are just not educated.

guy who abbreviates things, the guy

I mean, you just don’t know.

writes novels. He is the guy who was

Kroeger He talks about, in the first

caught in 1964 on the television show

chapter, the artistic and aesthetic

Twenty-One.1

approach intertwined. He said he could

Students should know about

not find a word that combined both of

these things. It is a good book to read.

those terms, or the aesthetics of art.

A good reference book. But if you are

Rand Well you can talk about it, there

going to start a bibliography you have

is a lot to talk about. This first chapter I

got a lot of books.

think on the very first page he says,

Kroeger You said during your lecture the other night that you have six pages of

By one of the ironic perversities that often

references in your latest book. (Figure 2)

attend the course of affairs, the existence

Rand Yes.

of the works of art upon which formations

Kroeger Is this John Dewey book in

of an esthetic theory depends has become

there?

an obstruction to theory about them. For

Rand That is one of the books. Well,

one reason, these works are products that

you are just not an educated designer

exist externally and physically. In common

unless you read this book or the

conception, the work of art is often

20

Paul Rand

identified with the building, book, painting,

paint in a museum—nobody was ever

or statue in its existence apart from human

there. But now it is impossible.

experience. Since the actual work of art

Kroeger Do you think people are search-

is what the product does with and in

ing for something to give meaning to

experience, the result is not favorable to

their lives?

understanding. In addition, the very

Rand I do not know; do not ask me. You

perfection of some of these products, the

will have to ask a psychologist. This

prestige they possess because of a long

book (Art as Experience) deals with

history of unquestioned admiration,

everything—there is no subject he does

creates conventions that get in the way of

not deal with. . . . This is his most famous

fresh insight. When an art product once

book. All your students should read it.

attains classic status, it somehow

(Figure 3)

becomes isolated from the human

Kroeger How do you relate reading or

conditions under which it was brought into

can you relate your experience to

being and from the human consequences

designing?

it engenders in actual life-experience.

Rand You do not. It is like eating bread—

it is nourishment when you run—you do

This is the essence of this whole

book, this paragraph. That art is a thing

not eat bread [while you are running],

you do not experience but you have to go

but there is a clincher here that you may

into a museum to find it. He says that art

not like.

is everywhere.

Kroeger Art in the museum is a fairly recent development.

Rand Museums have separated art from normal experience. The answer is in the problem. The problem is that it is isolated from where it should be. Art should be in your bedroom, in your kitchen, not just in the museums.

It used to be when you went into a museum there was nobody there. When I went into art school we used to go and

3

Conversation One

21

Kroeger That you may not be a good

look wet. What is the difference? This

designer—by just reading this book.

stuff is difficult stuff to do. You are

Rand Being able to do something, explain

involved in very complicated philosophy

and understand what you are doing—it is

and psychology. Wetness to one person

like sitting in an easy chair. It is like what

may be dryness to somebody else.

Matisse said, do you understand? It leads

(Figures 23–26)

to something.

Everything is relative. Design is

Kroeger I want to talk about these early

relationships. That is where you start to

stages of design. (Figures 4–8) The basic

design. Do you say what design is?

foundation—what would be an approach

That is important. If you say design is

to graphic design education. This is how I

relationships, you are already giving them

start: line interval studies, color problems,

something. That is very basic, and they

get the students familiar with

do not already know about it when they

composition. (Figures 9–17)

read this stuff. Without knowing the basic

Rand Why do you call this curved line and

theory, people feel they have to

curve shape? It should be curved. Curved

memorize everything. It is impossible.

line, one passive, one active, which is

Kroeger That is what I am trying to

passive, which is active? (Figures 18–20)

approach. What is the best way to teach

Kroeger The idea is to relate the forms

design to undergraduate design students?

to each other. The passive form is relative

Rand You have to define all your terms.

to the active form within its context. The

You have to define what design is. Do you

other examples are color studies: wet

know what design is? What is design?

and dry, hot and cold, good and evil, and

People have to understand what the hell

tumble and hide. (Figure 21 & 22)

they are doing. In art school people

Rand I know. How is this wet? How is this

assume everybody understands

dry? You are just saying it. It does not

everything. They do not. You talk about

Ground grid structure

4. Checkerboard

22

Paul Rand

5. Floating

6. Gradation

7. Rhythm

8. Motion

Vertical-line-composition development: five black and four white lines

9. Even / static

10. Static / white dominant 11. Static / black dominant 12. Progression / black increases, white remains same 13. Progression / white increases, black 9

remains same

11

10

14. Progression / white increases, black increases, same direction different rates 15. Progression / black decreases, white increases 16. Progression / white decreases, black increases

12

17. Random line composition using

14

13

common elements from the matrix 18. Two shapes, passive compared to active 19. Passive, active, more active, with an addition of a linear element 20. Passive to extremely active (five edge elements)

15

17

16

Organic, curvilinear form development

18

19

20

Word communication with ten square elements

21. Tumble

22. Hide

23. Cold

24. Wet

25. Dry

26. Hot

Conversation One

23

27

24

Paul Rand

design and there is no definition, and

it comes to illustrating wetness or

everybody has different ideas about

dryness, that is something else.

what design is. One person thinks of his

You have to establish a

father’s tie. One person thinks of his

relationship. It has to be related some

mother’s nightgown. Another person

way to something that gives you a clue.

thinks of the carpet in the living room.

You have to have some visual clue. This

Another person is thinking of his

is how you show wetness and dryness.

wallpaper in his bathroom. You know?

You do not do it the way you did it. That

That is not design. That is decorating.

is not possible. Unless you explain it,

What is the difference between design and decoration? The basics are

that is not explained.

Now if, for example, you have a

very important! This is not basic. There

pattern of white dots on a black

is nothing basic about this stuff. This

background, there is an idea of wetness

is really sophisticated stuff. I do not

by association with raindrops. So there

know how it was taught in Basel. I

are all kinds of associations that come

suppose it was done by example, not

into the picture. You are dealing with a

by theory.

very complicated subject. (Figure 28)

Kroeger We can point to design. This poster is good design. The chair is a good design. (Figure 27) Rand Everything is design. Everything!

Kroeger Then what do we have? We

Paul Rand’s idea

have good design or bad design?

by author

of wetness, realized

Rand That’s right.

28

Kroeger Then how do we decide?

Marion Rand (Paul Rand’s wife)

Rand You ask questions that are not

It strikes me that there must be some

answerable. There are a priori notions

books that you could find. Books that

about things that are self-understood.

would explain the foundation of design.

Everybody agrees. There are things that

Kroeger Kepes’s Language of Vision

are not a priori, things that do not agree.

(1969)?

There are things that you agree, you

Rand No, no, no! That is philosophical

know, you go out, the sun is shining,

double-talk.

everybody agrees, very pleasant. When

Marion: Not Kepes.

Conversation One

25

34

Paul Rand

Conversation One

35

Conversation One

33