Peretz Rosenbaum was an orthodox Jew born in Brooklyn, New York in 1914. It was later on that he changed his name to the world recognized Paul Rand. Growing up Rand painted signs for his father’s grocery store and also any events at his school. He attended the Pratt Institute from 1929-1932 and the Art Students League from 1933-1934. He also taught ‘Design’ at Yale University at multiple periods during his life. Rand was mostly a self-taught designer and read many issues of European magazines such as ‘Gebrauchsgraphik’. He was particularly interested in the works of Cassandre and Moholy-Nagy and eventually transformed many European styles into his own unique designs.
The beginning of his career saw Rand working part time creating stock images for various newspapers and magazines. One particular cover page which he was acclaimed for was the 1940 December issue of ‘Direction Magazine’. The cover showed a barbed wire cross across a package with a casually written ‘Merry Christmas’ tag. This image represented the contradictory aspects of mans behavior. Such emotional and thoughtful images are present throughout Rand’s work. At the age of twenty three Rand accepted a full time job as the director for the Esquire- Coronet magazines. He was offer the job a year earlier after his talent was noticed in an ‘Apparel Arts’ magazine, but decided to decline the offer feeling he wasn’t ready. Later on in his career Rand left the field of editorial design and moved to the more challenging field of advertising. It is his work with logos for large corporations in the 1950’s and 1960’s that Rand is most recognized for. His 1956 IBM logo was his first big success in corporate advertising. In addition to designing their logo, Rand designed packaging materials and posters for IBM. United Postal Services original logo was designed by Rand where he acknowledges the incorporation of humor into his work. ‘..To take an escutcheon- a medieval symbol which inevitably seems pompous today –and then stick a package on top of it, that is funny.” The UPS logo has been changed to the more futuristic design we see today. This caused much agitation amongst much of the designing community. In an interview with Steve Forbes the inventor of Apple computers, Forbes stated that Paul Rand was a very unique person to work with. He claimed that Rand would not offer any options to Apple for their logo. Instead he would provide a single ‘solution’ which he figured would best suit the company, and any alternatives can be obtained from other designers. Forbes admired Rand’s business-like attitude as well as his designing abilities. Besides these corporations Rand also worked with Ford Motors, ABC news and Westinghouse. He published many articles and publications during his career but possibly the most influential to the design industry was his 1946 text’ Thoughts on Design’.
Paul Rand’s creative perspectives seem very simplistic but they repeatedly prove that with equal form and context, even the most simplistic symbol can have several layers of meaning. In his own words Rand says ‘Art is when context and form are indistinguishable.’ An interesting point which he makes is that design cannot have too much content. If it does then it will get boring very quickly and the form has to be just right to capture the imagination. Many logos which are being created by young designers fail because they place too much emphasis on aesthetics. Rand argues that logos must be designed with restraint in order to be successful. The creative perspective which Rand used was also influenced by collages by Picasso. His designs have been known to illustrate a great deal of artistic freedom which makes them unusual and interesting. Even though he had many staff working for him Rand did the vast majority of the work on all his designs, using his staff to organize meetings and set dates etc. In another interview Rand was asked what he likes most about Graphic design and his response was ‘Problem solving’. He claimed that he enjoyed using graphic design to solve realistic problems. This is very true in relation to his logo for Apple computers where Steve Forbes has said that the company was in much need of a universally accepted logo. The unique perspectives from which Rand created his work are still very influential to this day and many of his logos are still in use.
Just prior to Rand’s death in November 1996, Steve Forbes labeled him “The greatest living graphic designer”. He enjoyed challenges and managed to become an iconic figure in the world of graphic design. There is no doubt that Paul Rand contributed greatly to the visual language industry and his additions will be admired for generations to come.
Sources:
The Art Directors Club : http://www.adcglobal.org/archive/hof/1972/?id=300
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand
‘Conversations with Paul Rand’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZzVyL_OpSI
1993 Interview with Steve Forbes :
http://www.logodesignlove.com/all-about-paul-rand
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