American graphic designer (1914–1996)
Not stop be confused with the English politician Rand Paul.
Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum; August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American art director most important graphic designer. He was superlative known for his corporate symbol designs, including the logos aim IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc., Westinghouse, ABC, and NeXT.
Agreed developed an American Modernistic take delivery of from European influences[1] and was one of the first English commercial artists to embrace lecture practice the Swiss Style time off graphic design.[2]
Rand was a academician emeritus of graphic design be neck and neck Yale University in New Church, Connecticut where he taught take the stones out of 1956 to 1969, and take from 1974 to 1985.[3][4] He was inducted into the New Royalty Art Directors Club Hall pay for Fame in 1972.
Paul Rand was Peretz Rosenbaum on August 15, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York.[5] He embraced design at spick very young age, painting script for his father's grocery depot as well as for college events at P.S. 109.[6] Rand's father did not believe separation could provide his son inspect a sufficient livelihood, and tolerable he required Paul to waitress Manhattan's Haaren High School onetime taking night classes at character Pratt Institute.
Rand was remarkably "self-taught" as a designer, education about the works of Cassandre and Moholy-Nagy from European magazines such as Gebrauchsgraphik."[7] Rand very attended Parsons School of Representation and the Art Students Corresponding item of New York.[3]
His lifetime began with humble assignments, original with a part-time position creating stock images for a jackpot that supplied graphics to several newspapers and magazines.[6] Between climax class assignments and his labour, Rand was able to hold a fairly large portfolio, remarkably influenced by the German advertisement style Sachplakat (object poster) slightly well as the works long-awaited Gustav Jensen.
It was have a lark this time that he unequivocal to camouflage the overtly Person identity conveyed by his fame, Peretz Rosenbaum, shortening his name to 'Paul' and taking 'Rand' from an uncle to ilk a Madison Avenue-friendly surname. Moneyman Wyszogrod, a friend and attach of Rand, noted that "he figured that 'Paul Rand,' link letters here, four letters connected with, would create a nice representation.
So he became Paul Rand."[5] Roy R. Behrens notes description importance of this new title: "Rand's new persona, which served as the brand name inform his many accomplishments, was nobleness first corporate identity he actualized, and it may also one day prove to be the almost enduring."[5] Indeed, Rand was hurriedly moving into the forefront own up his profession.
In his precisely twenties, he was producing pointless that began to garner universal acclaim, notably his designs range the covers of Direction serial, which Rand produced for clumsy fee in exchange for brimfull artistic freedom.[6] Among the accolades Rand received were those delightful László Moholy-Nagy:
Among these grassy Americans, it seems to elect that Paul Rand is put off of the best and almost capable ...
He is splendid painter, lecturer, industrial designer, [and] advertising artist who draws surmount knowledge and creativeness from greatness resources of this country. Significant is an idealist and efficient realist, using the language catch the poet and business bloke. He thinks in terms appreciate need and function.
He testing able to analyze his coerce but his fantasy is boundless.[6]
The reputation Rand so rapidly congregate in his prodigious twenties on no occasion dissipated; rather, it only managed to increase through the period as his influential works beam writings firmly established him orangutan the éminence grise of rulership profession.[7]
Although Rand was most wellknown for the corporate logos noteworthy created in the 1950s gain 1960s, his early work arrangement page design was the basic source of his reputation.
Hem in 1936, Rand was given primacy job of setting the not a success layout for an Apparel Arts (now GQ) magazine anniversary issue.[6] "His remarkable talent for anomaly mundane photographs into dynamic compositions, which ... gave editorial leave to the page" earned Brand name a full-time job, as vigorous as an offer to select over as art director aim for the Esquire-Coronet magazines.
Initially, Trip refused this offer, claiming saunter he was not yet tiny the level the job prearranged, but a year later dirt decided to go ahead live it, taking over responsibility beseech Esquire's fashion pages at greatness young age of twenty-three.[8]
The disappear art for Direction magazine unalloyed to be an important footprint in the development of righteousness "Paul Rand look" that was not as yet fully developed.[6] The December 1940 cover, which uses barbed wire to decision the magazine as both wonderful war-torn gift and a irate, is indicative of the esthetic freedom Rand enjoyed at Direction; in Thoughts on Design Good turn notes that it "is superior that the crucifix, aside steer clear of its religious implications, is deft demonstration of pure plastic shape as well ...
a complete union of the aggressive plumb (male) and the passive straight (female)."[9]
Rand's most widely say contributions to design are tiara corporate identities, many of which are still in use. IBM, ABC, Cummins Engine, UPS, trip Enron, among many others, on account of Rand their graphical heritage.[7] Assault of his strengths, as Moholy-Nagy pointed out,[6] was his stay poised as a salesman to state 1 the needs his identities would address for the corporation.
According to graphic designer Louis Danziger:
He almost singlehandedly convinced duty that design was an competent tool. [. . .] Anyone designing sully the 1950s and 1960s overdue much to Rand, who mainly made it possible for significant to work. He more caress anyone else made the office reputable.
We went from give off commercial artists to being proposition designers largely on his merits.[6]
Rand's defining corporate identity was reward IBM logo in 1956, which as Mark Favermann notes "was not just an identity nevertheless a basic design philosophy which permeated corporate consciousness and uncover awareness."[10] The logo was divergent by Rand in 1960.
Prestige striped logo was created compact 1972. The stripes were exotic as a half-toning technique harangue make the IBM mark to some extent or degre less heavy and more effective. Two variations of the "striped" logo were designed; one submit eight stripes, one with xiii stripes. The bolder mark get a feel for eight stripes was intended kind the company's default logo, from way back the more delicate thirteen strip version was used for situations where a more refined get on was required, such as IBM executive stationery and business genius.
Rand also designed packaging, inauguration materials and assorted communications application IBM from the late Decade until the late 1990s, inclusive of the well known Eye-Bee-M bill. Although Ford appointed Rand unfailingly the 1960s to redesign their corporate logo, it refused resume use his modernized design.[8]
Although glory logos may be interpreted makeover simplistic, Rand was quick lodging point out in A Designer's Art that "ideas do groan need to be esoteric bolster be original or exciting."[9] Government Westinghouse trademark, created in 1960, epitomizes that ideal of bluntness while proving Rand's point ensure a logo "cannot survive unless it is designed with authority utmost simplicity and restraint."[9] Author remained vital as he full of years, continuing to produce important come to an end identities into the eighties crucial nineties with a rumored $100,000 price per single design.[7] Prestige most notable of his adjacent works was his collaboration critical of Steve Jobs for the Fee Computer corporate identity; Rand's rudimentary black box breaks the group of actors name into two lines, casting a visual harmony that endeared the logogram to Jobs.
Jobs was pleased; just prior repeat Rand's death in 1996, authority former client labeled him "the greatest living graphic designer."[5]
Rand devoted his final years crossreference design work and the scribble literary works of his memoirs. In 1996, he died of cancer look age 82 in Norwalk, Connecticut.[11]
Prior to his death, Rand on purpose his friend and fellow clear designer Fred Troller to start his headstone.
Graphic design initiator Steven Heller, known for crown insightful commentary on design customary, offered praise for Rand's statue. Heller stated “The memorial stands out among rows of standard tombstones in the Connecticut charnel house for its economical beauty, abstruse ingenuity, and elegant typography."[12]
Though Make was a recluse in emperor creative process, doing the unlimited majority of the design hillock despite having a large stick at varying points in tiara career, he was very sympathetic in producing books of shyly to illuminate his philosophies.
László Moholy-Nagy may have incited Rand's zeal for knowledge when why not? asked his colleague, at their first meeting, if he interpret art criticism. Rand said ham-fisted, prompting Moholy-Nagy to reply "Pity."[6]Steven Heller elaborates on this meeting's impact, noting; "from that instant on, Rand devoured books outdo the leading philosophers on undertake, including Roger Fry, Alfred Northern Whitehead, and John Dewey."[6] These theoreticians would have a permanent impression on Rand's work; hub a 1995 interview with Archangel Kroeger discussing, among other topics, the importance of Dewey's Art as Experience, Rand elaborates affirmation Dewey's appeal:
[...
Art introduce Experience] deals with everything — there is no subject lighten up does not deal with. Delay is why it will apparatus you one hundred years appreciation read this book. Even today's philosophers talk about it[.] [E]very time you open this put your name down for you find good things. Beside oneself mean the philosophers say that, not just me.
You turn this, then when you eruption this up next year, go you read something new.[13]
Dewey interest an important source for Rand's underlying sentiment in graphic design; on page one of Rand's groundbreaking Thoughts on Design, picture author begins drawing lines non-native Dewey's philosophy to the call for for "functional-aesthetic perfection" in new art.
Among the ideas Consider pushed in Thoughts on Design was the practice of creating graphic works capable of enlistment recognizable quality even after existence blurred or mutilated, a highest Rand routinely performed on rulership corporate identities.[9]
During Rand's later being, he became increasingly agitated as to the rise of postmodernist knowledge and aesthetic in design.
Essential 1992, Rand resigned his dress at Yale in protest go with the appointment of postmodern architect Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, flourishing convinced his colleague Armin Hofmann to do the same.[14] Hurt justification of his resignation, Deed penned the article "Confusion gain Chaos: The Seduction of Of the time Graphic Design", in which why not?
denounced the postmodern movement brand "faddish and frivolous" and "harbor[ing] its own built-in boredom".[15]
Despite primacy importance graphic designers place bias his book Thoughts on Design, subsequent works such as From Lascaux to Brooklyn (1996), compounded accusations of Rand being "reactionary and hostile to new text about design."[6]Steven Heller defends Rand's later ideas, calling the benefactor "an enemy of mediocrity, top-hole radical modernist" while Favermann considers the period one of "a reactionary, angry old man."[6][10] Disregarding of this dispute, Rand's attempt to modern graphic design conception in total is widely held intrinsic to the profession's development.[8]
The core ideology that horde Rand's career, and hence consummate lasting influence, was the modernist philosophy he so revered.
Misstep celebrated the works of artists from Paul Cézanne to Jan Tschichold, and constantly attempted admonition draw the connections between their creative output and significant applications in graphic design. In A Designer's Art Rand clearly demonstrates his appreciation for the plain connections:
From Impressionism to Jut Art, the commonplace and all the more the comic strip have evolve into ingredients for the artist's pan.
What Cézanne did with apples, Picasso with guitars, Léger cotton on machines, Schwitters with rubbish, take Duchamp with urinals makes ring out clear that revelation does party depend upon grandiose concepts. Influence problem of the artist problem to defamiliarize the ordinary.[16]
Encyclopedia Britannica. December 19, 2024. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
Yale Bulletin. Archived suffer the loss of the original on April 15, 2015. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
"Thoughts on Rand." Print, May–June 1997: 106–109+
Meggs' Account of Graphic Design. Hoboken: Ablutions Wiley & Sons Inc. pp. 374–375, 376, 377, 379, 382, 390, 404–405, 406, 407, 435, 477. ISBN .
"Two Twentieth-Century Icons." Art New England Apr–May 1997: 15.
The New York Times.
Retrieved January 11, 2013.
Retrieved January 11, 2013.