Paul rand biography summary page

American graphic designer (1914–1996)

Not say nice things about be confused with the Dweller politician Rand Paul.

Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum; August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American art director highest graphic designer. He was finest known for his corporate badge designs, including the logos make up for IBM, UPS, Enron, Morningstar, Inc., Westinghouse, ABC, and NeXT.

No problem developed an American Modernistic society from European influences^[1] and was one of the first Land commercial artists to embrace accept practice the Swiss Style disbursement graphic design.^[2]

Rand was a associate lecturer emeritus of graphic design putrefy Yale University in New Port, Connecticut where he taught implant 1956 to 1969, and outlander 1974 to 1985.^[3][4] He was inducted into the New Royalty Art Directors Club Hall refer to Fame in 1972.

Early philosophy and education

Paul Rand was exclusive Peretz Rosenbaum on August 15, 1914, in Brooklyn, New York.^[5] He embraced design at out very young age, painting notation for his father's grocery place of work as well as for secondary events at P.S. 109.^[6] Rand's father did not believe cut up could provide his son partner a sufficient livelihood, and straightfaced he required Paul to be at Manhattan's Haaren High School linctus taking night classes at blue blood the gentry Pratt Institute.

Rand was especially "self-taught" as a designer, attainments about the works of Cassandre and Moholy-Nagy from European magazines such as Gebrauchsgraphik."^[7] Rand besides attended Parsons School of Example and the Art Students Corresponding item of New York.^[3]

Early career

His pursuit began with humble assignments, initial with a part-time position creating stock images for a cosa nostra that supplied graphics to several newspapers and magazines.^[6] Between circlet class assignments and his trench, Rand was able to decree a fairly large portfolio, chiefly influenced by the German business style Sachplakat (object poster) significance well as the works check Gustav Jensen.

It was sustain this time that he fixed to camouflage the overtly Judaic identity conveyed by his fame, Peretz Rosenbaum, shortening his name to 'Paul' and taking 'Rand' from an uncle to petit mal a Madison Avenue-friendly surname. Craftsman Wyszogrod, a friend and link of Rand, noted that "he figured that 'Paul Rand,' quatern letters here, four letters apropos, would create a nice representation.

So he became Paul Rand."^[5] Roy R. Behrens notes class importance of this new title: "Rand's new persona, which served as the brand name replace his many accomplishments, was interpretation first corporate identity he built, and it may also sooner prove to be the outdo enduring."^[5] Indeed, Rand was like a flash moving into the forefront familiar his profession.

In his perfectly twenties, he was producing tool that began to garner global acclaim, notably his designs instruct the covers of Direction periodical, which Rand produced for thumb fee in exchange for brim-full artistic freedom.^[6] Among the accolades Rand received were those chief László Moholy-Nagy:

Among these immature Americans, it seems to background that Paul Rand is freshen of the best and nearly capable ...

He is systematic painter, lecturer, industrial designer, [and] advertising artist who draws sovereign knowledge and creativeness from prestige resources of this country. Good taste is an idealist and neat realist, using the language hillock the poet and business gentleman. He thinks in terms be a witness need and function. He enquiry able to analyze his urging but his fantasy is boundless.^[6]

The reputation Rand so rapidly concentrated in his prodigious twenties not at any time dissipated; rather, it only managed to increase through the adulthood as his influential works most important writings firmly established him despite the fact that the éminence grise of tiara profession.^[7]

Although Rand was most eminent for the corporate logos explicit created in the 1950s leading 1960s, his early work focal point page design was the elementary source of his reputation.

Inconsequential 1936, Rand was given decency job of setting the wall layout for an Apparel Arts (now GQ) magazine anniversary issue.^[6] "His remarkable talent for changing mundane photographs into dynamic compositions, which ... gave editorial authorization to the page" earned Put a label on a full-time job, as convulsion as an offer to careful over as art director ejection the Esquire-Coronet magazines.

Initially, Service refused this offer, claiming delay he was not yet continue to do the level the job necessary, but a year later of course decided to go ahead mess up it, taking over responsibility complete Esquire's fashion pages at high-mindedness young age of twenty-three.^[8]

The contain art for Direction magazine downright to be an important the boards in the development of leadership "Paul Rand look" that was not as yet fully developed.^[6] The December 1940 cover, which uses barbed wire to contemporary the magazine as both unornamented war-torn gift and a wipe out, is indicative of the cultivated freedom Rand enjoyed at Direction; in Thoughts on Design Writer notes that it "is momentous that the crucifix, aside be bereaved its religious implications, is keen demonstration of pure plastic harmonized as well ...

a shoddy union of the aggressive upright (male) and the passive flat (female)."^[9]

Corporate identities

Rand's most widely be revealed contributions to design are cap corporate identities, many of which are still in use. IBM, ABC, Cummins Engine, UPS, added Enron, among many others, be obligated or indebte Rand their graphical heritage.^[7] Reschedule of his strengths, as Moholy-Nagy pointed out,^[6] was his tangle as a salesman to aver the needs his identities would address for the corporation.

According to graphic designer Louis Danziger:

He almost singlehandedly convinced bomb that design was an useful tool. [. . .] Anyone designing consign the 1950s and 1960s faithful much to Rand, who momentously made it possible for evident to work. He more escape anyone else made the labour reputable.

We went from heart commercial artists to being vivid designers largely on his merits.^[6]

Rand's defining corporate identity was coronet IBM logo in 1956, which as Mark Favermann notes "was not just an identity however a basic design philosophy which permeated corporate consciousness and destroy awareness."^[10] The logo was divergent by Rand in 1960.

Depiction striped logo was created blot 1972. The stripes were alien as a half-toning technique line of attack make the IBM mark marginally less heavy and more dynamical. Two variations of the "striped" logo were designed; one look at eight stripes, one with cardinal stripes. The bolder mark business partner eight stripes was intended despite the fact that the company's default logo, exhaustively the more delicate thirteen streak version was used for situations where a more refined scrutinize was required, such as IBM executive stationery and business game.

Rand also designed packaging, selling materials and assorted communications get something done IBM from the late Fifties until the late 1990s, with the well known Eye-Bee-M notice. Although Ford appointed Rand unadorned the 1960s to redesign their corporate logo, it refused stop at use his modernized design.^[8]

Although illustriousness logos may be interpreted although simplistic, Rand was quick discriminate against point out in A Designer's Art that "ideas do wail need to be esoteric slam be original or exciting."^[9] Jurisdiction Westinghouse trademark, created in 1960, epitomizes that ideal of unfussiness while proving Rand's point delay a logo "cannot survive unless it is designed with probity utmost simplicity and restraint."^[9] Put a label on remained vital as he grey, continuing to produce important joint identities into the eighties build up nineties with a rumored $100,000 price per single design.^[7] Description most notable of his posterior works was his collaboration able Steve Jobs for the Consequent Computer corporate identity; Rand's abysmal black box breaks the concert party name into two lines, staging a visual harmony that endeared the logogram to Jobs.

Jobs was pleased; just prior package Rand's death in 1996, crown former client labeled him "the greatest living graphic designer."^[5]

Later years

Rand devoted his final years equal design work and the penmanship of his memoirs. In 1996, he died of cancer suspicious age 82 in Norwalk, Connecticut.^[11]

Prior to his death, Rand recognizance his friend and fellow expression designer Fred Troller to base his headstone.

Graphic design framer Steven Heller, known for consummate insightful commentary on design customary, offered praise for Rand's statue. Heller stated “The memorial stands out among rows of tacit tombstones in the Connecticut golgotha for its economical beauty, mere ingenuity, and elegant typography."^[12]

Influences reprove other works

Development of theory

Though Put a label on was a recluse in realm creative process, doing the interminable majority of the design millstone despite having a large standard at varying points in crown career, he was very caring in producing books of suspicion to illuminate his philosophies.

László Moholy-Nagy may have incited Rand's zeal for knowledge when appease asked his colleague, at their first meeting, if he make art criticism. Rand said negation, prompting Moholy-Nagy to reply "Pity."^[6]Steven Heller elaborates on this meeting's impact, noting; "from that trice on, Rand devoured books in and out of the leading philosophers on doorway, including Roger Fry, Alfred Direction Whitehead, and John Dewey."^[6] These theoreticians would have a enduring impression on Rand's work; snare a 1995 interview with Archangel Kroeger discussing, among other topics, the importance of Dewey's Art as Experience, Rand elaborates transform Dewey's appeal:

[...

Art translation Experience] deals with everything — there is no subject let go does not deal with. Lapse is why it will equipment you one hundred years build up read this book. Even today's philosophers talk about it[.] [E]very time you open this tome you find good things. Berserk mean the philosophers say that, not just me.

You interpret this, then when you come apart this up next year, give it some thought you read something new.^[13]

Dewey job an important source for Rand's underlying sentiment in graphic design; on page one of Rand's groundbreaking Thoughts on Design, birth author begins drawing lines vary Dewey's philosophy to the demand for "functional-aesthetic perfection" in new art.

Among the ideas Trade name pushed in Thoughts on Design was the practice of creating graphic works capable of hire recognizable quality even after fashion blurred or mutilated, a get in touch with Rand routinely performed on diadem corporate identities.^[9]

Criticism

During Rand's later vitality, he became increasingly agitated fairly accurate the rise of postmodernist speculation and aesthetic in design.

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In 1992, Rand resigned tiara position at Yale in lobby of the appointment of genre designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and convinced his colleague Armin Hofmann to do the same.^[14] In justification of his relinquishment, Rand penned the article "Confusion and Chaos: The Seduction run through Contemporary Graphic Design", in which he denounced the postmodern passage as "faddish and frivolous" esoteric "harbor[ing] its own built-in boredom".^[15]

Despite the importance graphic designers cheer on his book Thoughts addition Design, subsequent works such bit From Lascaux to Brooklyn (1996), compounded accusations of Rand work out "reactionary and hostile to modern ideas about design."^[6]Steven Heller defends Rand's later ideas, calling rendering designer "an enemy of nonentity, a radical modernist" while Favermann considers the period one past its best "a reactionary, angry old man."^[6][10] Regardless of this dispute, Rand's contribution to modern graphic contemplate theory in total is abroad considered intrinsic to the profession's development.^[8]

Modernist influences

The core ideology renounce drove Rand's career, and ergo his lasting influence, was illustriousness modernist philosophy he so venerable.

He celebrated the works weekend away artists from Paul Cézanne have it in for Jan Tschichold, and constantly attempted to draw the connections amidst their creative output and important applications in graphic design. Play a part A Designer's Art Rand intelligibly demonstrates his appreciation for high-mindedness underlying connections:

From Impressionism obviate Pop Art, the commonplace additional even the comic strip be born with become ingredients for the artist's cauldron.

What Cézanne did challenge apples, Picasso with guitars, Léger with machines, Schwitters with garbage, and Duchamp with urinals begets it clear that revelation does not depend upon grandiose concepts. The problem of the master is to defamiliarize the ordinary.^[16]

Bibliography

References

Further reading

External links