Paul Rand1914-1996

Lauren Fisher

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Early Life Paul Rand was born Peretz Rosenblum in Brooklyn in 1914

Being born into a strict Orthodox Jewish family was an obstacle for him since the religion did not allow drawing or representations of the human form

He took night classes at Pratt during high school against his parents’ will

He attended Parsons School of Design in 1932-33 as well as the Art Students League in 1933-34

Peretz changed his name to Paul Rand in order to fit into the advertising world which was dominated by Protestants

Influences Paul always felt he was a self taught designer

He credits Gebrausgraphik, a German advertising magazine, for early influences on his work

Modernists, like Picasso, Leger, DuChamp and Paul Klee

He drew on many European art movements: Cubism, Constructivism, and De Stijl to produce his own style

• Graphic design career

• Wrote several books on design

• Wrote and illustrated several children’s books

• Consulted for companies

• Taught at Yale 

First job at Apparel Arts Magazine setting the page layouts

• Became known for “transforming mundane photographs into dynamic compositions” 

A page from Apparel Arts Magazine

• Influence of European Modernists

• Engages viewer in the creative process

A cover he designed for Direction Magazine, an anti-fascist magazine of art & culture

• Christmas issue 1940

• “presents the magazine as both a war torn gift and a crucifix”

Advertisement: Coronet Brandy ‘Man’

• photo, collage, print & drawing

• bold graphics

• whimsical humor

(page 2 of logos)

Advertisement for Dubonnet Company

• cubism influence

• prominent label

Advertisement for El Producto Cigar Company

• combines photo of cigar & label with whimsical line drawings

• used this mascot over & over in ads for the company, close to 100 of them

1956 redesigned the IBM logo

• they did not ask him to change the logo, he felt it needed to be updated

• took the label from 3 solid capitals to the 3 striped capitals

• he saw a problem with the sequencing of the letters going from narrow capital I to the wide capital M, stripping tied them together

A poster done in 1981 for an in house event for the company

• initially officers at IBM did not like because took away from their official logo

• known as one of his best works

Original Westinghouse logo was made with a “gothic” typeface “w”

• Rand choose not to depart totally from the original, instead he changed the “w” to a circuit board “w” and kept the circle around it

UPS approached Rand in 1961

• he took their antiquated shield logo, and decided to make it more modern

• he streamlined the shield, used lower case gothic lettering, and placed the outline of a package with a bow on top

1962 the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) approached Rand to redesign their logo

• original logo was three capital letters in black: ABC

• Rand decided to change them all to lower case gothic typeface and based his design on 3 equal circles of white on a black background

• Rand loved the idea of minimalism

Rand collaborated with Steve Jobs for the NeXT computer in 1986

• Steve Jobs wanted to have a logo designed for his educational computer company, he went to IBM to seek special dispensation so that Rand could design a logo for him

• The computer came in a black box/cube

• “decided to frame the word itself within a cube to evoke the product itself”

• changed “e” to lowercase because he felt all capitals would be misinterpreted as EXIT

“A logo cannot survive unless it is designed with the utmost simplicity and restraint”. - Paul Rand

Sources

Heller, Steven, and Paul Rand. Paul Rand. London: Phaidon, 2000. Print.