Paul Rand, by: Paula Sosin
Paul (Rosenbaum) Rand, was born August 15, 1914. He was born an Orthodox Jew and as the creation of images that can be worshiped as idols was forbidden, his story takes on a new perspective, considering who he would soon become.
He was educated at the Pratt Institute, Parsons The New School for Design, the Arts League, and then began teaching at Yale University.
He became one of the originators of the Swiss style of graphic design and designed posters and corporate identities such as IBM, ABC.
By 1951, he had completed his first career as a media promotion designer for the Esquire-Coronet and an extraordinary designer for Apparel Arts and Directions. In those years, he accumulated an array of magazine covers and was featured regularly in exhibitions for the Art Directors Club, Four years before soaring into his second life-time career, he published a book, Thoughts on Design. The book had nearly one hundred reproductions of only some of his designs as well as some of the best diction, though written on graphic design. Thoughts on Design promoted him as the ‘designer of influence from Zurich to Tokyo,’ giving him the international reputation he was bound to achieve. For his second career, he began as an art director doing advertising design at the William Weintraub agency. There he was recognized as one of the ten best art directors by the Museum of Modern Art and the same year awarded by the Art Directors Club with a gold medal for his Morse Code advertisement addressed to David Sarnoff of RCA:
His third career in cooperate identification began in 1954. Many of his original corporate identities are still in use today or even similar copies of his designs are currently in the media, which confirms his successful triumphs as an artist, not just of his time, but ahead of his time as well.
Once he started at his own Weston studio, he had already established a renowned name for his trademarks. The designer could be identified by his use of bright color, graphic forms and typography. He somehow knowingly had the artistic touch to naturally be able to catch the viewers’ eye, which was the advertiser’s dream so everybody wanted in.
He ended up with a collection of advertisements for: Airwick, American Broadcasting Company, Ancient Age Whiskey, The Architectural Forum, Bab-O, Bell for Adano, Jacqueline Cochran, CIO Chorus….and the list goes on for companies from A-Z.
The American graphic design artist, most commonly known for his corporate logos died of cancer November 26th, in 1946. By the time he died, he had produced books and articles, advertisements, collateral, editorial, identity, packaging, posters, and other miscellaneous items such as clock designs, lunch boxes, mugs, pins, and the list goes on…
The artist and businessman knew how to think conceptually in order to arrive at the most simplest solution. He created works that could be identified upon the first second of viewing the work, while at the same time giving the viewer something new to think about. The work he provided to the media and our society was some of the most ground-breaking graphic design creations and writings. It set him apart from previous artists as he provided the revolutionary distinguished foundation that society called for at the time.
As a designer going in the visual communications field, I look at his work and see that what sets him apart from other artists of his time and even today, not only the simplicity but also the graphic forms used in his work are vital to any advertisements and cooperate logos. Few have the ability he did, to create such well-remembered icons that provide a visual for the companies that are so prominent in our society today. I admire the fact that his designs look so easy to come up with, yet they are still so innovative that there is no question they were designed by nobody other than Paul Rand.
http://www.paul-rand.com/about.shtml http://www.areaofdesign.com/americanicons/rand.htm
