“Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions, there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.”
These remarkable words were spoken by Paul Rand (1914 – 1996), the most important and undoubtedly, the most gifted graphic designer of our time. Paul Rand’s design expertise covered advertising design, illustration and industrial design, and typography. He was known as an artist, painter, and lecturer and recognized for creating outstanding design mechanisms. More importantly, Paul Rand became increasingly famous in the 1950s for his corporate logo designs.
He was one such pioneer whose work in advertising design and typography has an astounding influence on the design profession. One of his most important achievements was to bring up commercial art from the low caliber of masses, to the discipline of fine arts. Not to forget, Paul Rand was famous for creating simple designs, but nothing he crafted, was without concept.
Early Life:
Peretz Rosenbaum aka Paul Rand was born in 1914 in New York. He studied at the Pratt Institute, the Parsons School of Design and the Arts Students League, New York. However, he was much of a self-taught designer. Paul’s father had the impression that studying art would not be enough to earn a living, so he had to be enrolled in night classes simultaneously with high school.
He loved to design and the first corporate identity he created was that of his name. He shortened his original name to ‘Paul Rand’, showing his sense of symmetry and balance, with four alphabets on one side and four on the other. Being an infant prodigy, Paul Rand’s work received worldwide recognition in his early twenties, especially for page design.
Design Career:
Paul Rand’s design career is divided in four phases. Having established his own office in 1935, he worked as the art director of Esquire-Coronet and Apparel Arts magazines for two years.
In the second phase of his career, advertising, he created a series of cover designs for Direction, a culture magazine, from 1937 to 1941. Here, Paul Rand worked for free, without being paid, as he thought he could produce more honest art without financial obligation. These covers immediately caught attention due to their propaganda-free style, identifiable imagery, and often hand-written text.
From 1941 to 1954, he served as the advertising director at the well-known William H. Weintraub Agency in New York. Here, Paul Rand and his team produced advertisements that combined type and image in a remarkable pictorial manner. In the mid 1950s, he became a freelance graphic design consultant and created corporate identification images for various leading American corporations.
Achievements:
Paul Rand received extensive acknowledgment for his talent and groundbreaking designs. In the 1950s, he was voted one of the ten best art directors in the USA. He also won many design awards, including Gold Medals from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and the Art Directors Club of New York. He was elected to the latter’s Hall of Fame in 1972. Rand was also a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale (AGI).
His work has been exhibited at the National Museum, Stockholm (1947), and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1954), and in exhibitions of the Alliance Graphique Internationale in Paris, London, and Lausanne.
Teaching:
The fourth part of Paul Rand’s career was when he started teaching design and other related elements. He taught at the Cooper Union in the year 1942 and at the Pratt Institute in 1946. He was associated in a similar teaching capacity with the Yale University’s Graduate School of Design and the School of Architecture as a Professor of Graphic Design from 1956 to 1992.
Books and Publications:
Paul Rand wrote several design related books and articles throughout his lifetime. He published his non-descriptive book, “Thoughts on Design”, with reproductions of almost one hundred of his designs and some of the best words yet written on graphic design, in 1946. It was a publishing event that gave him added strength, improving his international reputation and identifying him as an influencing designer, from Zurich to Tokyo.
The 1985 publication, Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art gave insight to his work, influences, beliefs and a number of reprinted essays from his illustrious graphic design career. As seen in his text Design, Form and Chaos published in 1994, Rand was also highly critical of many aspects of contemporary graphic design practice.
Paul Rand also published many children’s books with his wife Ann Rand, which are known for their clever artwork. One such example, “Sparkle and Spin”, is a Mid-century children’s classic re-published by Chronicle books.
Paul Rand passed away in 1996. He was suffering from cancer. He was labeled the ‘greatest living designer’ by one of his clients. The design theory put forward by Paul Rand will remain with us for a long time, with much appreciation shown by people who still idealize him.
After his death, many of Paul Rand’s books were donated by his widow, to the Arts of the Book collection at Yale University. Yale turned down this offer, refusing to accept a collection of a teacher and design maestro who taught on their campus for decades, a collection worth millions if sold and trillions if valued.
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