Paul Rand
1914-1996
Image here
Lauren Fisher
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 antifascist 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
Advertisement for
Dubonnet Company
• cubism influence
• prominent label
(page 2 of logos)
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.