Paul Rand

Peretz Rosenbaum was born in 1914 in Brooklyn, NY. Rosenbaum would later change his name to Paul Rand, and become one of the most famous and influential graphic designers in history. He is best known for his logo design and corporate branding, creating timeless icons such as the IBM and ABC television logos. Paul Rand was an advocate of employing a wide variety of techniques such as typography, painting, collage, photography and montage to produce a distinctive and modern visual image poster, cooperate identity or magazine cover. He used movements such as Cubism, Expressionism and Bauhaus as inspiration for his own style.

Rand first made a name for himself as an editorial designer, doing work for magazines such as Esquire and Direction. Rand then focused on his passion for print design He even worked for free in some cases in turn for creative freedom, and as a result his style became known in the design community. Over the course of his career Rand has created some logos for some memorable brands such as NeXT and UPS. In the link below Paul Rand himself talks process, art and design in general. This video would taken before he sadly passed away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZzVyL_OpSI

http://www.paul-rand.com/ - his official website.


Paul Rand took inspiration from various artists such as; Paul Klee, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Wassily Kadinsky, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropuis, Roger Fry, Alfred North Whitehead and John Dewey.

The following logos below are probably the ones Rand are most famous for todays society. Rands logos have always been pretty simple.

Paul Rand defined the IBM logo back in 1956. He modified it in 1960 and didnt create the striped version until the 1970s. I personally prefer the logo in colour rather than black and white when Rnad produced it. Again, It refers to me being a fan of colour and the way I work as an artist. The achromatic version is very bland and tbh the strriped makes it vrey difficult to focus on. Almost plays with the eyes with the use of positive and negative space. Paul Rand also designed packaging and marketing materials for IBM including the well known Eye-Bee-M poster which is featured below.

 

Rand later collaborated with Steve Jobs to create a cooperate identity for Next. Rand used a simple black box to highlight the companys name hence why he used vibrant colours for each individual letter. He also broke the companys name into two lines to create a more compact look.

 

"Dont try to be original, try to be good" - Paul Rand quote.

 

 

 

In a recent youtube video, Rand says that when it comes to creating a cooperate identity there is a various things to take into consdieration as an artist such as; order, variety, constrast, symmertry, tension and balance. Also, scale, texture, space, shape, light and most importantly colour.