Paul Rand: His Life and Contributions - Research Paper Example

Paul Rand: His Life and Contributions Paul Rand: His Life and Contributions There are millions of highly talented graphic designers, but Paul Rand is the most celebrated in modern times. Once a lecturer, painter, author and industrial designer, Rand derived his skills and experience from the resources offered by United States. He was both a realist and an idealist since he exploited the language used in poetry and the business world to come up with best selling graphic designs. To create such amazing masterpieces, his line of thought focused on necessity and functionality. As a result, his creativity and imagination became limitless.1 Paul Rand’s life began in 1914 in Brooklyn. He was raised up in a firm Orthodox Jewish environment. Orthodox rules condemn the establishing of images for worship such as idols, but at a tender age, Rand would contravene such laws by extracting and placing photos of celebrities and supermodels aired in the media in his father’s grocery warehouse. He joined the Pratt Institute, previously known as the Parsons School of design, as well as the Art Students League. In the Art League, he became one of the pioneers of the Swiss Style of graphic design.2 Having a strong background in designing stock portraits and images for many magazine and newspaper companies, coupled with the thought that his Jewish name might drag his career backwards in a white domineering society, he renamed himself Paul Rand. These two four letter words served as his lifelong corporate identity. In his early twenties, Rand piled a large Portfolio. He was being assigned jobs that made him famous both at home and abroad. During this period of time, he began setting page layouts for the famous Apparel Arts magazine. His designs on the exterior layout of the Direction Magazine became astounding, attracting readership. In 1940, he came up with a barbed wire cover design, which depicts the magazine as both a war-tone token and a crucifix. This was his tactic of testing with high art themes.3 Rand was gifted in converting the mundane into creative and astonishing layouts. This earned him a contract in the Esquire-Coronet magazine as an art director. At first, he failed to take up the job, but later reconsidered the offer, making him the head of Esquire Magazine when he was as young as 23. In late 1930s, Rand commenced his occupation of designing logos and corporate brand identities. In 1938, he established a new trade name for both Wallace Puppets and Esquire. At the turn of 1940, Rand climbed the job ladder to become the Art Director with William H. Weintraub Advertising firm.4 During his tenure as the Art Director for William Weintraub Advertising firm, he created contacts with prominent clients and started his career in advertising. He worked with many clients, including El Producto Cigar Company, Kaufman and Disney Hats, during which he designed artistic images and advertising promotions. His logos were uncomplicated and illustrated the standards of minimalism. In his advertising campaigns, every single detail was tailored towards attracting the eyes of prospective clients. Rand’s designs were always categorized into two major segments- an eye-catching large mass and a smaller one that warranted closer focus by the viewer.5 Since he was not the conventional art-director, he came up with most of the designs by himself. Most employees that worked under him feared him since he would forthrightly tell them whenever he was not impressed with their works of art. Towards 1954, Rand opted out of Weintraub and started developing his Weston studio. At this time, he became a famous trademark artist. In 1955, Rand kicked off his profession in corporate design by jointly working with Thomas J. Watson, then president of International Business Machines Company. Besides, he designed many book covers and movie posters.6 All through 1950s and 60s, Rand worked with many multinational corporations, designing their corporate identities. Some of his renowned masterpieces form trademarks of companies such as Westinghouse, IBM, Colorforms, United Postal Service (UPS), Cummins, ABC, Enron and Ford. To date, most of his designs for these organizations are still in use, albeit with few alterations.7 Rand was a lead-the-way functionalist who depended on firm visual ideas and vibrant typography to relay messages. The year1930 is remembered as a period when the American commercial arts and advertising sector was controlled by hard sell copy and factual illustrations. However, Rand developed and brought the official language of the 1920s European cutting-edge to publishing and corporate communications. He was among the rare American artists to lay claim to the Modernist trend of Cubism, DeStijl, Constructivism and Bauhaus.8 In United States, Rand came to the fore in introducing the new typography, which gets rid of the age-old and sentimental forms of layout treatments. Thereafter, he carried on with his firm campaign for modern design, both as a professional and an author. In 1941, Lazslo Moholy Nagy, a commentator for PM magazine, noted that among the youthful generation of Americans during his times till now, Paul was perhaps the best and most talented. Moholy added that Paul was not only an idealist, but also a realist, who exploited the language of poetry and the business world, thinking in terms of necessity and functionalities. Further, he retorts that Paul was capable of analyzing and understanding his challenges, having been endowed with a limitless mind. For that reason, Rand became the eminence grise of his line of profession.9 The foundation of Rand’s exceptional designs can be traced back to his early life in Pratt Institute, the Parsons School of Design, and the Art Student League of New York. He continued amassing many titles of honor from the organizations he served. In the process of exploring various lines of specialties, he found himself in the position of promotional editorial designer for many renowned media organizations. His hard work started earning him international honors since the designs would appear in the cover pages of leading global magazines. One of the many lauded works of Rand was for the 1939 issue of Direction Magazine, a modern cultural periodical.10 As an approval of the European Bauhaus ideologies, Rand enjoyed free displays of his works in the form of covers, which was accorded him in return for his pro bono services he offered. His career further shot up in 1950s when the design world in America was changing from war-oriented works to a more modernized technique. Moving away from the already existing forms of layout and typography, he turned to a more visual form in 1940s. As depicted in his newspaper front layouts, he designed his objects by borrowing from the traditional approaches of previous movements like Constructivism, De Stijl, Cubism and Bauhaus. He borrowed such forms so as to take on the success of European modernism into a wholly new form of American art.11 One of the most important projects of Rand’s whole professional life was his reconstruction of the IBM logo. The International Business Machines, a leading multinational technology company based in New York, had previously had five iterations of its insignia by mid 50s. In 1956, Thomas Watson, the founding president of IBM died. His son Tom Watson took over as the new Chief Executive Officer of the company. He began his work as CEO by calling for a review of the logo to herald a new age.12 Watson commissioned Rand to design the IBM Continuity emblem, where extended typography within a restricted format changed the impression of corporate identity by way of graphic communication. The alterations and changes were previously viewed as somewhat subtle, undertaken with the objective of bringing a smooth transition for the entire organization. Rand applied various changes to the earlier version, including utilizing City Medium type, which is a serif font that substituted the outline version of Beton Bold.13 Since the organization’s emblem had solely three simple letters, one of the most identifiable alterations was use of letter “m” with a sharp point in the middle. The famous emblem went through further changes in 1972, when its horizontal stripes were used in place of the block letters as a show of speed and dynamism in the world of continuous technological transformations. His design is still one of the most identifiable in today’s world.14 Besides IBM, Rand reconstructed the corporate identity of the American Broadcasting Company. Initially, the organization used a trademark featuring a literal representation of a television set that some perceived as extremely sophisticated or busy. He dismantled the image and reduced the message to its essence, realizing a memorable and distinct logo. The drawing shows a simple black circle enclosing three lowercase characters. The typeface he used is a reversion to the European movements since it was encouraged by the Bauhaus school in 1920s.The old 1960 emblem has been refined and used forty years later.15 Other outstanding works of art generated by Rand in the present times include the logos for Westinghouse Electric Company, United Parcel Service and Enron Corporation. Paul Rand’s achievements are beyond measure. His successes as graphic designer are always termed as legendary. In a 1990 interview with Steve Heller, an artistic reporter, Rand takes him back to his works by saying that when he was creating the covers of Direction, he was attempting to wrestle with Bauhaus, Picasso and Van Doesburg.16 However, he further notes that he was not just competing with them, but also attempting to perform it in their spirit and ideals.17 Many gurus and historians have pronounced Paul Rand the greatest designer of all time. In 1954, he was identified and voted as one of the ten outstanding art directors within the confines of United States. Later, he would be initiated into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, further boosted his unofficial title. One of Rand’s most renowned designs of his old days the corporate identity created in unison with Steve Jobs for NEXT Computer, a company dealing with the manufacture of computer workstations for business organizations and institutions of higher learning.18 Apple Computers, being the benchmark for art and design in both the business and academic world, Jobs, its founder, acknowledged Rand as the smartest living graphic designer prior to his death in 1996. In 1974, Rand was taken by the Yale University’s graduate school of design, where served in the capacity of Professor of Graphic Design. He held teaching with high esteem at Yale. Paul Rand met his death in November 1996.19 Americans may have forgotten Rand, but his achievements still have extensive influence in the world of graphic design now and undoubtedly in years to come.20 As a result, his contributions will never be matched with the contemporary graphic designers. His name will also never be erased from the annals of history as the pioneers of modern graphic design in United States and beyond. Bibliography Berlau, Alison. “The Logo King.” Graphic Designs, (2012): 32. http://www.ebscohost.com Heller, Steven. “Paul Rand.” Design Issues 13, no.1 (1997): 82. http://www.ebscohost.com Mercado, Nicole. Paul Rand. Fitchburg: FIDM DIGITAL ARTS, 2012. http://www.ebscohost.com Turk, Peter. “Paul Brand: A Designer’s Art.” Journal of Advertising, (1985): 62-63. http://www.ebscohost.com Vin, Khoi. “Design Your Own Destiny.” Print 65, no.1 (2011): 44-46. http://www.ebscohost.com Wright, Bruce. “Brands- The Early Years: Brand Identities by Paul Rand.” Print 65, no.1 (1997): 82. http://www.ebscohost.com Read More