Sunday 3 October 2010

Paul Rand



Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum, (August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a collaborative process between a client and a designer — in conjunction with producers of form — to convey a specific message to a targeted audience. The term "graphic design" can also refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines that focus on visual communication...
er, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM
IBM
International Business Machines is a multinational computer, technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States. IBM is the world's fourth largest technology company and the second most valuable by global brand...
, UPS
United Parcel Service
United Parcel Service, Inc. , commonly referred to as UPS, is the world's largest package delivery company. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Since...
, Westinghouse
Westinghouse Electric (1886)
Westinghouse Electric was an American power company. It was founded in 1886 as Westinghouse Electric Company and later renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by George Westinghouse. The company purchased CBS in 1995 and became CBS Corporation in 1997...
, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
, and Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs, is an American business magnate and inventor. He is well-known for being the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple...
NeXT
NeXT
Next, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets...
. He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design.

Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute (1929–1932), Parsons The New School for Design (1932–33), and the Art Students League

Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...



 (1933–1934). From 1956 to 1969, and beginning again in 1974, Rand taught design at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
 in New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is the second-largest municipality in Connecticut and the sixth-largest municipality in New England with a core population of about 124,000 people. "New Haven" may also refer to the wider Greater New Haven area, which has nearly 600,000 inhabitants in the immediate area...
. Rand was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972. Rand died of cancer in 1996. He is buried in Beth El Cemetery in Norwalk, Connecticut.








Influences

The core ideology that drove Rand’s career, and hence his lasting influence, was the modernist philosophy he so revered. He celebrated the works of artists from Paul Cézanne to Jan Tschichold, and constantly attempted to draw the connections between their creative output and significant applications in graphic design. In A Designer’s Art Rand clearly demonstrates his appreciation for the underlying connections:
This idea of “defamiliarizing the ordinary” (or "making the familiar strange," a strategy commonly credited to Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky

Viktor Shklovsky
Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky was a Russian and Soviet critic, writer, and pamphleteer.-Life and work:Shklovsky was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and attended St. Petersburg University...


) played an important part in Rand’s design choices. Working with manufacturers provided him the challenge of utilizing his corporate identities to create “lively and original” packaging for mundane items, such as light bulbs for Westinghouse.

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