“To all children who like ice cream”

Paul Rand, Sparkle and Spin,1957

Scuola del Design
Design della Comunicazione - C2
Laboratorio di Fondamenti del Progetto
Anno Accademico 2016 - 2017

DOCENTI
Prof.ssa Daniela Calabi
Prof.ssa Cristina Boeri
Prof.ssa Raffaella Bruno

CULTORI DELLA MATERIA

Dott.ssa Silvia Ludmilla Mondello
Dott.ssa Monica Fumagalli

COLLABORAZIONI ESTERNE
Dott.ssa Gabriella Frigerio
Cristina Balbiano D’Aramengo

PROGETTO GRAFICO
Barazzetta Micol Rachele
Corso Beatrice
Invernizzi Alicia
Viena Veronica

DesignVerso: una collana dedicata ai designer della

comunicazione immaginata come allegato alla
rivista Multiverso, Università degli Studi di Udine.
 INDEX
Randirector
1 Maria Popova
children books
13 Paul and Ann’s
Magazines and 41
advertising
Steven Heller
Paul Rand
3 Instinct
Paul Rand’s The Play
laboratory 25
Steven Heller
23
Fun never Rand
BRand Identity
25
27 Paul Rand
Logos, Flags Invention
and Escutcheons Integrity and
Paul Rand 13
37 Jessica Helfand
How to design an Logocentrism
enduring logo 3
Anne Quito
1
Randesigner
Font
Droid Serif: designed by Steve
Matteson. The Droid Serif font
family features a contemporary Editorial staff
appearance and was designed for
comfortable reading.
Futura
Bodoni 72
editorial
INDEX
 A
“An idealist and a realist using the language of the poet and the businessman. He
thinks in terms of need and function. He is able to analyze his problems, but his
fantasy is boundless.” These are the words that Moholy-Nagy used in order to describe
the manifold and fleeting nature of one of the most acclaimed graphic designer of the
last century: Peretz Rosenbaum, the man, the designer, the artist.

The one who has reinvented the language of the visual communication with method
and irony. Brand identities, magazines, advertisings and children books: metaphors
that go beyond the simple visual impact. Through these communicative artifacts he
explored the minimalism and essentiality in a disarming manner, and above all in
a successful way. We were also interested in showing the child who cuts and pastes,
throws together and experiments new combination of shapes and words. In order to
became the designer that we all know, he never forgot the importance of the game, as
a method to reach creativity and modernity.

In this monograph we tried to explain the versatility of his personality and of his
works. Moreover we’d like to express his multiverse, controversial and multi-colored
soul. The goal was to design a monograph using his stylistic choices of simplification,
bold colors and solid hues.

The insert is a little book which contains interviews to Paul Rand or to people who
worked with him. With this insert we tried to show Rand’s personality through his
own words or with the personal experiences of his collaborators.

This monograph is divided into two parts: one is about Rand’s life and character,
while the other shows his works. The two sections are characterized by different
page orientation. This features is taken from the magazine “Multiverso”, to which this
monograph is bundled. Each section is dived in two topics.

EDITO RIAL
Beatrice Corso
Randesigner
Paul Rand, photograph by Joe A.Watson

By Jessica Helfand
 G
raphic design is easily the most ubiquitous of all the arts. It is everywhe-
re, touching everything we do, everything we see, everything we buy: on
billboards and in Bibles, on taxi receipts and on web sites, on birth certi-
ficates and on gift certificates, on the folded circulars tucked inside jars
of aspirin and on the thick pages of children’s chubby board books. [...]
It is complex combinations of words and pictures, numbers and charts,
photographs and illustrations that, in order to succeed, demand the clear thinking of
a thoughtful individual who can orchestrate these elements so that they all add up to
something distinctive, or useful, or beautiful, or playful, or subversive, or in some way
truly memorable. It is a popular art, a practical art, an applied art, an ancient art. It
is informed by numerous disciplines, including art and architecture, philosophy and
literature, politics and performance. 4
Simply put, graphic design is the art of visualizing ideas.
Until World War II, it was better known in the United States as commercial art.
Practiced by printers and typesetters, it was more a vocation than a profession, more
a reflection of the economic realities of a newly industrialized culture than an oppor-
tunity to engage the creative expression of an individual or an idea.
Unlike the experimentation that characterized design as it was being practiced
and taught in Europe in the early years of this century-led by Cubism and Constructi-
vism, pioneers of DeStijl and disciples of the Bauhaus — what we now think of as
graphic design was, in this country, driven by the demands of commerce, and fueled
by the prospect of eliminating the economic hardships that had plagued the nation
during the Depression.[...]

B
y the early 1930s, however, a small but accomplished group of American
and European expatriate designers began to experiment with new ways
to approach the design of commercial printed matter.
Combining the experimental formal vocabularies of their European col-
leagues with the material demands of American commerce, they helped
to inaugurate a new visual language that would revolutionize the role of
design as both a service and an art. Of this group — which included Lester Beall, Bra-
dbury Thompson, and Alexey Brodovich, among others — none was so accomplished,
or would produce as many lasting contributions to the field, as Paul Rand, arguably
America’s most accomplished graphic designer, who died last year at the age of 82.
More than any other designer of this century, Rand is credited with bringing
the modernist design aesthetic to postwar America. Highly influenced by the Euro-
pean modernists — Klee and Picasso, Calder and Miro — Rand’s formal vocabulary
signaled the advent of a new era.

RANDESIGNER
 Using photography and montage, cut paper and what would later become known as
The New Typography — asymmetrical typography that engaged the eye and activated
the page — Rand rallied against the sentimentality of stolid, commercial layouts and
introduced a new, sharper, cleaner, and forward-looking vocabulary of the kind that
he had observed in such European design magazines as the German Gebrauchsgraphik
and the English Commercial Art. To look at Rand’s work today — work that dates from
half a century ago — is to see how an idea can be distilled to its most concentrated and
salient form. The style is playful, the message immediate, the communication unde-
niably direct.

B
orn in 1914 in Brooklyn, the son of Viennese immigrants who were Or-
5 thodox Jews, Rand began drawing as a child and went on to attend the
Pratt Institute, the Parsons School of Design, and the New York Art Stu-
dents League, where he studied with George Grosz. He opened his own
studio in New York in 1935; two years later he was named art director of
Esquire. In his twenties, he suffered a terrible loss when his identical twin
brother, a jazz musician, died in an automobile accident; his divorce and subsequent
remarriage followed not long after.
During these turbulent years, he remained busy designing layouts for Apparel
Arts magazine, as well as covers for the antifascist magazine Direction, where, betwe-
en 1938 and 1941, he developed his skills in connection with complicated political
issues: the Nazi seizure of the Sudetenland, for example. In 1941, at the age of 27, Rand
left to join the William H. Weintraub advertising agency, where he would spend the
next 13 years producing advertisements for, among others, El Producto, Dubonnet,
Orbach’s, and Revlon. He was hired as the graphic design consultant for IBM in 1956
(the same year he was hired by Josef Albers to teach in the graduate design program
at Yale), where he collaborated with Thomas Watson Jr. and Eliot Noyes on the famous
striped letter forms that are still in use today.
Rand was also one of the few distinguished practitioners of graphic deign who
saw fit (or found time) to publish on the subject. A contributing writer to numerous
design publications here and abroad, he went on to publish four important books:
Thoughts on Design (1946); Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art (1985); Design, Form and Chaos
(1994); and, most recently, From Lascaux to Brooklyn (1996) . Consequently, he was
perhaps the only designer of his generation to articulate a sustained theoretical posi-
tion about graphic design.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

POSTER EYE, BEE, M (1981)
Paul Rand’s popular Eye-Bee-M poster, a type
of word puzzle known as a rebus that uses pi-
ctures to represent letters, was created in 1981
in support of IBM’s motto, THINK.

SOME COVERS OF GEBRAUCHSGRAPHIK

MAGAZINE
First published in 1924 in Berlin – Gebrauch-
sgraphik (published as Novum from 1970s)
is a leading and influential design magazine.
Each month this journal presents the best in
graphic design, illustration, photo-design,
corporate design, paper, packaging, adver-
tising and typography.

RANDESIGNER
 COVER OF PERSPECTIVES U.S.A.
ISSUE 3, SPARING 1953
Published by James Laughlin as part of the
Cultural Cold War against the Soviet Union,
Perspectives U.S.A. was a journal about
American arts and literature. The cover il-
lustrations of every issue were designed by
some of the great Modernist designers and
illustrators of the era. Paul Rand designed
the cover right below.

SOME COVERS OF GEBRAUCHSGRAPHIK

MAGAZINE
For over 90 years Gebrauchsgraphik has
been providing professionals with an inspi-
ring mix of international graphic design and
advertising, and it also delivers a unique hap-
tic experience in terms of an exciting array of
cover materials and treatments. During these
years of publications it has become a source
of inspirations for a lot of graphic designers,
like Paul Rand.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 R
and was a modernist not only in the reductive vocabularies of his design,
but also in the intellectual curiosity of his writing. His books typically
consist of short, staccato-like essays in which he considers the funda-
mental factors that shape our understanding of visual communication.
In each of his books, he scrutinizes the relationship between art and de-
sign, between design and aesthetics, between aesthetics and experience.
At length, he examines the role of intuition and ideas, the balance between form and
function, and the universal language of geometry.
He believed these topics to be timeless. «My interest has always been in resta-
ting the validity of those ideas which, by and large, have guided artists since the time
of Polyclitus,» he wrote. «It is the continuing relevance of these ideals that I mean to
emphasize, especially to those who have grown up in a world of punk and graffiti.» 8
There is a personal, almost spiritual quality to Rand’s work. The promises of moderni-
sm, in which the harmony of formal relationships gesture to a higher order, and seek
to embrace a purist ideal, must have held, for Rand, a kind of divine appeal.

W
hile it is true that Rand’s celebration of pure form gestured to an eco-
nomy of means that might be characterized as quintessentially modern,
it is also true that his resistance to new, more abstract forms of expres-
sion revealed itself repeatedly in his writings and interviews, thus bran-
ding him, in his final years, as outmoded and conservative.
Throughout his professional life, the words most frequently associated
with Rand were irascible, ornery, and curmudgeon - characteristics which led to such
statements as «The development of new typefaces is a barometer of the stupidity of our
profession.» True to form, his last book was dedicated «to my friends and enemies.»
A lifelong advocate of the axiom «less is more», he was criticized for his rejection of
a more contemporary design idiom. Rand scorned what he saw in his later years as a
postmodern free-for-all, in which sentiment and subjectivity supplanted logic and cla-
rity. The teacher in him saw an opportunity to redefine and to restate the great lessons
of the modernist legacy; his writing is tireless in this regard.
And the artist in him saw the necessity of promoting the same exacting stan-
dards that he used not only to evaluate his own work, but to assess the quality of
any great work of art. «The quality of the work always precedes everything else,» he
explained in an interview not long before his death. «And the quality, of course, is my
standard.» Throughout his books, Rand sustained his arguments through repetition
that sometimes verged on dogma. He wrote in the rhetoric of the manifesto.
Written primer-style on such topics as The Beautiful and the Useful, Design and

RANDESIGNER
 the Play Instinct, and Intuition and Ideas, his essays were extensively illustrated by
visual examples from his own portfolio, and footnoted with citations from his equally
extensive library. In Rand’s writings, design became a humanist discipline; and his
insistence was amplified not only by references to, say, Leger and Albers, but also to
Kant, Hegel, Dewey, Whitehead, Bergson, James, and others. «To design,» Rand writes
in Design, Form and Chaos, «is much more than simply to assemble, to order or even
to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate, to simplify, to clarify, to modify,
to dignify, to dramatize, to persuade, and perhaps even to amuse. To design is to tran-
sform prose into poetry.»
For Rand, design was an orchestration of rhythm, contrast, balance, propor-
tion, repetition, harmony, and scale — a philosophically sophisticated vocabulary of
9 simple form, specific function, and symbolic content. In his vision, a circle could be
a globe, an apple, a face, a stop sign; a square became a gift-wrapped box (the UPS
trademark), an Egyptian frieze (the IDEO trademark), or a child’s toy (the Colorforms
trademark). Over the course of a career that spanned more than six decades, Rand
produced a prolific body of work that included advertising and posters, books and
magazines, illustration and — perhaps most important — a host of extraordinary tra-
demarks for such corporations as ABC, IBM, UPS, and Westinghouse. It is for these
ubiquitous icons that he is best remembered.[...]

L
ooking back on his prolific career, it is paradoxical to think that the man
who gave graphic life to such technological giants as IBM, IDEO (the inter-
national technology think tank based in Northern California), and Steve
Jobs’s NeXT should himself have been so averse to the computer. How
could Rand, the devout modernist, be so openly resistant to the progressi-
ve changes brought about by the machine, the symbolic child of modern
industry? It is as though the same geometric forms that embodied the logic of mecha-
nical reproduction, the same formal vocabulary that inspired his mentors and defined
the very spirit of modernism, were available to Rand only in theory.
Such contradictions underscored his entire career. The darling of corporate
America for decades, Rand rejected the lure of city life, choosing to work alone in his
home studio in Connecticut for the better part of his career. He claimed to despise
academia, but he remained a devoted member of the Yale faculty for over 35 years. It
is likely that the orthodoxy that characterized both his relationship to design and his
relationship to God was an attempt to resolve these contradictions, to right the balan-
ces, to establish order in the studio and in the spirit. But the contradictory impulses
remained: «Five is better than four, three is better than two», he often announced to

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

Can design
become a
humanist
discipline
for
everyone?
 his students, claiming that the mind worked harder and received a greater sense of
reward when resolving asymmetrical relationships on the page.
As Rand grew older, such lessons were taught with even greater passion and
emphasis. At the same time, in his own work, the pioneering spirit that led him to
push the boundaries of expression in the early years grew decidedly less ambitious.
With each successive book, the editorial organization is looser, the type is larger, and
the writing is weaker. Rand’s last book, From Lascaux to Brooklyn, is in many ways his
weakest book. The precision that qualified the earlier essays is missing, the ideas fol-
low a less logical path, and the marginalia from philosophy, aesthetics, and literature
combine somewhat randomly with Rand’s brazen, ex cathedra statements. And yet
it is a passionate and exuberant book. «The impulse to creation knows no exception,
11 fashionable or practical», he writes. «Cosmetics or jewelry, flatware or footwear, ham-
mers or nails — it is the urge to invent, to solve problems, visual or mechanical, that
really matters.» There is Rand’s testament, there is Rand going out in a blaze of brains
and glory.

Paul Rand, photograph by Kelly A. Gunn

JESSICA HELFAND, a founding editor of Design Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media and Visual
Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. Culture (2001), Scrapbooks: An American History (Yale Uni-
She is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and versity Press, 2008) (named that year’s best visual book by
a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica the New York Times) and Design: The Invention of Desire
received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where (Yale University Press, 2016).
she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.
She is the author of numerous books on design and cultural This article has been published in a longer form for the ma-
criticism, including Paul Rand: American Modernist (1998), gazine New Republic, December 29, 1997, Vol. 217, Issue 26

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

RANDESIGNER
Integrity and
invention
by Paul Rand
 W

We are told «One picture is worth more than a thou-

sand words», but is it? Does any one ad, poster, tra-
demark, book jacket, letterhead, or TV commercial
tell us of the compromises, doubts, frustrations, or
misunderstandings that went into its making?

Some years ago I was asked to contribute a paper

on the subject of the visual arts. Those problems
I chose to write about have, if anything, become
even more apparent today than they were then.
For the most part neither time, nostalgia. Victoria-
na, Art Deco, nor any other fashionable revival has
warranted any substantial alterations in my views.
 COURAGE AND CREATIVITY
To function creatively the artist must have the courage to fight for what he believes.
Courage in the face of a danger that has no element of high adventure in it-just the
cold, hard possibility of losing his job. Yet the courage of his convictions is, along with
his talent, his only source of strength. Frank Lloyd Wright put it this way:
15
Il work as ’Il think as I am
No thought of fashion or sham
Nor for fortune the jade
Serve vile Gods of trade
My thought as beseemeth a man.
(Frank Lloyd Wright, Work Song (Oak Book Workshop,1898) )

The businessman will never respect the professional who does not believe in what he
does. The businessman under these circumstances can only use the artist for his own
ends. And why not, if the artist himself has no ends? In asking the artist to have cou-
rage, we must ask the same of industry. The impetus to conform, so widespread today,
will , if not checked, kill all forms of creativity, scientific and technological included.
Business has a strong tendency to wait for a few brave pioneers to produce or
underwrite original work, then rushes to climb on the bandwagon. The bandwagon,
of course, may not even be going in the right direction. The attention and admiration
evoked by the high calibre of XYZ’s advertising have induced many an advertiser to
say, “Let’s do something like XYZ” without considering that it might not be at all su-
ited to his needs. Specific problems require specific visual solutions. But both XXX’s
and YYY’s advertising and products can be made to fulfill their functions and also be
aesthetically gratifying. Both can express respect for and concern with the broad· est
interests of the consumer. Against the outstanding achievements in design by some
companies, there stands the great dismal mountain of lacklustre work. On the whole,
industry lacks confidence in creative talent and creative work, and this is the most
serious obstacle to raising the standards of design.

D ESIGN
DESIGN VERSO 2017
VERSO 2017
 23

Vittorio Cassoni (Ing. C. Olivetti & Co.) with Steve Jobs at the Personal Computer Forum, 1990. Photograph by Ann Yow-Dyson

In 1986, Steve Jobs recruited renowned graphic designer Paul Rand to create a
brand identity for his new company, Next. He spent $100,000 for Rand’s project.

«I asked him if he would come up

with a few options, and he said, “No,
I will solve your problem for you
and you will pay me. You don’t have
to use the solution. If you want op-
tions go talk to other people.”»
(Steve Jobs on working with Rand, 1993)

RANDESIGNER
 ORIGINALITY AND SUBJECT-MATTER
Ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting. As H. L. Mencken says of
Shaw’s plays, «The roots of each one of them are in platitude; the roots of every effecti-
ve stage play are in platitude.» And when he asks why Shaw is able to ‘kick up such a
pother’, he answers, «For the simplest of reasons. Because he practises with great zest
17
and skill the fine art of exhibiting the obvious in unexpected and terrifying lights.»
From Impressionism to Pop, the commonplace and the comic strip have be-
come the ingredients for the artist’s cauldron. What Cezanne did with apples, Picasso
with guitars, Leger with machines, Schwitters with rubbish, and Duchamp with uri-
nals makes it clear that revelation does not depend upon grandiose concepts. In 1947
I wrote what I still hold to be true, «The problem of the artist is to make the common-
place uncommonplace.» If artistic quality depended on exalted subject-matter, the
commercial artist, as well as the advertising agency and advertiser, would be in a bad
way. For years I have worked with light bulb manufacturers, cigar makers, distillers,
etc., whose products visually are not in themselves unusual. A light bulb is almost as
commonplace as an apple, but if I fail to make a package or an advertisement for light
bulbs that is lively and original, it will not be the light bulb that is at fault.

ARTISTIC INTEGRITY
There are those who believe that the role the designer must play is fixed and determi-
ned by the socio-economic climate; that he must discover his functional niche and fit
himself into it. It seems to me that this ready-made image ignores the part the artist
can play in creating this climate. Whether we are advertising tycoons, missile buil-
ders, public figures, or private citizens, we are all human beings, and to endure we
must first of all, be for ourselves.
Only when man is not accepted as the center of human concern does it beco-
me feasible to create a system of production which values profit out of proportion to
responsible public service or to design ads in which the only aesthetic criteria are the
use of fashionable illustrations and in typefaces.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

«The problem
of the artist is 25

to make the
commonplace
uncommonplace.»
Paul Rand, Thoughts on Design
New York: George Wittenborn, Inc., 1947

RANDESIGNER
26 “Brillo Box of Andy
Warhol, unlike the
pile of Brillo boxes
in the supermarket
storeroom, is
transfigured by “a
certain theory of art”.
It is the theory that
takes it up into the
world of art and
keeps it from
collapsing into the
real object which it
is.”

Arthur C. Danto,
The Transfiguration of the
Commonplace: a Philosophy
of Art,
PaperBack, 1983

Andy Warhol
poses with his
artwork titled
The Brillo Boxes
at the Tate
Gallery in
D ESIGN VERSO 2017 London on
February 15,
1971
THE CORPORATE IMAGE
In this, the speed generation, practically any corporation large or small, can have its
image made to order. A vast army of image makers have made a business out of art
large enough almost to rival the businesses they help to portray. Much has been touted
about the virtues of corporate identification programs. Because the corporate image
so often conveys the impression that it is all­encompassing, it leaves little doubt in the 20
mind of the onlooker that the image he sees represents a company which is really in
the swim, that it’s the best, the first, and the most.
However, being with it is not always being for it. lt seems to me that a company
can more easily be recognized for what it really believes not by its made-to-order
image (its trademark, logotype, letterhead), nor by the number of avant-garde prints
or Mies van der Rohe chairs that embellish its offices, but by its more mundane, day-
to-day activities: its house organs, counter displays, trade advertisements, packaging,
and products. Unless it consistently represents the aims and beliefs as well as the total
activity and production of a company, a corporate image is at best mere window dres-
sing, and at worst deception. Things can be made and marketed with out considering
their moral or aesthetic aspects; ads can convince without pleasing or heightening the
spectator’s visual awareness; products can work regardless of their appearance. But
should they? The world of business could function without benefit of art. But should
it? I think not, if only for the simple reason that the world would be a poorer place if
it did. The commercial artist (designer) who wants to be more than a mere stylist and
who wishes to avoid being overwhelmed by the demands of clients, the idiosyncrasies
of public taste, and the ambiguities of consumer research surveys must clarify what
his cultural contribution should be. In all these areas he must try to distinguish the
real from the imaginary, the sincere from the pretentious, and the objective from the
biased. If the graphic designer has both talent and a commitment to aesthetic values,
he will automatically try to make the product of graphic design both pleasing and vi-
sually stimulating to the user or the viewer. By stimulating I mean that this work will
add something to the spectator’s experience.
The artist must believe his work is an aesthetic statement, but he must also un-
derstand his general role in society. lt is this role that justifies his spending the client’s

RANDESIGNER
 money and his risking other people’s jobs. And it entitles him to make mistakes. He
adds something to the world. He gives it new ways of feeling and thinking, he opens
doors to new experience. He provides new solutions to old problems.
There is nothing wrong with selling, even with hard selling, but selling which
misrepresents, condescends, or relies on sheer gullibility or stupidity is wrong. Moral-
21
ly, it is very difficult for an artist to do a direct and creative job if dishonest claims are
being made for the product he is asked to advertise, or if, as an industriai designer, he
is supposed to exercise mere stylistic ingenuity to give an old product a new appearan-
ce. The artist’s sense of worth depends on his feeling of integrity. lf this is destroyed he
will no longer be able to function creatively.

ART AND COMMUNICATION

The lament of the graphic designer that he is not permitted to do good work because
good work is neither wanted nor understood by his employers is universal. It is in-
deed very often true. But if the artist honestly evaluates his work he will frequently
find that the good work the businessman has rejected is really not so good. Many
times when the square client says «It’s too far out» he may be un­consciously reacting
to inappropriate symbolism, obscure interpretation of an idea, poor typography, an
inadequate display of his product, or simply bad communication.

This text is taken from Paul Rand’ book A Desi- flipped through. Rand’s essays cited academics.
gner’s Art, published in 1985. Prints of his logo work for IBM, ABC, and Westinghouse,
“It was the first book to look at a graphic designer’s output along with indie work for magazine and book covers, sup-
intelligently, as opposed to just visually,” says Steven Heller, ported his arguments. It was a lot to digest. “You could read
a design critic who knew Rand professionally. Unlike other it in one sitting, but it still requires time to absorb the ideas,”
monographs, A Designer’s Art was meant to be read, not Heller says.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

Graphic design
which fulfills aesthetic needs.
complies with the laws
of form and the exigencies
of two-dimensional space;
which speaks in
semiotics sans-serifs, and
geometrics; which abstracts,
transforms, translates,
rotates, dilates, repeats,
mirrors, groups, and regroups
is not good design if it is
irrelevant.

Graphic design
which evokes the symmetria
of Vitruvius, the dynamic
symmetry of Hambidge, the
asymmetry of Mondrian; 29

which is a good gestalt,

generated by intuition or by
computer, by invention
or by a system of coordinates
is not good design
if it does not communicate.

Yale University Professor Emeritus

Designer of many of the canonical identities of corporate
America including ABC, IBM, Westinghouse, UPS, and Next.

RANDESIGNER
Rachele Micol Barazzetta
Fun never Rand
32
Design
Play
and the

Instinct

by PAUL RAND
D ESIGN VERSO 2017
 T
he absence in art of a well-formulated and systematized body of litera-
ture makes the problem of teaching a perplexing one. The subject is fur-
ther complicated by the elusive and personal nature of art. Granted that
a student’s ultimate success will depend largely on his natural talents, the
problem still remains: how best to arouse his curiosity, hold his attention,
and engage his creative faculties.
Through trial and error, I have found that the solution to this enigma rests, to a large
extent, on two factors: the kind of problem chosen for study, and the way in which
it is posed. I believe that if, in the statement of a problem, undue emphasis is placed
on freedom and self expression, the result is apt to be an indifferent student and a
meaningless solution. Conversely, a problem with defined limits, implied or stated

In the left page: redesign of the cover of The Play Instinct, Paul Rand, 1970
disciplines which are, in turn, conducive to the instinct of play, will most likely yield
an interested student and, very often, a meaningful and novel solution.

Of the two powerful instincts which exist in all human beings and which can be used
in teaching, says Gilbert Highet, one is the love of play.” The best Renaissance tea-
chers, instead of beating their pupils, spurred them on by a number of appeals to the
play-principle. They made games out of the chore of learning difficult subjects—Mon-
taigne’s father, for instance, started him in Greek by writing the letters and the easiest
words on playing cards and inventing a game to play with them.”
Depending on the nature of the problem, some or all of the psychological and intel-
lectual factors implicit in game-playing are equally implicit in successful problem-sol-
ving:

FUN NEVER RAND

 34

Moholy Nagy D ESIGN VERSO 2017

Abacus photo-
grams 1943
 W
ithout the basic rules or disciplines, however, there is no motivation, test
of skill, or ultimate reward—in short, no game. The rules are the means to
the end, the conditions the player must understand thoroughly, and work
with, in order to participate. For the student, the limits of a well-stated
problem operate in much the same way. “Limited means,” says Braque,
“beget new forms, invite creation, make the style. Progress in art does not
lie in extending its limits, but in knowing them better.”
Unfortunately, in some of our schools little attempt is made to guide the stu-
dent’s thinking in a logical progression from basic design to applied design. We are
all familiar with the so-called practical problems which attempt to duplicate the con-
ditions of industry-the atmosphere of the advertising agency, for example. Such pro-
blems are frequently stated in the broadest terms with emphasis, if any, on style and 28
technique in advertising, rather than on interpreting advertising in terms of visual
design principles.
Without specific formal limitations, without the challenging possibilities of in-
troducing the element of play, both teacher and student cannot help but be bored. The
product may take the form of a superficial (but sometimes “professional looking”) li-
teral translation of the problem, or of a meaningless abstract pattern or shape, which,
incidentally, may be justified with enthusiasm but often with specious reasoning.

S
imilarly, there are badly stated problems in basic design, stressing pure
aesthetics, free expression, without any restraints or practical goals. Such
a problem may be posed in this fashion: arrange a group of geometric
shapes in any manner you see fit, using any number of colors, to make a
pleasing pattern. The results of such vagaries are sometimes pretty, but
mostly meaningless or monotonous. The student has the illusion of cre-
ating great art in an atmosphere of freedom, when in fact he is handicapped by the
absence of certain disciplines which would evoke ideas, make playing with those ideas
possible, work absorbing, and results interesting.
The basic design problem, properly stated, is an effective vehicle for teaching the
possibilities of relationships: harmony, order, proportion, number, measure, rhythm,
symmetry, contrast, color, texture, space. It is an equally effective means for exploring
the use of unorthodox materials and for learning to work within specific limitations.
To insure that theoretical study does not end in a vacuum, practical applica-
tions of the basic principles gleaned from this exercise should be undertaken at the
proper time (they may involve typography, photography, page layout, displays, sym-
bols, etc.). The student learns to conceptualize, to associate, to make analogies; to see a

FUN NEVER RAND

 “The cros
sword fu
urge to so lfills the hum
lve the un an
known”

sphere, for example, transformed into an orange, or a button into a letter, or a group
of letters into a broad picture. “The pupils,” says Alfred North Whitehead, “have got to
be made to feel they are studying something, and are not merely executing intellectual
minuets.”
If possible, teaching should alternate between theoretical and practical pro-
blems-and between those with tightly stated “rules” imposed by the teacher and those
with rules implied by the problem itself. But this can happen only after the student has
been taught basic disciplines and their application. He then is able to invent his own
system for “playing the game”. “A mind so disciplined should be both more abstract
and more concrete. It has been trained in the comprehension of abstract thought and
in the analysis of facts.”
29 There are many ways in which the play-principle serves as a base for serious pro-
blem-solving, some of which are discussed here. These examples indicate, I believe,
the nature of certain disciplines and may suggest the kind of problems which will be
useful to the student as well as to the teacher of design.

T
he crossword puzzle is a variation on the acrostic, a word game that has
been around since Roman times. There have been many reasons given
for the popularity of the game. One is that it fulfills the human urge to
solve the unknown, another that it is orderly, a third that it represents,
according to the puzzle editor of the New York Times, “a mental stimula-
tion... and exercise in spelling and vocabulary-building”. But the play in
such a game is limited to finding the exact word to fit a specific number of squares
in a vertical and horizontal pattern. It allows for little imagination and no invention
or aesthetic judgment, qualities to be found in abundance, for example, in the simple
children’s game, the Tangram.
The Tangram is an ingenious little Chinese toy in which a square is divided
into this configuration. It consists of seven pieces, called “tans”: five triangles, one
square, and one rhombus. The rules are quite simple: rearrange to make any kind of
figure or pattern.
Here above is one possibility. Many design problems can be posed with this game in
mind, the main principle to be learned being that of economy of means-making the
most of the least. Further, the game helps to sharpen the powers of observation throu-
gh the discovery of resemblances between geometric and natural forms. It helps the
student to abstract: to see a triangle, for example, as a face, a tree, an eye, a nose, de-
pending on the context in which the pieces are arranged. Such observation is essential
in the study of visual symbols.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

14 15 16

17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34

35 36 37 38

39 40 41

42 43 44 45

46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53
30

54 55 56 57

58 59 60

61 62 63

ACROSS
1. Makes a choice
5. Adored, with “on” 54. Chop
shop inpu 29. Geologic time period
sport t
10. Tubular water tran 56. “That
can’t be go 30. Word with state or elephant
58. Tool w od
14. Snare ith teeth 31. Direct
nborn United States 59. Cabin
15. The first Hawaiia et membe 36. Hardly prolix
60. Rex’s r under D
president tec ubya 37. Student’s improvised sled
ruments 61. Besee
16. Hawaiian-born inst ched @ 20 38. Stop the reign
l con diti on pop ular on soap 62. Big nam 09
40. Burn a bit
17 .Medica e in chicke
63. Disch n 41. It may be Great at the movies, or
operas arge
and Page, e.g. 20.
18 .Monroe, Mansfield, Amazing on TV
Auto-maker Enzo
DOWN 42, and 54 across
ure 1. Not requ
22. It may give you clos iring an R Robert Stockton
2. Lit-Crit x
23. Like many a lecturer 43. Rang out
orous Bombeck 3. Docile
Chinese dinner 24. Hum 44. Flake
4. The 30 45. Dines at the dining room table
25. Chipotle chilis 0, e.g.
ts? 5. One-a-
32. Contribute two cen day, e.g. 48. Amt. at a car dealership
6. Titania
33. Narrow inlets ’s spouse 49. Slanted writing: Abbr.
7. Prepar 50. Symbol of servitude
34. Poker prize
llustration created by Rachele Micol Barazzetta,

e for flight
ege team 8. Ambula , perhaps
35. Beehive State coll nce initia 51. Information beltways? (Abbr.)
9. The do ls
36. Oleo, often main of Eo 52. “May I say something?”
10. Decor s
38. Venetian magistrate ative auto 53. Actress Singer of
a table or a stage 11. “Enou feature
39. What to do with gh alread “ Footloose”
12. Pitch y! I get it
40. Kind of bet !” 55. Like Marvell’s mistress
inspired by Paul Rand’s graphics

13. Brutu 57. Word which might describe 18, 25,

41. Signal once more s’s being
19. One-ti
42. Monsoons, e.g. me child
hood dise
21. Noose
46. Large ref. work necessity ase
pop ” 24. DeMill
47. “A e specialt
played by Mo rita 25. Practi y
48. Karate Kid master ce Maryl
and’s stat
translations 26.More
51. Like some truth or fitting e sport
27. Practi
ce to deci
28. Projec eve
ting windo
w
 Let’s draw a chicken using geometrical shapes:

Hokusai’s Rapid Lessons in Abbreviated Drawing (Riakougwa

Hayashinan, 1812)
 ation
s e r v
s o f ob
p o wer t w een
n the e s be
e lan c
s h arp m b
e l p s to o f rese
a m eh o v e ry s.
e g d i s c o r m
Th
h t he t u ral f
ug d na
thro n
Micol Barazzetta, inspired by Paul Rand’s graphics

ric a
t
IIn the left page: ilustration created by Rachele

e
geom

FUN NEVER RAND

 The #tangramchallenge

40

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 Nextel 10:11 99%

instagram
now is your turn

41

28 likes
instagram#PaulRand #designverso #TangramChallenge
#IsTangram
FUN NEVER RAND
 This drawing is reproduced from the first volume of Hokusai’s Rapid Lessons
in Abbreviated Drawing (Riakougwa Hayashinan, 1812). In the book Hokusai shows
how he uses geometric shapes as a guide in drawing certain birds. This exercise may
be compared to the Tangram in that both use geometric means. The Tangram, howe-
ver, uses geometry as an end in itself to indicate or symbolize natural forms-whereas
Hokusai uses it as a clue or guide to illustrate them. In the artist’s own words, his sy-
stem “concerns the manner of making designs with the aid of a ruler or compass, and
those who work in this manner will understand the proportion of things”.[...]

T
he Modulor is a system based on a mathematical key. Taking account of
the human scale, it is a method of achieving harmony and order in a gi-
ven work.
35
In his book, The Modulor, Le Corbusier describes his invention as “a me-
asuring tool (the proportions) based on the human body (6-foot man) and
on mathematics (the golden section). A man-with-arm-upraised provides,
at the determining points of his occupation of space-foot, solar plexus, head, tips of fin-
gers of the upraised arm-three intervals which give rise to a series of golden sections,
called the Fibonacci series.” (1, 1, 2,3,5,8, 13, etc.) (Italics are mine.)
The Modulor is a discipline which offers endless variations and opportunities
for play. Le Corbusier’s awareness of these potentialities is evident from the numerous
references to the game and play in his book, such as: “AlI this work on proportioning
and measures is the outcome of a passion, disinterested and detached, an exercise, a
game.” Further, he goes on to say, “for if you want to play modular...”
In comparison to most so-calIed systems of proportion, the Modulor is perhaps the
least confining. The variations, as wilI be seen from this ilIustration, are practicalIy
inexhaustible (and this example utilizes only a very limited number of possibilities).
If, however, the system presents any difficulties which happen to go counter to one’s

IIn the rignt page: llustration created by Rachele Micol Barazzetta,

intuitive judgment, Le Corbusier himself provides the answer: “I still reserve the right
at any time to doubt the solutions furnished by the Modulor, keeping intact my free-
dom which must depend solely on my feelings rather than on my reason.”
Like the architect’s plan, the grid system employed by the graphic designer
provides for an orderly and harmonious distribution of miscellaneous graphic mate- inspired by Le Corbusier’s Sketches Le Modulor, 1950
rial. It is a system of proportions based on a module, the standard of which is derived
from the material itself. It is a discipline imposed by the designer.
Unlike the Modulor, it is not a fixed system based on a specific concept of pro-
portion, but one which must be custom-made for each problem. Creating the grid calls
for the ability to classify and organize miscellaneous material, with sufficient foresi-
ght to allow for flexibility in handling content which may, for one reason or another,

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

“AlI this work on proportioning and measures is the
outcome of a passion, disinterested and detached,
an exercise, a game.” Further, he goes on to say, “for
if you want to play modular...”

Le Corbusier; Le Modulor, 1948

43

FUN NEVER RAND

 be altered. The grid must define the areas of operation and provide for different tech-
niques, pictures, text, space between text and pictures, columns of text, page numbers,
picture captions, headings and other miscellaneous items.
Here is a simple grid system for a booklet. Devising such a grid involves two creative
acts: developing the pattern that is suitable for the given material and arranging this
material within the pattern. In a sense, the creative ability required for the former is
no less than that for the latter, because the making of the grid necessitates analyzing
simultaneously all the elements involved. But once it is evolved, the designer is free
to play to his heart’s content: with pictures, type, paper, ink, color, and with texture,
scale, size and contrast.[...]
Much of the painting of Josef Albers is based on this geometric pattern. The
37 pattern is not used, however, in the same manner as the masons’ lattice. Here it is the
painting itself. It represents a strict, immutable arrangement (theme) in which the ar-
tist, by juxtaposing colors (variations) plays the fascinating game of deceiving the eye.
The squares as we see them here appear to recede into the picture plane. However, by
skillful manipulation of colors, the painting flattens out and is thus seen as a two-di-
mensional picture.
The many variations based on this and similar designs attest to the fascination the
artist finds from the interplay of a great variety of color schemes and an extremely
limited geometric format.[...]
There are disciplines other than those based on geometry, among them avai-
lability of materials, reproduction processes, mechanical limitations, economic con-
siderations, legal requirements, time factors, physical handicaps. Some of these are
self-imposed, others are involuntary, but in the hands of the artist each may contribu-
te to, rather than detract from, the end product.

I
t is inconceivable to consider Matisse’s compositions with cut paper wi-
thout, in some way, linking them to the play element—the joy of working
with simple colors and the fun of “cutting paper dolls”. But the greatest
satisfaction, perhaps, is derived from creating a work of art with ordi-
nary scissors and some colored paper—with so simple means, such sati-
sfying ends.
Similarly, the early Cubist collages, in which cut paper played an important part, are
products of strict rules, limited materials: newspaper mounted on a surface, with the
addition of a few charcoal or pencil lines, usually in black and white and sometimes
with tan or brown or similarly muted colors. These elements were juggled until they
satisfied the artist’s eye. The playfulness and humor in the production of some of these
compositions in no way detracts from the end result—a serious work of art. One can-

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

not underestimate the importance of restraint and playfulness in almost any phase
of Picasso’s work. Here, for example, one sees a restrained use of the brush and one
flat color. The drawing of the child’s face, the ornament and the lettering are all one.
Lettering is not used as a complement to the drawing, but as an integral part of the
drawing. It serves as both a garland and a verbal image—a visual pun. What emerges
is a kind of game itself, revealing the ingenuity and playfulness of the artist, his ability
to deal with problems in the simplest, most direct, and meaningful manner.
Similarly, this ability to do much with little—to find a bull’s head in a bicycle
seat and handle bars—is another aspect of Picasso’s wizardry, his humor, his childlike
spontaneity, his skill as a punster and ability to improvise and invent with limited,
often surprising means.

T
38
his monochrome, Persimmons, by Mu Ch’i, a thirteenth century Zen
priest and painter, is a splendid example of a painting in which the artist
plays with contrasts (the male and female principle in Chinese and Japa-
nese painting): rough and smooth, empty and full, one and many, line and
mass, black and white, tint and shade, up and down. It is a study in the
metamorphosis of a fruit, as well as of a painting. (The artist, incidentally,
never used any color but black.)
The reader may find a parallel, at least in spirit, between this painting and the prece-
ding one by Picasso. Both employ a single color, and exploit this limitation to achieve
as much variety as possible, and both undoubtedly were painted very rapidly, a condi-
tion often conducive to utmost simplification and improvisation.

I
n modern times artists like Man Ray and MoholyNagy, working with the
most limited photographic means, the photogram, created highly signifi-
cant pictures. This technique offers the artist ample opportunity to play
with light anWd a great variety of materials, opaque, translucent, and
transparent, to produce, very rapidly, rich and unexpected effects.
The photogram, at the left, made by the writer some years ago, shows
how simply one is able to capture movement and achieve interesting tonal effects.
Because the technique itself dictates a certain degree of speed the time factor becomes
an additional discipline, which acts as a creative stimulus.
The de Stijl movement, founded in 1917, had a profound influence on painting, archi-
tecture, and typography. Piet Zwart, the designer responsible for this advertisement
for the Dutch firm Nederlansche Kabelfabriek, was associated with this group.
The disciplines which de Stijl encouraged—functional use of material and me-
aningful form, and the restrained use of color (black and/or primary colors)—are

FUN NEVER RAND

 evident in this design. With a few simple typographic elements and an ingenious play
on the letter “O”, a humorous, yet significant design was evolved. A picture is created
by typographic means: a few type characters and type rules are so manipulated as to
make a useful product, an advertisement. Many examples of this artist’s work reveal

T
his same playful approach and are worthy of serious study.
he earth colors of Africa, the ice of the polar regions, the bamboo of Ja-
pan, are among the many challenging materials with which artists and
artisans create their idols, their utensils, and their houses—all natural
limitations which provide their own built-in disciplines which, in turn,
contribute to the creative solution.
Some years ago in Kyoto I was fortunate enough to witness a young
39
Japanese craftsman make the “chasen” you see here. It is a whisk used in the tea ce-
remony and is cut from a single piece of bamboo with a simple tool resembling a
penknife. Both the material and manufacturing process (about one-half hour) are the
quintessence of discipline, simplicity and restraint. The invention of such an article
could not possibly have been achieved by anyone lacking the ability to improvise and
the patience to play with a specific material: to see the myriad possibilities and disco-
ver the ideal form. It has not been the purpose of this discussion to provide a glossary
of disciplines or recipes, but merely to indicate the virtue of the challenge implicit in
discipline. “I demand of art”, says Le Corbusier, “the role of the challenger... of play
and interplay, play being the very manifestation of the spirit.”

This version of the article was originally publi- to integrate the knowledge we have about the process of vi-
shed in “Education of Vision”, 1965. sion, the didactic devices to develop it, and the concrete ter-
The broad objectives in the creation of this volume have been ritories where creative vision can be put to service. The first
stated by the editor: “The living reintegration of all aspects step is to define the scope and nature of our image-making
of our life on the new parameter of the 20th century knowle- faculty. The, based upon this knowledge, we must survey the
dge... is our great contemporary challenge, and in this work factors that can facilitate its development” the impact of the
the imaginative power of creative vision could have a central visual environment on the one hand, and on the other the pe-
role... A key task of our time is the education of vision—the dagogical processes that can train our visual sensibilities.”
development of our neglected, atrophic sensibilities. We need

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

FUN NEVER RAND
 48
Paul and Ann’s children books

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

by Maria Popova
 M
My background is in graphic design. I am not a trained
illustrator, for this reason, I am hesitant about making a
children’s book. I decided to research other graphic desi-
gners that also made children’s books. I like Paul Rand’s
Style, it reminds me of Matisse’s paper cuts (see previous
post). His style is fun, playful and dynamic. Below are a
selection of his children’s books.
“Paul Rand did not set out to create classic children’s bo-
oks, he simply wanted to make pictures that were playful.
Like the alchemist of old, he transformed unlikely ab- In the left page: llustration created by Rachele Micol

stract forms into icons that inspired children and adults

Barazzetta, inspired by the pastdown and free en-
dpaper of “Sparkle and spin“, Paul Rand, 1957

and laid the foundation for two books that have indeed
become children’s classics.” — Steven Heller, author of
Paul Rand. (Books by Paul Rand: Sparkle and Spin)

FUN NEVER RAND

D ESIGN VERSO 2017
SPARKLE AND SPIN
“Sparkle and Spin: A Book About Words” (public library) — an utterly, perhaps para-
doxically, delightful 1957 children’s book illustrated by legendary designer and noto-
rious curmudgeon and imagination champion Paul Rand, and written by his then-wife
Ann.
I came across the book in the excellent Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual
Storytelling, a treasure trove of seminal vintage children’s books.
With its bold, playful interplay of words and pictures, the book encourages an under-
standing of the relationship between language and image, shape and sound, thought
and expression, a lens we’ve also seen when Italian novelist and philosopher Umberto
Eco introduced young readers to semiotics in the same period.
Though the cover of the 2006 reprint, with its all too literal glitter gimmick, would
have likely sent Rand into a vapid fury, the book is an absolute treasure, one I’m happy
to see survive the out-of-print fate of all too many mid-century gems.
Sparkle and Spin is part of a Rand trilogy, including Little 1 (1962) and the out-of-print,
incredibly hard to find Listen! Listen! (1970).
44

Illustration taken by “Sparkle and spin“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1957
 Words are the names of people
you like:
Sally and Mary,
Thomas and Harry.
45
Words tell how you feel:
fine and dandy
and I like candy.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 53

FUN NEVER RAND

D ESIGN VERSO 2017
LITTLE ONE
The second book in the series, Little
1 (public library), was published in
1961 and enlisted the same playful
dance of wordplay and bold, vibrant,
minimalist images in introducing the
young reader to the numbers from 1
to 10 through a heart-warming story
about friendship and belonging.
The deceptively simple illustrations
juxtaposed with seemingly basic
concepts — like, for instance, the
concept of “how many,” the idea of
sets that we take for granted but that

48

Illustration taken by “Little one“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1961

FUN NEVER RAND

 is, in fact, a triumph of human cognition and
a cognitive challenge for the young brain —
parallel Umberto Eco’s infatuation with semi-
otics in serving a bigger mission of exploring
the symbolic relationship between text and
image.
Some three decades later, in a 1993 inter-
49 view, Steve Jobs, who worked with Rand on
the design of the NeXT logo, captured a defi-
ning quality of Rand’s character that seems to
permeate his children’s books, one that lived
beneath his public persona as a professional
curmudgeon:
He’s a very deep, thoughtful person who’s tri-
ed to express in every part of his life what his
principles are. And you don’t meet so many
people like that today.
Little 1 was followed by the third and final
book in the series, Listen! Listen!, in 1970. It is
long out of print and currently nearly impos-
sible to find.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

FUN NEVER RAND
57

Illustration taken by “Little one“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1961

D ESIGN VERSO 2017
LISTEN, LISTEN!
Listen! Listen!: A Vintage Invitation to Presence and Attentive Attunement with the
World, Illustrated by Graphic Design Legend Paul Rand
From the plop of a raindrop to the crunch of buttered toast, a celebration of life throu-
gh the soundscape of everyday aliveness.

Legendary graphic designer Paul Rand was a creative genius who wore his kindness
in cantankerous camouflage. His timeless wisdom on design continues to influence ge-
nerations of creators and visual communicators. Steve Jobs, who hired Rand to design
the identity for his second company, NeXT, admired him as “a very deep, thoughtful 52

person who’s tried to express in every part of his life what his principles are.”
Among the principles Rand most passionately espoused was his faith in the power
of the relationship between word and image, negotiated in the intricate language of
visual communication — a language mastered throughout life, but first acquired in
childhood.
In the late 1950s, Rand and his then-wife, Ann Rand — a prolific and imaginative chil-
dren’s book author who had been trained as an architect — began collaborating on a
series of unusual, semi-semiotic children’s books nurturing that formative relation-
ship with word and image. Listen! Listen! is one of them. It was published (public li-
brary) in 1970, conceived for the Rands’ young daughter, Catherine —it is a marvelous
celebration of presence through the soundscape of daily life, reminiscent of Margaret
Wise Brown’s little-known yet enormously wonderful Quiet Noisy Book, published
two decades earlier.

This forgotten gem, long out of print, is now brought to life anew by Princeton Ar-
chitectural Press. Ann Rand’s warmhearted verses wink at Paul Rand’s unmistakable

Illustration taken by “Listen, Listen!“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1970

primary colors and collage-driven illustrations to extend an openhanded invitation to
attentiveness and attunement with the living world.
Now that’s not a door, because a door goes wham! Complement Listen! Listen! with
the lovely Japanese counterpoint
The Sound of Silence, then revisit Ann Rand’s What Can I Be? — her wonderful vinta-
ge concept book about how the imagination works, written in the same era but only
discovered and published in our time.

FUN NEVER RAND

 if you slam it,
nor a dog,
and as for a at,
it certainly isn’t that.
A bear would growl
and a wolf would howl.
None of you knows
what that roar was.
I like the whir
that the wings
of a hummingbird make
60
when it flies,
and the Psssssst!
of fireworks as they
sputter in the sky. But the noise I like
the very best
is early morning before sunrise
because then
(when I keep my eyes tight shut)
I can hear
the world wake up.
It’s a wonderful mixed-up sound.
From far and near
from air and ground,
it comes from all around.
Listen.
Illustration taken by “Listen, Listen!“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1970
D ESIGN VERSO 2017
 How
simpl
m
y
a
b y
ny t
o
h
b
i
s
n
e r
gs
v
c
in
a

FUN NEVER RAND

g
n
t h
on e
ew
d i
o
s
r
c
l
o
d !
v e r ,

Illustration taken by “I know a lot of things“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1956
I know such a lot of things...
I know when I look
in a mirror
what I see is me.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 65

FUN NEVER RAND

 I KNOW A LOT OF THINGS
A leaf could be a ferry for a snail, and
the moon is a light for the night: there’s
no border between reality and imagina-
tion, and everyday I’ll discover to know
one thing more, and as I grow I know I’ll
know much more. Bright and rhythmic,
Ann Rand’s text is a catalogue of little-e-
veryday-wonders that only need to be
discovered; colourfully illustrated by
Paul Rand, Quante cose so (I know a lot
of things) is a classic among children’s
books, originally published in 1956.
Paul Rand (1914 - 1996) studied at Pratt
Institute and Parson’s School of Design,
as well as with George Grosz, the cele-
brated figure of German Expressionism.
His most widely known contribution to
graphic design are his corporate identi-
ties (for firms such as IBM, Westinghou-
se, ABC and UPS), many of which are still
in use. Rand’s approach to advertising
was much like an artist, and his ability
to grasp the familiar object and convert
Illustration taken by “I know a lot of things“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1956

it into a charming yet commanding sym-

bol made his works famous the world
over. He is author of many articles about
graphic design, and he also continued
his interest in education by occasionally
teaching and lecturing and by illustra-
ting children’s books. Ann Rand wrote
five children’s books, four of which il-
lustrated by her husband, Paul Rand.
Together they created spontaneous and
light books, based on the immediateness
of images and words.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

67
61

or wave hello to a mushroom who’s just a little

fellow with a big umbrella.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 62

Illustration taken by “I know a lot of things“, Paul and Ann Rand, 1956

These articles were taken by the site Brain Pi- Founded in 2006 as a weekly email that went out to seven
cking, which is written by Maria Popova. She is a reader, friends and eventually brought online, the site was included
writer, interestingness hunter-gatherer, and curious mind in the Library of Congress permanent web archive in 2012.
at large. she is previously written for Wired UK, The Atlan- The core ethos behind Brain Pickings is that creativity is a
tic, The New York Times, and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our mental
Lab, among others, and am an MIT Futures of Entertainment pool of resources — knowledge, insight, information, inspi-
Fellow. Brain Pickings is a one-woman labor of love — a ration, and all the fragments populating our minds — that
subjective lens on what matters in the world and why. Mo- we’ve accumulated over the years just by being present and
stly, it’s a record of her own becoming as a person — intel- alive and awake to the world, and to combine them in extra-
lectually, creatively, spiritually — and an inquiry into how to ordinary new ways.
live and what it means to lead a good life.

FUN NEVER RAND

Paul Rand, Sparkle and Spin (1957)
 INDEX

Randirector
1 Maria Popova
children books
3 Paul and Ann’s
Paul Rand’s 41

laboratory
Steven Heller

Paul Rand

13 Instinct
Magazines and The Play
advertising 25

Steven Heller

23
Fun never Rand

BRand Identity
25

27 Paul Rand

Logos, Flags Invention

and Escutcheons Integrity and
Paul Rand 13

37 Jessica Helfand
How to design an Logocentrism
enduring logo 3

Anne Quito

1
Randesigner

Font
Droid Serif: designed by Steve
Matteson. The Droid Serif font Editorial staff
family features a contemporary
appearance and was designed for
comfortable reading.
Futura editorial
Bodoni 72

INDEX
6

Veronica Viena

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

Randirector
 3
Paul Rand working with his staff, 1984

Advertising
Magazines and

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

Paul Rand

Paul Rand in front of

the Coronet Advertisem
ent Poster
 by Steven Heller

Published in “Communica
tion Arts”, March/April 19
99

I
f the word legend has any meaning in the graphic arts and if the term
legendary can be applied with accuracy to the career of any designer, it
can certainly be applied to Paul Rand (1914-1996). When I first met him in
1951 at a lunch with Arnold Gingrich, the founding editor of Esquire mag-
azine, the legend was already firmly in place. By then Paul had completed
his first career as a designer of media promotion at Esquire-Coronet and 9
as an outstanding cover designer for Apparel Arts and Direction. He was well along on
a second career as an advertising designer at the William Weintraub agency which he
had joined as art director at its founding. Paul Rand’s book, Thoughts on Design, with
reproductions of almost 100 of his designs and some of the best words yet written on
graphic design, had been published 4 years earlier-a publishing event that cemented
his international reputation and identified him as a designer of influence from Zurich
to Tokyo.

P
aul Rand was only 32 years old when he completed Thoughts on Design
and he was still in his 30s when we met. My impressions of that meeting
are still vivid—the quick, curious and intensely analytical look in his eyes
framed by dark-rimmed glasses; the close-cropped hair above a forehead
where a frown always seemed to lurk ready to pounce on the first banality
that had the effrontery to rear its ugly head; all of this over a conserva-
tive suit marked by a black knit tie-the trademark of his Madison Avenue days. Paul
recalled a time when, in a somewhat less conservative mood, he was wearing a bright
red viyella shirt and matching red socks that prompted his friend Saul Steinberg to
remark, “That must be the longest underwear I ever saw.”
There was little change since the Madison Avenue period-his hair was certainly grayer
after twenty years-his frown was less evident and his glasses had become trifocal; but
the eyes continued their curious analysis of anything that had the nerve to cross his
field of vision.

In an interesting way the chronology of Paul Rand’s design experience paralleled the
development of the modern design movement.

RANDIREC TO R
 I
n America, unlike Europe where the poster was dominant, new design
directions came first to magazine design and media promotion. By the
1940S this emphasis began to shift to advertising design following the
pioneering work already being done at N.W. Ayer in Philadelphia and at
Young & Rubicam and Calkins and Holden in New York. At the end of the
5 1950S, with the rapid growth of rational companies into multinational
corporations, another shift of emphasis placed the spotlight on coordinated corporate
design programs.
Paul Rand’s first career in media promotion and cover design ran from 1937 to 1941,
his second career in advertising design ran from 1941 to 1954, and his third career
in corporate identification began in 1954. Paralleling these three careers was a
consuming interest in design education and Paul Rand’s fourth career as an educator
started at Cooper Union in 1942. [...]

T
he Rand apprenticeship in graphic design began in 1935 when he
worked for George Switzer, an innovative designer whose package and
advertising design helped set the style for modern merchandising. In
1937 Paul launched his first career at Esquire. Although he was only
occasionally involved in the editorial layout of that magazine, he designed
extensive promotion and direct mail material on its behalf and turned out
a spectacular series of covers for Apparel Arts, a quarterly published in conjunction
with Esquire. In spite of a schedule that paid no heed to regular working hours or
minimum wage scales, he managed in these crucial years to find time to design an
impressive array of covers for other magazines, particularly Direction. From 1938 on,
his work was a regular feature of the exhibitions of the Art Directors Club.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 “When I designed a cover of
Direction, I was really trying to
compete with the Bauhaus. Not with
Norman Rockwell,” clarified Rand.
“I was working in the spirit of Van
Doesburg, Leger, and Picasso.

Direction, April 1940

Direction, March 1939
On the right:
Direction, March 1941
Above:

RANDIREC TO R
It was not old fashioned.

To be old fashioned
is, in a way, a sin.”
Paul Rand, “Thoughts on Design”, 1947

propagandistic tools in favor of

“Rand avoided conventional

imagery...

Direction, March 1940

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 ...He believed would serve
as both art and message”
Steven Heller

M
ost contemporary designers are aware of Paul Rand’s highly successful
and often compelling contributions to advertising design. What is not
well-known is the significant role he played in setting the pattern for fu-
ture approaches to the advertising concept. Paul was probably the first of
a long and distinguished line of art directors to work with and appreciate
the unique talent of William Bernbach. It was shortly after Bernbach’s 8
stint with the New York World’s Fair and several years before he was to become the
principal creative force at Doyle Dane Bernbach that he worked briefly with the re-
cently formed Weintraub agency. Paul described his first meeting with Bill Bernbach
as “akin to Columbus discovering America,” and went on to say, “This was my first
encounter with a copywriter who understood visual ideas and who didn’t come in
with a yellow copy pad and a preconceived notion of what the layout should look like.”
A few years later when Bill Bernbach had moved on to the Grey Agency, Paul and Bill
were brought together again to create advertising for Ohrbachs, a New York depart-
ment store. For over two years they created the now-famous series of intensely visual
newspaper advertisements. During this period Paul worked at Weintraub and served
the Ohrbach account as a design consultant.

Y
ou can’t quite say that it all began there, because it was a time when too
many things were happening in advertising in too many places, but it is
reasonable to assume that from this point on the isolation of the art and
copy departments was destined to give way to a closer if not always har-
monious working relationship between these two creative forces.
The William Weintraub Company originally consisted of a small staff
drawn largely from the business side of Esquire, but by 1951 it had a staff of over 100.
The agency continued to function under a different name, but it was a far different
agency from the one that was built around Paul Rand’s talent in 1941 when he was 27
years old.
During the years when Paul was at the agency, Weintraub served many impressive
accounts including Schenley, Revlon, Kaiser, Seeman Brothers, Stafford Mills and El
Producto Cigars.

RANDIREC TO R
 14

Paul Rand, “Coronet Advertisement”

“The Coronet Brandy

and Ohrbach’s advertisements
are based on a common object in

animated
D ESIGN VERSO 2017
Art”, 1985
Paul Rand, “A Designer’s
for
m
Paul Rand, “Ohrbach’s Poster, 1963

RANDIREC TO R
15

Paul Rand, “Ohrbach’s Poster, 1964

 His advertisements for Air-wick that combined modern typography with 19th century
engravings not only introduced a new product, but succeeded in turning a local dis-
tributor into a nationwide success story overnight.

P
aul spent fourteen years in advertising and left a mark that would last
11 for many more. He was a primary mover in the fusing of visual ideas and
persuasive communication. He demonstrated the importance of the art
director in advertising and helped break the isolation that once surround-
ed the art department. He played a key role in establishing the art and
copy team as the base for the advertising concept. But perhaps his over-
riding contribution was the inspiration that his brilliant approach to design brought
to a generation of future advertising art directors.
To me, an even more significant contribution was his sense of responsibility to the
reader and his emphasis on quality and good taste. Today this contribution may be
more honored in the breach than in the observance in many agencies, but scores of
responsible art directors around the world continue to demonstrate that the Rand in-
fluence was considerably more than a brief moment of an advertising Camelot.

T
he final thought of his Thoughts on Design is worth repeating: “Even if
it is true that commonplace advertising and exhibitions of bad taste are
indicative of the mental capacity of the man in the street, the opposing
argument is equally valid. Bromidic advertising catering to that bad taste
merely perpetuates that mediocrity and denies him one of the most easily
accessible means of aesthetic development.”
Rand also pointed out that when an art director translates a literal approach into a
“visual message which is not only arresting and persuasive, but imaginative, dramatic
and entertaining as well, he has fulfilled his obligation to his audience, and perhaps
he has fulfilled his obligation to more personal standards.”
By the time he decided to leave advertising, Rand had gained considerable experience
in the not so gentle art of working with difficult people. It began with David Smart
and William Weintraub at Esquire which in its early days was a pressure cooker par
excellence. He recalled a time when Dave Smart stuffed him with artichokes in his

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

luxurious hotel apartment so that Paul could go back to the loft and work through the
night on a special Esquire Christmas promotion. William Weintraub was himself a leg-
endary accomplished, but unusually tough salesman, who had once tried to convince
the Steinway people through an elaborate presentation that by advertising in Esquire
they could increase the sale of pianos in bordellos.

B
12
ill Weintraub was a formidable impresario who you remembered as be-
ing taller than he actually was. He appreciated and exploited the com-
mercial value of Paul Rand’s talent and taught him how tww+wo make
and enjoy money, but he was never an easy man to work for. He was a
master of the demeaning gesture, and it was sometimes his style to cre-
ate tension and conflict among his staff in the misguided belief that controversy had
something to do with creativity.
lient relations at the agency were no bed of roses either with clients like Revlon’s
Charles Revson and Schenley’s Lewis Rosenstiel. In fact, one of the more absurd myths
surrounding the Rand legend was the notion that while other art directors were
forced to face day-to-day pressures, Paul operated in the splendid isolation of some
ivory tower. Nothing could be further from the truth. One of the outstanding, but lit-
tle-known, attributes to his success was his ability to bridge the gap between creative
communication and business needs, and he achieved all of this without any assistance
from representatives and without com- promising his principles.
Although he was never at ease with the time-consuming and rarely productive meet-
ings of the plans board, and he avoided these sessions whenever he could, he was ex-
cellent in the all-important face- to-face meetings with major management executives
where most of the real decisions are made.

STEVEN HELLER Wears many hats (in addition to the Book Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as
New York Yankees): For 33 years he was an art director Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA
at the New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and for New Programs, and writes the Visuals column for the New
for almost 30 of those years with the New York Times York Times Book Review.

RANDIREC TO R
18

Paul Rand’s Laboratory:

The Art of Books Jackets
and Covers
D ESIGN VERSO 2017
 L
Like a painter who reaches catharsis moving paint,
Paul Rand moved type, juxtaposed geometric
forms, and manipulated colour masses to frame
ideas. ‘Looking at Rand’s designs,’ an admirer 14

wrote, ‘one never has a doubt whether this line

should go that way, whether this shape should not
be a little larger or smaller, or whether a green star
might not be better than the blue circle.’

And this was never more evident than in his book

jackets and covers created between 1944 and the
late 1960s.

RANDIREC TO R
 O
vershadowed by his early advertising and later corporate careers, Rand’s
book jackets and covers are arguably just as significant, and crucial in
defining him as a pure artist with a unique vision. Amidst his overall
experience book design was simply a logical expansion of his general
practice. But this was a field particularly mired in mediocrity, governed by
15 marketing conventions, and more often than not, indifferent to content.
Many publishers scrutinized the interior typography of their books, but surprisingly
few were concerned with how their books were wrapped. Jackets were considered
necessary evils, the province of marketing departments designed as advertisements to
hook customers into consuming on impulse. Book designers and editors alike referred
to them as unwanted appendages of the pristine book. Nevertheless, the jacket
was prime for revamping when Rand was hired to help improve a few progressive
publishers’ presentations.
For Rand, book jackets were no different than any other medium that could benefit
from good design. In fact, they were better. A jacket did not have to be slavishly
literal but rather convey moods or interpret content. Not only were graphic symbols
the perfect shorthand; colour, shapes, and lettering could evoke the requisite cues.
Presumably the designer could have more control if the advertising and marketing
experts could be kept at bay. And since Rand was already rather skilled at controlling
this particular foe, he had no stumbling blocks. In fact, Rand always worked with
sympathetic clients. Wittenborn & Company (later Wittenborn, Schultz), for instance,
gave him ample licence to push the boundaries of their artbook jackets and covers.

He used all the methods in his growing repertoire to give each book an individual
presence, as well as an overall Wittenborn identity. Advertising had taught him the
virtue of anchoring concepts to a consistent design element, such as a logo. In the
case of the Wittenborn books, consistency was achieved through gothic titles typeset
unobtrusively to underscore the contemporary spirit of the books.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 “Rand’s 21

interpretation
evoked the pith of
the revolutionary
artform.”
Steven Heller

Guillame Apollinaire, “The cubist painter”,

Wittenborn & Co, 1945
Jacket by Paul Rand

RANDIREC TO R
 Down: Alan Harrington, “The revelation of Dr.
Modesto”, Knopf, 1945, Jacket by Paul Rand

AIGA logo, designed by Paul Rand

17

Above: W.R. Valentiner, “Origins of Modern

sculpture”, Knopf, 1946, Jacket by Paul Rand

Poster for Aspen Design Conference, 1966

designed by Paul Rand

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 R
and’s earliest jacket for Guillaume Apollinaire’s The Cubist Painters (1944)
was his first attempt at pure, non-representational abstraction; smudges of
colour adorn the jacket, with a simple, unobtrusive line of sans serif type
for the title. This jacket was the prototype for The Documents of Modern
Art series, and not only did it differ from typical American artbook jackets,
which convention dictated were either all-type or showed a detail of a 18
painting, Rand’s interpretation, which was consistent with his dictum against copying,
did not even mimic the Cubist style. Rather it evoked the pith of the revolutionary
artform. Designing artbooks in such an ‘artistic’ way might seem quite appropriate
to the subject, but before Rand it was exclusive primarily to European avant garde
designers. By using Italian Futurist and Bauhaus books among other touchstones, Rand
developed a vocabulary of shapes and colours that evoked modernity. He also used a
medley of antiquated visual elements in collages to illustrate ancient and classical art.
For the jacket of The Origins of Modern Sculpture (Wittenborn, Schultz, Inc. 1946), he
juxtaposed two silhouettes an ancient sculpture and Brancusi’s sculpture of an egg (a
pun on ‘origins’) divided by a small line of sans serif type. Through this iconic pairing
he astutely summarized centuries of artistic evolution.

I
n 1945 Alfred A Knopf, one of New York’s most prestigious, small literary
publishers and a design conscious bookman with a penchant for fine
typography and illustration, invited Rand to join an eclectic repertory
of classical and modernistic designers, including W A Dwiggins, Rudolf
Ruzicka, Ernest Reichl, and Warren Chappell, among others. As a
condition of his initiation he was asked to do a version of Knopf’s Borzoi
logo. The sleek Russian hound whose running silhouette was stamped on every spine,
was rendered by other designers in pen and ink or woodcut usually in a traditional
manner. Always inclined to be contrary, Rand graphically reduced the sleek canine to
a few simple straight lines at right angles, with a full stop for an eye. Prefiguring his
later make overs of venerable corporate logos, this was a textbook example of Rand’s
ability to redefine a visual problem and devise an alternative solution that pledged
allegiance to the original form. Knopf was quite taken with the audacity of the designer
in transforming the mark yet retaining its essential mnemonic quality.

RANDIREC TO R
 L
ike the Borzoi logo, Rand’s first jacket for Knopf, The law(1945), raised
eyebrows at the time publication. It was certainly Knopf’s most reductive
jacket. The image was a dramatically lit, mortised photograph of the head
of Michelangelo’s ‘Moses’ partially covering the stacked lines of gothic
type, which screamed out, ‘The Law.’ The solid brown background did
19 not fill the entire image area but like a window shade stopped before
reaching the jacket’s bottom, leaving a channel of white space that gave an illusion of
three-dimensionality against the base of the image. The jacket’s ad hoc quality gives
an impression that Rand cut and pasted the art and type together in an instantaneous
burst of creative energy reminiscent of a Dada collage. In fact, he labored over his
solution until he achieved the appearance of an accident, everything was precisely
composed, yet slightly off kilter.

M
anipulating ragged cuts of paper and torn photographs, often using an
informal, hand-scrawled script, Rand’s jackets and covers were like
playthings. Perhaps in another life he would have been a toymaker
because he enjoyed combining shapes, colours, and objects into sculptural
cartoons. Yet there was a serious side to this. ‘I use the term “play”,
but I mean coping with the problems of form and content, weighing
relationships, establishing priorities’, Rand explained years later in Graphic Wit.
Each book title offered him the stimulus and rationale to play with or manipulate a
multitude of forms, from drawing to collage, from lettering to type. There was never a
preordained format or formula.
Scores of jackets and covers illustrate Rand’s play principle at work, but two of his
favourites, created 12 years apart, exhibit how Rand’s experiments evolved. The first
was a jacket for Nicolas Monsarrat’s Leave Cancelled (Knopf, 1945), a tragic tale of
lovers separated by war. The second was for James T Farrell’s H L t, an analysis of the
social critic’s most biting essays.
For Leave Cancelled Rand requested that ‘bullet’ holes be die-cut through the cover
photograph of Eros, the god of love. The technique was unheard of with a trade book at
that time indeed everything about this jacket was so unprecedented and fanciful that
Alfred Knopf’s wife was reported to have called the final result an ‘expensive

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 “The jacket’s ad hoc Thomas Mann, “The Law”, 1945, Knopf
Jacket by Paul Rand

quality gives an
impression that Rand
cut and pasted the art
and type together in
an instantaneous burst
of creative energy
reminiscent of a

DADA
COLL AGE
”
Steven Heller

Dada Collage

RANDIREC TO R
 extravagance.’ Rand also designed the binding, which featured an embossing of a
simple line drawing of the broken hands of a clock, symbolizing the protagonist’s
premature return to the battlefield. Rand took his inspiration from European avant
garde art books, but he also prefigured contemporary artists books in the introduction
of tactile materials.

R
21
and was more limited in what he could do for the cover of H L Mencken:
Prejudices: A Selection. The budgets for paperback covers were even
smaller than for hard cover jackets, consequently the printing options
were fewer. Yet Rand recalled that his solution was built into the raw
material that he was given. Starting with a ‘lousy’ photograph of Mencken
he magically produced a comic image that became a virtual logo for the
writer. ‘What could one do with a bad portrait of the guy?,’ Rand explained in Graphic
Wit: ‘I cut up the photo into a silhouette of someone making a speech, which bore no
relation to the shape of the [original] photo. That was funny, in part because of the
ironic cropping and because Mencken was such a curmudgeon.’ The result was a kind
of paper doll in the form of an oratorical statue. The ragged contours of cut photograph
dictated that a hand-scrawled title and byline be dropped out of irregularly cut and
randomly positioned colour boxes. Each of these elements was crude, but in total the
pieces fit perfectly together. The Mencken cover echoed the informality of Futurist
and Constructivist book covers from the 20S, but was far ahead of its time in American
trade publishing of the 50S.
At Knopf, ‘Rand’s ideas were never questioned,’ recalls Harry Ford, production
manager and art director from 1947 to 1959. ‘We bent over backwards to give Paul
what he wanted because he was so good.’ Booksellers were ‘bowled over, simply taken
aback by his work,’ continues Ford. ‘They would always give prominent display to his
book jackets.’ In fact, competitive publishers were also impressed with Rand’s talent,
but Ford presumes that ‘since most publishers were set in their ways, few wanted to
copy what Rand did, Nevertheless, there was widespread agreement that his method
was revolutionary.’
Although the Knopf (and then, later Vintage, Doubleday, Atheneum, Harvard, and
Harvest Books) jackets and covers were ostensibly illustrative in a modern sense, Rand

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 “
there was
wide
agreeement
that his
metod was
revolutionary 27

”
Steven Heller

Above: Nicolas Monsarrat, “Leave Cancelled”,

Knopf, 1945, Jacket by Paul Rand

Right: H.L. Mencken, “Prejudices, a selection”,

Knopf, 1947, Jacket by Paul Rand

RANDIREC TO R
 continued his exploration of pure abstraction with jackets produced between 1956
and 1964 for the Bollingen series, published by Pantheon Books. Using colour fields,
geometric and amorphic shapes, and random splatters combined with his distinctive
scrawl, these jackets were more akin to small canvases than conventional wrappers.
And while they were overtly less playful than his other, mass-market jackets, they
23 were no less eye-catching and in a way even more timeless.

T
he Bollingen Foundation was founded in 1947 by the Andrew W Mellon
family to publish works by psychoanalyst Carl Jung. In addition to
Jung’s own books and essays, and those by Jungian scholars, Bollingen
also supported art and ‘social histories, notably E H Gombrich’s Art and
Illusion, and published papers presented at the prestigious A W Mellon
lectures. Rand’s jackets were never killed and in return, he developed an
unmistakable identity that underscored the serious aim of Bollingen while telescoping
the accessibility or ‘friendliness’ of the list. Rand did the Bollingen jackets until 1964.
Among the designers in the modern camp wtith whom Rand had an affinity, and
perhaps a healthy rivalry, Alvin Lustig, an American-born designer of books, magazines,
textiles and sign systems, was the most prolific. Lustig (along with former Bauhausler
Herbert Bayer) was also invited by Alfred Knopf to design jackets. But Lustig had made
his name starting in 1940 as a designer for the small literary publisher, New Directions
(which shared the same floor as Pantheon Books). At that time he was making imagery
from hotmetal typecase ‘furniture,’ a similar method to that for Russian Constructivist
books by Lasar, El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko.
n the mid 40s, however, when he was designing all the jackets in New Directions’ New
Classics series, Lustig had combined modern type with abstract line drawings, or what
he called symbolic ‘marks,’ which owed more to the work of artists like Paul Klee, loan
Miro, and Mark Rothko than to accepted commercial styles. Like jazz improvisations,
these non-representational images signaled the progressive nature of his publishing
house.
In the mid 40s, however, when he was designing all the jackets in New Directions’ New
Classics series, Lustig had combined modern type with abstract line drawings, or what
he called symbolic ‘marks,’ which owed more to the work of artists like Paul Klee, loan

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

Miro, and Mark Rothko than to accepted commercial styles. Like jazz improvisations,
these non-representational images signaled the progressive nature of his publishing
house. During the late 40s he introduced collage/montage and reticulated photography,
evoking surrealistic fantasies. And in the early 50s he developed a series of paperback
covers for Noonday and Meridian Books using only gothic and slab serif typography.
Rand and Lustig clearly shared certain traits since they were both fluent in the 24
language of modernism each had a similar preference for contemporary typefaces
and child-like scribbles but each interpreted modernism in their own ways, and no
doubt competed for who could alter the form faster. Some insist it was a dead heat.

“I use the term “play”, but I mean coping with

the problems of form and content, weighing
relationships, establishing priorities’, Rand
explained years later in Graphic Wit.”
Paul Rand

STEVEN HELLER Wears many hats (in addition to the Author Department, Special Consultant to the President of SVA
New York Yankees): For 33 years he was an art director at for New Programs, and writes the Visuals column for the New
the New York Times, originally on the OpEd Page and for York Times Book Review.
almost 30 of those years with the New York Times Book
Review. Currently, he is co-chair of the MFA Designer as The artice is taken from Baseline Magazine No. 27, 1999

RANDIREC TO R
30

Alicia Invernizzi

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 BRand Identity
31

BRAND IDENTIT Y
 Logos, Flags and Escutcheons

32

by PAUL RAND
 «I
t reminds me of the Georgia chain gang» quipped the IBM executive,
when he first eyed the striped logo. When the Westinghouse insignia
(1960) was first seen, it was greeted similarly with such gibes as “this
looks like a pawnbroker’s sign.” How many exemplary works have gone
down the drain, because of such pedestrian fault-finding? Bad design is
frequently the consequence of mindless dabbling, and the difficulty is not 28
confined merely to the design of logos. This lack of understanding pervades all visual
design. There is no accounting for people’s perceptions. Some see a logo, or anything
else seeable, the way they see a Rorschach inkblot. Others look without seeing either
the meaning or even the function of a logo. It is perhaps, this sort of problem that
prompted ABC TV to toy with the idea of “updating” their logo (1962). They realized
the folly only after a market survey revealed high audience recognition. This is to say
nothing of the intrinsic value of a well-established symbol. When a logo is designed is
irrelevant; quality, not vintage nor vanity, is the determining factor.

T
here are as many reasons for designing a new logo, or updating an old
one, as there are opinions. The belief that a new or updated design will
be some kind charm that will magically transform any business, is not
uncommon. A redesigned logo may have the advantage of implying so-
mething new, something improved-but this is short-lived if a company
doesn’t live up to its claim. Sometimes a logo is redesigned because it
really needs redesigning-because it’s ugly, old fashioned, or inappropriate. But many
times, it is merely to feed someone’s ego, to satisfy a CEO who doesn’t wish to be linked
with the past, or often because it’s the thing to do. Opposed to the idea of arbitrarily
changing a logo, there’s the “let’s leave it alone” school-sometimes wise, more often
superstitious, occasionally nostalgic or, at times, even trepidatious. Not long ago, I
offered to make some minor adjustments to the UPS (1961) logo. This offer was unce-
remoniously turned down, even though compensation played no role. If a design can
be refined, without disturbing its image, it seems reasonable to do so. A logo, after all,
is an instrument of pride and should be shown at its best. If, in the business of commu-
nications, “image is king,” the essence of this image, the logo, is a jewel in its crown.

Illustration created by Alicia Invernizzi inspired by a poster of Paul Rand’s

exhibition at the MoMa, New York (22 - 29 september 1976).

BRAND IDENTIT Y
HERE’S WHAT A LOGO
IS AND DOES:

A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon.

A logo doesn’t sell (directly), it identifies.

A logo is rarely a description of a business.

A logo derives its meaning from the quali-

ty of the thing it symbolizes, not the other
way around.

A logo is less important than the product it

signifies; what it means is more important
than what it looks like.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

A logo appears in many guises: a signature is a kind of logo, so is a flag. The French
flag, for example, or the flag of Saudi Arabia, are aesthetically pleasing symbols. One
happens to be pure geometry, the other a combination of Arabic script, together with
an elegant saber-two diametrically opposed visual concepts; yet both function effecti-
vely. Their appeal, however, is more than a matter of aesthetics. In battle, a flag can be
a friend or foe. The ugliest flag is beautiful if it happens to be on your side. “Beauty,” 30
they say, “is in the eye of the beholder,” in peace or in war, in flags or in logos. We all
believe our flag the most beautiful; this tells us something about logos.

S
hould a logo be self-explanatory? It is only by association with a product,
a service, a business, or a corporation that a logo takes on any real mea-
ning. It derives its meaning and usefulness from the quality of that which
it symbolizes. If a company is second rate, the logo will eventually be
perceived as second rate. It is foolhardy to believe that a logo will do its
job right off, before an audience has been properly conditioned. Only
after it becomes familiar does a logo function as intended; and only when
the product or service has been judged effective or ineffective, suitable or unsuitable,
does it become truly representative.
Logos may also be designed to deceive; and deception assumes many forms,
from imitating some peculiarity to outright copying. Design is a two-faced monster.
One of the most benign symbols, the swastika, lost its place in the pantheon of the ci-
vilized when it was linked to evil, but its intrinsic quality remains indisputable. This
explains the tenacity of good design.
The role of the logo is to point, to designate-in as simple a manner as possible.
A design that is complex, like a fussy illustration or an arcane abstraction, harbors a
self-destruct mechanism. Simple ideas, as well as simple designs are, ironically, the
products of circuitous mental purposes. Simplicity is difficult to achieve, yet worth the
effort.

In the left page: Westinghouse’s logo (1960), Abc’s logo (1962), Ups’ logo (1961), Yale
University Press’ logo (1985) and Enron’s logo (1996), all designed by Paul Rand.

BRAND IDENTIT Y
 It is only by association with a
product, a service, a business, or
36
a corporation that a logo takes on
any real meaning...

...If a company is second rate, the

logo will eventually be perceived
as second rate.”
Paul Rand

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 M
ost of us believe that the subject matter of a logo depends on the kind of
business or service involved. Who is the audience? How is it marketed?
What is the media? These are some of the considerations. An animal mi-
ght suit one category, at the same time that it would be an anathema in
another. Numerals are possible candidates: 747, 7-Up, 7-11, and so are let-
ters, which are not only possible but most common. However, the subject
matter of a logo is of relatively little importance; nor, it seems, does appropriateness
always play a significant role. This does not imply that appropriateness is undesi-
rable. It merely indicates that a one-to-one relationship, between a symbol and what 32
is symbolized, is very often impossible to achieve and, under certain conditions, may
even be objectionable. Ultimately, the only thing mandatory, it seems, is that a logo be
attractive, reproducible in one color and in exceedingly small sizes.
The Mercedes symbol, for example, has nothing to do with automobiles; yet
it is a great symbol, not because its design is great, but because it stands for a great
product. The same can be said about apples and computers. Few people realize that
a bat is the symbol of authenticity for Bacardi Rum; yet Bacardi is still being imbibed.
Lacoste sportswear, for example, has nothing to do with alligators (or crocodiles), and
yet the little green reptile is a memorable and profitable symbol. What makes the
Rolls Royce emblem so distinguished is not its design (which is commonplace), but the
quality of the automobile for which it stands. Similarly, the signature of George Wa-
shington is distinguished not only for its calligraphy, but because George Washington
was Washington.
Who cares how badly the signature is scribbled on a check, if the check doesn’t boun-
ce? Likes or dislikes should play no part in the problem of identification; nor should
they have anything to do with approval or disapproval. Utopia!

A
ll this seems to imply that good design is superfluous. Design, good or
bad, is a vehicle of memory. Good design adds value of some kind and,
incidentally, could be sheer pleasure; it respects the viewer-his sensibili-
ties-and rewards the entrepreneur. It is easier to remember a well desi-
gned image than one that is muddled. A well design logo, in the end, is
a reflection of the business it symbolizes. It connotes a thoughtful and
purposeful enterprise, and mirrors the quality of its products and services. It is good
public relations-a harbinger of good will.

BRAND IDENTIT Y
 R
and then explains how the quality of logo is tied to the quality of the com-
pany it represents. If your company sucks, a pretty logo won’t save you.
Often, the subject of the logo doesn’t even matter: surprising to many, the
subject matter of a logo is of relatively little importance, and even appro-
priateness of content does not always play a significant role. This does
not imply that appropriateness is undesirable. It merely indicates that
a one-to-one relationship between a symbol and what it symbolized is very often im-
possible to achieve and, under certain conditions, objectionable. Ultimately, the only
mandate in the design of logos, it seems, is that they be distinctive, memorable, and
clear.
Finally, Rand stresses the importance of presenting design work. You must
tell a unique story that’s catered to your audience: canned presentations have the
ring of emptiness. The meaningful presentation is custom designed–for a particular
purpose, for a particular person. How to present a new idea is, perhaps, one of the
designer’s most difficult tasks. This how is not only a design problem, it also pleads for
something novel. Everything a designer does involves presentation of some kind–not
only how to explain (present) a particular design to an interested listener (client, rea-
der, spectator), but how the design may explain itself in the marketplace. A presenta-
tion is the musical accompaniment of design. A presentation that lacks an idea cannot
hide behind glamourous photos, pizzazz, or ballyhoo. If it is full of gibberish, it may
fall on deaf ears; if too laid back, it may land a prospect in the arms of Morpheus.

Originally published in 1991 by AIGA, the members - AIGA advance design as a professional craft,
professional association for design. AIGA brings design to strategic advantage, and vital cultural force. AIGA works to
the world, and the world to designers. As the profession’s enhance the value and deepen the impact of design across
oldest and largest professional membership organization all disciplines on business, society, and our collective
for design - with 70 chapters and more than 25,000 future.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

The effectiveness of a good logo depends on:

distinctiveness
visibility
useability
memorability
universality
durability
timelessness

BRAND IDENTIT Y
 Bee from the IBM poster (1981) designed by Paul Rand.

40

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

 “If, in the business of
communications, “image is king,”
the essence of this image,
the logo, is a jewel in its crown.”
Paul Rand

BRAND IDENTIT Y
 How to design an enduring
logo: Lessons from IBM
and

42

by ANNE QUITO
 M
any tech companies these days obsess over constantly redesigning and
tweaking their logos. In that context, IBM’s 43-year-old logo is veritably
the branding equivalent of ancient sacred scripture.
38
Its iconic eight-bar logo is the marquee for IBM’s awakening to the power
of design in the 1950s. The story goes that after seeing a particularly com-
pelling store display of Olivetti typewriters in New York City, IBM’s then
newly installed CEO, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. had an epiphany. “Good design is good
business,” he declared. It became the company’s mantra and mandate and signaled
a profound design-conscious evolution in the company’s operations. Until then, IBM
reflected the conservative taste of Watson’s father who founded the company, an ae-
sthetic that the younger Watson compared to a “first-class saloon on an ocean liner.”
Guided by Eliot Noyes, an architect who was the curator of industrial design at the
Museum of Modern Art at that time, Watson sought to overhaul IBM’s image from
a nondescript corporation that sold punch-card timekeeping machines, data-storage
diskettes, and tabulating machines (with a rather generic name too—International
Business Machines) to a company with a modern sensibility, a distinct character and
a colorful lore, much like Olivetti.
The IBM logo was designed by the pioneering graphic designer and art direc-
tor Paul Rand, who is celebrated for translating the tenets of European modernism to
American corporate communications—introducing motifs from Bauhaus, Cubism, de
Stijl, and Constructivism in his commercial work. Until the Brooklyn-bred designer
came to the scene, most advertising work was controlled by copywriters.
Along with Eero Saarinen, Isamu Noguchi, and Charles and Ray Eames, Rand was part
of the design dream team that Noyes assembled for IBM. Aligning with Watson’s tre-
atise on good design, Rand understood that a distinguishing mark was essential to a
company’s success. “In the competitive world of look-alike products, a distinctive com-
pany logotype is one if not the principal means of distinguishing one product from
that of another,” Rand wrote in the introduction of IBM’s logo-usage manual. “The
value of the logotype, which is the company’s signature cannot be overestimated.”

Illustration created by Alicia Invernizzi inspired by Paul Rand’s poster

“Idea. Special Issue 30 Influential Designers of the Century”.

BRAND IDENTIT Y
 “Good design is
good business”
Thomas J. Watson, Jr

From the top: Reception area

of IBM facility in Rochester
(MN) designed by Eero
Saarinen & Associates, 1958.
The IBM logo on the façade
of an office building, 1968.
Selectric Magnetic Tape
Packaging, 1965.
 1888 1891 1911 1924

1947 1956 1972

SUBTLE, STRATEGIC CHANGES

The logo’s redesign did not happen overnight. Working with IBM’s existing mark that
already carried some cachet with its customers, Rand’s first design intervention was
subtle. To improve the mark’s legibility, he replaced the font Beton with a similar but
40
stronger-looking typeface called City. Rand tooled with the shape of the letterforms
too, he lengthened the serifs and made the stacked squares in the letter “B” larger. But
there was still something about the shape of the logo that bothered the detail-oriented
designer. “I felt there was a problem with the sequence, going from narrow to wide
without any pause, without any rhythmic possibility,” explained Rand, bugged by the
disparity in visual weight of the three letters. Experimenting with variations of the
logo for over a decade, in 1972 Rand introduced stripes to establish a better sense of
unity in the monogram and suggest a sense of movement. It has remained unchanged
since then.

BEYOND THE PAGE

But Rand approached the logo redesign with more than aesthetics in mind. He made
sure that the logo worked in all conceivable applications—brochures, magazine ads,
TV commercials, stationery, communication materials, building signage, trucks, and
packaging. At that time, this meant anything from diskette sleeves, to boxes of carbon
paper, printer ribbons, ribbon cartridges and microprocessing cards to the repeating
pattern on IBM’s egg-shaped pavilion at the 1964 World’s Fair.
Rand, who also designed the logos for UPS, Westinghouse, Enron, ABC, and Steve Job’s
short-lived NeXT, was known to present only one design concept to his clients. But the
single design approach is not to speak of Rand’s stubbornness or lack of effort. Rand
presented his proposals in the form of elaborate booklets that showcased the mark’s
versatility across numerous spreads. In doing so, he was able to stretch the client’s
imagination beyond the page.
Rand also wrote and designed guidance materials like the pamphlet Use of the
Logo / Abuse of the Logo: The IBM Logo, Its Use in Company Identification and a fra-
me-worthy “IBM House Style” poster showing the various sizes of the eight-bar logo.

In this page: Evolution of IBM logo from 1888 to 1972. Founded on 16 June 1911, IBM was previously known
as the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R) resulting from the merger of three companies
(the Herman Hollerith’s Tabulating Machine Co, the International Time Recording Company and the Computing Scale
Company).C-T-R became to be known as International Business Machines, or IBM, on 14 February 1924.

BRAND IDENTIT Y
46

“In the competitive world of

look-alike products, a distinctive
company logotype is one, if not the,
principal means of distinguishing
the maker of one product from
that another”
Paul Rand

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

IBM poster by Paul Rand (1981).
 The specificity of the language on these materials testifies to Rand’s acuity about the
quirks in the anatomy of the mark. “Black stripes are drawn thicker than white stri-
pes. White stripes look thicker especially when lit (signs, TV screens). Black and white
should appear similar optically,” Rand noted.
“As precise as he was in his own work, he was twice as precise in how others used his
logos,” wrote Steve Heller, who collects many of Rand’s manuals and has written the
quintessential biography on Rand.

MANAGING A MODERN BRAND

Like he did for many of his clients, Rand remained involved in the stewardship of
IBM’s visual branding for decades. Today, that mantle partly falls on the shoulders
of Terry Yoo, IBM‘s VP of brand strategy and experience design. After so many years,
does she ever feel tempted to redesign the logo? Considering the changes in tastes and
43 technologies, is the demise of Rand’s type-and-stripe design in sight?
“You don’t throw away something that special very easily,” Yoo tells Quartz. She
explains that Rand’s graphic legacy has actually given her and IBM’s many designers
around the world a solid foundation to build upon, and one that they are very proud to
have. As much as he valued precision, Rand was not opposed to play. In 1981, Rand de-
signed a witty rebus poster Eye-Bee-M to commemorate IBM’s THINK campaign. Un-
der his guidance, IBM published reports, brochures, and advertisements that played
with variations on the logo’s typography, stripe pattern, and color. After Rand’s pas-
sing in 1996, IBM continued the playful tradition in the covers of its annual reports,
and memorably in the visuals for the 100 Icons of Progress for its centennial in 2011.
Yoo has a pragmatic outlook on how the IBM logo ought to be managed across the
company with over 300,000 employees worldwide. Instead of constantly policing its
use and insisting on stringent adherence to manuals, she spends time explaining the
logic of how and why things are done, to champion and empower local expressions
of IBM’s message using their graphic vocabulary. “The logo stays. If something has to
change, we can work with the stuff around it,” she says.
“To build a great brand, you have to build a great company,” Yoo says, which is
another way of saying that nitpicking at a company’s logo is not always the best solu-
tion—even when stocks fluctuate and things go a bit awry. Yoo’s tempered observation
about a logo’s significance—even a great one like IBM’s—echoes Rand’s reflections too.
He wrote, “It is only by association with a product, a service, a business, or a corpora-
tion that a logo takes on any real meaning. If a company is second rate, the logo will
eventually be perceived as second rate.”

ANNE QUITO covers design and architecture also the founding director of Design Lab, a design practice
for Quartz. She holds a master’s degree in visual culture within an international development organization.
from Georgetown University and an MFA in design criticism
from the School of Visual Arts. Her MFA thesis on the nation This text is taken from Quartz, that is a digitally native
branding of the world’s newest country, South Sudan, has news outlet, born in 2012, for business people in the new
been recently featured on NPR. Anne has contributed to global economy. Quartz publishes bracingly creative and
numerous publications including Works that Work, AIGA intelligent journalism with a broad worldview.
Design Eye, and Core 77. An experienced art director, she is

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

Over: Carbon Paper Folder IBM Graphic Design Corporate Identity
60s.
In this page: Example of typewriter and vintage IBM Film Ribbon
Packaging design by Paul Rand.
50
 The IBM look...and the IBM logo...

In the competitive world of look-a-like products, a distinctive company

logotype is one, if not the, principal means of distinguishing the maker of
one product from that another. The value of a logotype, which is a
company’s signature, cannot be overstimated.

It is the graphic designer who, in a myriad of ways, is confronted with

the problem of using the logo effectively. Effective use implies not only an
awareness of special design problems, but also an awareness of semantics
- the meaning and relationship of words and pictures. It further involves some
understanding of people’s reactions to visual things. Often we say that a
thing is beautiful if it works. A beutiful looking chair that offers little comfort
is not a beautiful chair. The idea of discomfort affects the viewer’s impression
of its appearance. Similarly, a printed piece that is attractive to look at but
difficult to understand is not beautiful because it is not useful. In short, form
and function are inseparable.
46

In an age of mass culture and accelerated change, the visual arts seem
more and more to lean toward the commonplace. The rapid communica-
tion of ideas which, on the one hand, encourages initiative and invention,
tends also to invite imitation. A certain sameness seems to pervade all
fields of design: architecture, product and graphic. A well-designed
piece for electrical appliances. The emphasis on simple shapes, the absen-
ce of ornamentation, and the universal acceptance of certain art forms,
tend to encourage anonymity. Similarly, conscious striving for modernity,
and the universal use of certain tools and materials further tend to
complicate this problem. In brief, it is extremely difficult to be or even
to look original. As individuals or as corporations, we reflect in our
behavior and in our appearance the age in which we live.

In typography the preference for sans serif typefaces by most designers

seems in itself a contradiction of the idea of uniqueness. It is one of
the factors which prompts the “where have I seen this before?” reaction. This
is to confuse words with usage, tools with skills. To avoid a well-designed
sans serif typeface or resort to stylistic clichés is hardly a solution to such a
problem. It is more useful to focus on those aspects of a problem which
are timeless and which deal with design, visual perception, and function:
proportion, color, contrast, logical arrangement, and readability. Even more
important is the question of content, of idea, of relevancy; finding unique
solutions to commonplace problems.
Given the problems of sameness, of anonymity, of a common language
of design, the need for a distinctive means of company identification is
abundantly clear.

BRAND IDENTIT Y
 Not unlike its products, a printed piece is a company’s silent salesman.
What a brochure or nameplate looks like is part of its effectiveness.
If a logotype is too big or too small, awkwardly placed, too often repeated, omitted,
given the wrong emphasis, or otherwise confusing, it does not
help a company image. It is the purpose of this brochure to point out some
of the problems we face from day to day using the company logo.
In the end, it is the designer who must decide how best to use it.

Except for the Penguin cover on page 5, all work shown in this brochure
has been selected at random from IBM printed material to demonstrate the
most meaningful use of the company logo. The solutions shown are not
meant to be the only ones possible. Other examples could have been used to
make these same points. Paul Rand, April 1982

Excessive use of the logo:

The dictionary describes the word logo as deriving from the Greek “logos”
47 and a combining form meaning word or thought. It further states that a
logotype is a single type body containing two or more letters. Common usage
of the shortened form “logo” has broadened its meaning to signify any
trademark or device which stands for a company and its products. How the
IBM logo is used is the subject of this discussion.

One of the most frequent problems the designer faces is the excessive use of the
logotype with its equivalent in a typeface. This happens most frequently
when IBM is part of a title or selling statement. The logo is then shown
elsewhere as a singrature. At times this condition is unavoidable; at other times,
as we shall see, various solutions are possible.

It is always a difficult typographic problem to combine a logotype with a

typeface. The tendency is to avoid this situation by setting IBM in the same
face as the rest of the message.

Although repetition is an effective design device, the combination of the

logo with its type equivalent is not the same as repetition of the logo itself. Such
redundancy is confusing to the reader, creates more than one focal point,
always at the expense of the selling statement, and otherwise complicates what
should be a simple, straightforward message. Following are some of the
problems areas and possible solutions.

Use of the Logo / Abuse of the Logo: The IBM Logo formal and functional elements - their transformation and
As precise as he was in his own work, he was twice as precise enrichment.”
in how others used his logos. His insistence on quality was He attempted to lay down his rules of the qualitative road
best stated by Rand in an article in Print magazine in 1969: in a booklet for IBM, Use of the Logo / Abuse of the Logo:
“Quality deals with the judicious weighing of relationships, The IBM Logo, Its Use in Company Identification. This is a
with balance, contrast, harmony, juxtaposition, between companion to another booklet The IBM Logo.

D ESIGN VERSO 2017

BRAND IDENTIT Y
Packaging design for carbon paper by Paul Rand.
53
“Design is
the silent
ambassador
of your
brand.”
Paul Rand