Paul Rand - Softcover

Heller, Steven

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0714839949 ISBN 13: 9780714839943

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2000

Synopsis

Paul Rand (1914-1996) was a pioneering figure in American graphic design whose career spanned almost seven decades. Always enquiring and investigating, he explored the formal vocabulary of European avant-garde art movements and synthesised them to produce a distinctive graphic language.

About this title

Review:

IBM, UPS, ABC. If these acronyms ring a bell, their ubiquitous logos springing instantly to mind, then you know the work of Paul Rand (1914-1996), the Picasso of Graphic Design. A pioneer in the field of visual communication, Rand developed a fresh and individual design language drawn from European art movements including Russian constructivism, de Stijl, and the Bauhaus. His career as an art director, teacher, writer, and design consultant to major corporations spanned almost seven decades. Rand arguably got his start at the tender of 3 when he first began to secretly copy pictures of the attractive Palmolive models pictured in advertising displays in his father's grocery store in Brooklyn, New York. He later modeled his aesthetic on avant-garde artists like Paul Klee, El Lissitzky, and architect Le Corbusier, each of whom advocated a timeless spirit in design. Rand began his career in an era when working by hand was a given, a reality that would change before his eyes as the mass media, entertainment, and consumer industries were revolutionized by increasingly technical equipment, and ultimately the computer.

Steven Heller, senior art director at The New York Times and prominent author of numerous design books, presents this meticulously researched and detailed survey, which marks the first complete retrospective of Rand's powerful body of work, exploring the full range of his advertising, publishing, and corporate identity projects. Eminent designer Armin Hofmann writes the forward, and the introduction is penned by advertising legend George Lois, who writes, "The constant concern of the scholarly and humanistic Paul Rand was to create images that snared people's eyes, penetrated their minds, warmed their hearts and made them act." Appropriately, the designers of this large, bold, beautifully designed book seem well versed in Randism themselves, creating a gorgeous tribute to this quintessential artist's artist. Rand's uncanny ability to inject wit and whimsy into the corporate vocabulary is echoed here, for example, in an enlarged reproduction of an opened children's book whose spine is aligned with that of the actual book held by the reader, creating a playful trompe l'oeil effect. At 255 pages, with a staggering 452 illustrations (over 300 in color), this book is a delightful and inspiring must-have. --A.C. Smith

About the Author:

Steven Heller is Senior Art Director at The New York Times. He is also editor of the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design and co-chair MFA/Design Program of the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is author and co-author of numerous books including Graphic Style: From Victorian to Post-Modern and Graphic Wit and Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design. In 1996, Heller received the New York Art Directors' Special Educator's Award. Armin Hofmann is one of Switzerland's foremost graphic designers who taught with Rand at Yale and at the Brissago Summer School. George Lois, wunderkind of American advertising, says he owes everything to Rand. In his own right, Lois is the first among equals in the creative revolution in US advertising - he was responsible for the original VW campaign - and no more eminent figure exists in the field. He is author of The Art of Advertising and his most recent book What's the Big Idea? (1991) was widely acclaimed. Jessica Helfand, a former Rand student at Yale, is the new-media columnist for Eye magazine and writes regularly for i-D, Print and the AIGA Journal on design issues. She runs a design studio devoted to new media and is a highly respected writer.

About this edition

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0714839949
• ISBN 13: 9780714839943
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256