“I haven’t changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it. It means integrity, it means honesty, it means the absence of sentimentality and the absence of nostalgia, it means simplicity, it means clarity. That’s what modernism means to me.” Paul Rand, October 3rd, 1996.
Paul Rand came onto my radar very late in my design life. I’m not exactly sure why this was – possibly because the majority of his work was truly American, and in my early days I tended to be more obsessed with european design. Whatever the reason, the magic of Rand reached me late. I think the first thing I became aware of was his beautiful I B(ee) M poster. It’s really quite beautiful. I think it’s special because it’s clever, but everyone gets it straight away. You immediately get that each symbol can only be ready as “eye”, “bee” and “M” and you’re immediately in on the funny visual gag. And because of the omnipresence of the giant corporation that is IBM, we immediately understand who the poster is for. There is a timelessness to the work, because one never tires of looking at the beautiful way it was designed.
Eternally pleasing to the eye, and never gets old. It’s incredibly simple, boiled down to the very essence it conveys. Take the eyebrow from the eye, and it becomes penetrating, even daunting – but with it, it is friendly, human, and warm. The bee, even though it has the ability to sting and hurt you, appears here as a generous and kind honey maker, with soft rounded ends and soft teardrops for wings. The two little pink dots add a quaintness and charm. The “M” – impossibly hard to symbolise in shape – thankfully he kept it (through necessity no doubt) but it helps us identify who the poster is for – without it we be left struggling to figure it out – even if we could decipher the “IBM” clues. The the lines of the famous “M” – we are left in no doubt.
All set on a black background, this helps lift all the symbols onto a powerful platform of simplicity, allowing us easily to focus on what’s important – the cleverness of the design. The colours are beautifully balance as well. When we take the whole poster, the sizing, the positioning, the width of the characters – they all sit in perfect balance, no one symbol overpowering the others. A one-off, simple, eye-catching and memorable. All the things we love about our graphic design.
Rand is eternally quotable. So here’s one of my favourites:
“I steered towards humorous things. People who don’t have a sense of humour really have serious problems.”
Paul Rand, 1988.
Early life
Born Peretz Rosenbaum in Brooklyn in 1914, Rand showed a strong interest in art from a very early age, even painting signs for his father’s grocery store and events at his school as a child. He attended several art schools, including The New School for Design and the Art Students League, to hone his skills. However, for the most part, he taught himself designing by learning from the works of Cassandre (The famous french painter, poster artist and typeface designer) and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the progressive Hungarian painter and Bauhaus professor.
Rand began his career by producing stock images for a syndicate that worked with several newspapers and magazines. He was able to put together a sizeable portfolio between his work and class assignments. His influences this time were mainly the Sachplakat, an advertising style in Germany, with bold eye-catching images and also the works of Gustav Jensen.
Rand soon decided to become an independent designer, creating page layouts and ads for clients. Among his first jobs was the creation of a page layout for the anniversary edition of Apparel Arts (now known as GQ) magazine. He later became the art director at Esquire-Coronet, the owner of Apparel Arts, after being given a full-time job.
While still in his early 20s, Rand had become one of the leading designers in the U.S. Moholy-Nagy was one of those who took notice of and stressed the prodigy’s designing skills. It was around this period that he changed his name to somehow disguise his Jewish identity and boost his marketability. Roy R. Behrens, a friend of Rand’s at the rime said: “Rand’s new persona, which served as the brand name for his many accomplishments, was the first corporate identity he created, and it may also eventually prove to be the most enduring.” Paul Rand: much easier to remember, 4 words here, 4 words there. Memorable, punchy, smart.
“I was just doing what they were doing in Europe. I didn’t claim that this was any great, original stuff, because it wasn’t. It was influenced by Surrealism and Picasso.”
Rand quickly cemented his reputation in the States, and was offered the role of Art Director of the Esquire Magazines. Initially he refused, feeling he was too young for the role, in his mid-twenties. After a while though – a year of thinking about it – he decided he was man enough to take on the role, and began a very successful period of his professional life, designing the pages of the fashion magazine. Rand’s design brought a fresh breath of air to Madison Avenue in the post-war years and he continually pushed his European modernist approach to design: “One quickly realises that simplicity and geometry are the language of timelessness and universality”. I personally feel that many of Rand’s designs now seem very dated indeed. In particular his early work – but this is to be expected – some of them are now more than 70 years old! I dread to think about some of my designs – that are 7 years old. But this is because of the photography treatments, typefaces and fashions of the day, are now of course very dated. The work of Rand’s that I really want to talk about are of course, his corporate identities. These masterworks are not dated, at all. Why is that, you may ask? Well, it’s because in these identities, the elements are stripped back to their essence, simple marks, without time or fashion involved – the Eye Bee M poster a perfect example. In fact, let’s talk about one of his finest works – one which he created when still a relatively young man – the IBM corporate identity.
From IBM: “In 1956, Thomas Watson Jr. (Son of Thomas Senior) hired as the company’s design consultant Eliot Noyes, a well-respected architect and former curator of industrial design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Noyes’s goal was to create a first-of-a-kind corporate design program that would encompass everything from IBM’s products, to its buildings, logos and marketing materials.
(This initial to renovate the IBM brand was arrived at by a Thomas Junior walk in the early 1950’s, down 5th Avenue in New York. Happening upon an Olivetti retail outlet, where typewriters were on display, Watson was inspired by the futuristic-looking machines. They were bright, stylish and modern and offered in a variety of different colours. Inside the Italian aesthetic continued, with bold, primary colours, fashionable furniture and displays coupled with slick typographical designs. Watson compared this cohesive modern identity with that of his own, at IBM back on Madison Avenue. At the time, IBM were machines were drab, boxy and lacking any design flourish – utilitarian machines with only engineering desires at its core. This lack of visual flair and lack of modern design thinking was also reflected in IBM’s HQ, which was designed around his fathers design tendencies. “It looked like a first-class saloon on an ocean liner.” He said, years later. I think a first class ocean liner actually sounds amazing, but each to their own. As Watson was preparing to take over at IBM from his father in 1952 he realised that “I could put my stamp on IBM through modern design” and later professed ““good design is good business.” I couldn’t agree more. It took many years for businesses of ANY size to truly understand this ethos. And many today still don’t get it. The value of design, is sometimes hard to explain, even by designers – and so sometimes hard to understand.)
The goal of this visual renovation was much more than just the superficial rebranding of the IBM mark. It is widely regarded as the first time in which a business re-grouped to become more design-thinking, as a collective entity. “In a sense, a corporation should be like a good painting; everything visible should contribute to the correct total statement; nothing visible should detract.” Noyes wrote.” He brought in not Just Paul Rand for this exceptional brand vision, but a wide variety of artists, designers and architects— a collection of the finest design minds of the day, including: Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen (Of CBS Blackrock fame) Paul Rand and Isamu Noguchi. There is also an excellent article on the Rand IBM Graphics Manual here, for those of you wanting to know how to create brand guidelines in 1972.
The IBM logo is for me, one of the greatest of all time. I like it as much as the Deutsche Bank logo, designed by Anton Stankowski. And that’s saying ALOT.
The next piece of work I’d like to discuss is Paul’s work for Steve Jobs, during his “failed” NeXT Project. There are lots of designs of Rand’s that I could spend my life talking about – alas – life is just too short and I have work to do. My two standout favourites are the IBM logo and the NeXT logo, so for now, I’ll focus on these two.
The whole NeXT episode gives us a fascinating insight into Rand’s later years and also how revered he was then by the (relatively) young Jobs. There’s loads of references online about how the partnership came about, no doubt owing to the synergy and excitement that is created by two very famous people working together on something quite special. Although NeXT was a failure commercially (they sold only 10,000 units in the entire life-cycle of the company – projected to be 10,000 a year) the operating system NeXTStep was ultimately purchased from NeXT by Apple for around $400 million and formed the basis of the next gen UX/UI for future generations of apple hardware. And of course, initiated the return of Jobs to Apple, once the deal was done. So the NeXT black box was a commercial failure, but remains a significant intellectual milestone for Jobs, Rand and Apple.
There comes a time in some designers lives (I expect) where there fame and regard become so huge, that not only can they command any fee they want, but they design how they want. This leads us nicely to the next quote, from Steve.
“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 options go talk to other people.” Steve Jobs, 1986.
Rand was brilliant in many ways. One of my favourite factoids about him was that he refused to give his clients “options” for their design problems. He would provide them with the solution, and if they wanted it, they could use it. If not, they can throw it away, Paul Gets Paid. One very interesting interview with Steve resides on youtube, where Steve talks at length about the experience of working with Rand in a very complimentary and respectful way. “Paul is a phenomenal thinker. Extremely smart and a heart of gold.” I can listen to certain smart people talk all day. I liken Steve to John Lennon, in that everything they ever said I find fascinating and can spend hours lying down on the sofa, listening to them talk. Almost like a meditation as their wise words flood into my dark matter. Great stuff.
Jobs was introduced to Rand by a member of his in-house staff and NeXT, and was given some books and articles on Rand to enlighten the young Jobs on the immense body of Rand’s exceptional work. He wasn’t aware of who Rand was at the time, but came to realise that he was of course familiar with much of his work. After reading up on and educating himself on Rand, Jobs became enthused that Rand was the man for the job and enticed Rand with the offer of $100,000 to complete the project. Jobs initially requested several options, but was quickly flattened by the senior Rand. One option, only.
As was Rand’s style, after a few weeks Rand came back to Jobs and NeXT, with his design solution. As usual, it was only one solution, partnered with an extensive booklet, outlining the thought process and the meaning behind the solution. Personally, I love the logo and think it has dated well. It’s clean, interesting and the colours are still great. I love the little “e” and it gives it a really nice quirkiness. I also like the alternatives that are displayed in the book, with reds and yellows.
There is also a fantastic youtube video here, which actually captures the moment Rand appears and presents the new logo and booklet to the NeXT team. This is just so fabulous, that this very rare moment in time was captured by some very prudent videographer in 1986. I think it must be completely unique – the moment of a very famous designer revealing his designs at a presentation to a crowded room of clients – one of them being Steve Jobs! Insanely great, as Steve would say. It’s hilarious to see Steve bouncing around, super excited with Paul presence. It’s also great to see how Rand handles the room – the consummate professional, full of confidence and humour – even making fun of himself at one point with the strange cover of the NeXT booklet with an abstraction of the NeXT word “Don’t get scared, this is not the design.” Steve was thinking “Jesus, $100,00 buck down the drain”. Brilliant.
The most interesting part of the NeXT booklet for me is where Rand talks about the physical make up of the new logo, and why he arrived at its unusual format:
“It is desirable to keep the letter style simple, unmannered and untrendy so as not to distract from the cube concept. Splitting the logo into two lines accomplishes several things: it startles the viewer and give the word a new look..and increases the size two-fold, within the framework of the cube. For small space use, a one line logo would have been too small to fit within this framework. Readability is hardly affected because the word is too simple to be misread.”
Paul Rand leaves behind him a colossal body of work which in many cases, has stood the test of time and will be forever more an important point of reference for art, history, design and culture.
