Paul Rand and his Corporate Identity Logos

Paul Rand was a painter, lecturer, industrial designer, advertising artist that draw his knowledge and creativeness from the resources of this country. He was an idealist and a realist, using the language of the poet and businessman. He acts in terms of need and functionality. He was able to analyze his problems but his fantasy was limitless. Paul Rand was one of the most famous and recognized American designers of the 20th Century. His ideas, philosophies and approach continued to be part of a large fundamentals of design taught in education programs across the world.

His early career was spent working for Apparel Arts and Esquire magazines and then joining the Weintraub agency. He was so successful that after a few years he wanted to be paid for half the time, and got it. His relentless passion for corporate identity helped to improve the American business landscape in the 1960s. He worked in the field until the day that he died, at the age of 82.

 

Alfred A. Knopf (1945) In 1945, the American publishing company Alfred A. Knopf asked Rand to pitch for the honour of redesigning the company's trademark borzoi logo. He employed the same modernist reductivism, he'd applied to every cover he'd previously designed for the publisher, and created an incredibly simple, straight forward-thinking mark that both looked to the past and pointed to the future. Rand's design was chosen, and started his journey to becoming one of the greatest ever logo designers began.

 

IBM (1956) When, in 1956, the architect and designer Eliot Noyes was made director of the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), company that looked decidedly old-fashioned, he knew immediately what he had to do. Recognising the need for visual progression, Noyes hired Rand to remake the identity, and the reputable American designer did so with aplomb. Rand recreated everything, from the existing slab-serif logotype to packaging and printed material. He even introduced photography, drawings and the new logo to create editorial content the company could use as a powerful branding tool. Rand's IBM identity is his best known, his redesign not only changed looks of the company, but also it’s fortunes

Invitation for Art Directors Club of Cincinnati (1994). For this invitation, Rand produced a design that was originally used in the book illustration "I Know a Lot of Things" (1956), in which the letters are placed in the form of a human body. Once again flat primary and secondary colours are used and using not much text and for these to keep the design simple and more appealing to the audience.

Referance

Elif Ayiter, N/A. The History of Visual Communication. [online] Available at: <http://www.citrinit as.com/history_of_viscom/index.html> [Accessed December 2013].