THE TRADEMARKS OF PAUL RAND -- A SELECTION
Paul Rand
Paul Rand: THE TRADEMARKS OF PAUL RAND -- A SELECTION. New York: George Wittenborn, Inc. 1960. First [only] edition; limited to 450 copies. Square quarto. Stiff, printed french-folded wrappers. Unpaginated. The interior signatures are perfect-bound in the Japanese-style. Cover design and typography by the author. General formatting and printing by Hiram Ash at the School of Art and Architecture, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Internally nearly fine with slight offsetting from the heavily inked pages. Uncoated wrappers lightly sunned and handled, with a couple of scratches as well as a vintage retail price sticker from Kroch’s & Brentano’s to the rear panel. Unsigned, thus rare.
According to a Wittenborn trade advertisement in TYPOGRAPHICA [New Series] 3 (London: Lund Humphries, June 1961, page 72), THE TRADEMARKS OF PAUL RAND was issued in a 450 copy press run and subsequently offered for $7.50 per copy. This limitation automatically makes this volume the rarest of books authored by Paul Rand. This copy is unsigned, thus rare.
9.5 x 9.5 softcover book [unpaginated] spotlighting 12 of Rand’s classic trademarks. Each mark is presented as a full-page design element with all printing in spot-color. In "The Trademark as an Illustrative Device" Rand wrote that "the trademark becomes doubly meaningful when it is used both as an identifying device and an illustration, each working hand in hand to enhance and dramatize the effect of the whole." This volume seeks to transform the sales mark into the realm of fine art.
- Introduction by Gibson A. Danes: Dean of the School of Art and Architecture, Yale University
- Comments by Paul Rand: revised and reprinted on page 24 of A Designer's Art. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.
- Borzai Books, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1945
- Smith, Kline and French Laboratories, 1945
- Westinghouse Electric Corporation, 1960
- Consolidated Cigar Corporation, 1959
- Robeson Cutlery Corporation, 1947
- Helbros Watch Company, 1943
- Harcourt Brace and Company, 1957
- El Producto Cigar Company, 1952
- Colorforms, 1959
- International Business Machines Corporation, 1956
- Coronet Brandy, 1941
- Esquire Magazine, 1938
I find it fascinating to see which marks Rand was most proud of in 1960. THE TRADEMARKS OF PAUL RAND definitely acts as an agenda-setter for how Rand wanted his career legacy to be remembered. Gibson Danes’ introduction also reinforces this point, as well as his decicion to appoint Rand Professor of Graphic Design at Yale University's graduate school of design in 1956.
If 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). By 1947, 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 as an outstanding cover designer for Apparel Arts and Directions. 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. THOUGHTS ON DESIGN (with reproductions of almost one hundred of his designs and some of the best words yet written on graphic design) had just published -- an event that cemented his international reputation and identified him as a designer of influence from Zurich to Tokyo.
A chronology of Rand's design experience has paralleled the development of the modern design movement. 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 there has been a consuming interest in design education and Paul Rand's fourth career as an educator started at Cooper Union in 1942. He taught at Pratt Institute in 1946 and in 1956 he accepted a post at Yale University's graduate school of design where he held the title of Professor of Graphic Design.
In 1937 Rand launched his first career at Esquire. Although he was only occasionally involved in the editorial layout of that magazine, he designed 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 Directions. From 1938 on his work was a regular feature of the exhibitions of the Art Directors Club.
Most contemporary designers are aware of Paul Rand's successful and compelling contributions to advertising design. What is not well known is the significant role he played in setting the pattern for future approaches to the advertising concept. Rand was probably the first of a long and distinguished line of art directors to work with and appreciate the unique talent of William Bernbach. Rand described his first meeting with 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."
Rand spent fourteen years in advertising where he demonstrated the importance of the art director in advertising and helped break the isolation that once surrounded the art department. The final thought from 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."
In 1954 when Paul Rand decided Madison Avenue was no longer a two-way street and he resigned from the Weintraub agency, he was cited as one of the ten best art directors by the Museum of Modern Art. The rest is design history.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a pioneer typographer, photographer, and designer of the modern movement and a master at the Bauhaus in Weimar, may have come closest to defining the Rand style when he said Paul was "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."