DESIGNING PROGRAMMES
Paul Rand's Copy
Karl Gerstner
Karl Gerstner: DESIGNING PROGRAMMES. New York: Hastings House, 1968. New enlarged edition by D.Q. Stephenson [originally published by Arthur Niggli, 1964]. Octavo. White cloth stamped in black. Printed dust jacket. 112 pp. Black and white and color illustrations throughout. "Variable picture comprising 31 bars by Karl Gerstner" 10-page brochure laid in. Textblock edges mildly sunned. Dust jacket lightly worn along top edge with a few tiny spots on front panel. Spine slightly darkened. Small short closed tear on front bottom edge. A nearly fine copy.
PAUL RAND'S COPY with his Ex Libris plate attached to front free endpaper. Books from Rand's library are not uncommon, but nicely associated copies such as this are considerably scarcer. Truly difficult imagining a better association copy than this one.
People are somewhat surprised to hear that Paul Rand hired a designer to produce the bookplate for his personal library. Rand's outsourcing can certainly be forgiven considering that he hired Gianni Basso for the job. Basso -- the Venetian Gutenberg-- and his Letterpress Studio on the Calle Fumo in Venice are the final destination for people wanting to mark their collection with distinction. Basso prides himself on not owning a computer and all of his type is set in metal. Basso's bookplate for Rand is simple, elegant and timeless.
7.25 x 10 hardcover book with 112 pages illustrated in black and white and color. The design of the book is traditional Swiss Modern -- immaculately typeset and laid out on a consistent 2-column grid, a single type family [Univers] set with a minimum of scale and weight changes.
Includes an introduction by Paul Gerdinger and four essays by Gerstner: Programme as Typeface, Programme as Typography, Programme as Picture and Programme as Method.
In these essays, the author provides a basic introduction to his design methodology. Instead of set recipes, the method suggests a model for design in the early days of the computer era. The intellectual models it proposes, however, continue to be useful today. What it does not purvey is cut-and-dried, true-or-false solutions or absolutes of any kind - instead, it develops fundamental principles in an innovative and future-oriented way. The book is especially topical and exciting in the context of current developments in computational design, which seem to hold out the possibility of programmed design. With many examples from the worlds of graphic and product design, music, architecture, and art, it inspires the reader to seize on the material, develop it further, and integrate it into his or her own work.
"To describe a problem is part of the solution. This implies: not to make creative decisions as promoted by feeling but by intellectual criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more create the work becomes. The creative process is to be reduced to an act of selection. Designing means: to pick out determining elements and combining them." -- Karl Gerstner