NEXT
THE SIGN OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMPUTERS
FOR EDUCATION
Paul Rand
Paul Rand: [NEXT] THE SIGN OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMPUTERS FOR EDUCATION. Weston, CT: Paul Rand, Spring 1986. Quarto. Perfect-bound self-wrappers. 20 pp. Interior signatures are perfect-bound in the Japanese-style. Light handling wear [especially to white rear panel] otherwise a nearly fine copy.
8.375 x 11.875 book written and designed by Rand for Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computer Company. An original copy of the presentation book prepared for Jobs in the Spring of 1986. "In this veritable textbook of logo design, Rand explained the decisions that supported his type choices and how these simple letters were transfromed into a mnemonic mark." [Heller]
Once upon a time, Jobs had an idea for a user-friendly personal computer that ran on a UNIX platform. He had the technology. He had the money. But he needed a logo. You know where this is going.
"Paul understood the purpose and power of logos better than anyone in history," explained Jobs about his decision to pay $100,000 for the mark in 1986. "he was also the greatest living graphic designer." [Heller, pp. 194]
With a track record including Esquire Magazine (1938), Coronet Brandy (1941), Helbros Watch Company (1943), Borzai Books (1945), Smith, Kline and French Laboratories (1945), Robeson Cutlery Corporation (1947), El Producto Cigar Company (1952), International Business Machines Corporation (1956), Harcourt Brace and Company (1957), Colorforms (1959), Consolidated Cigar Corporation (1959), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (1960), UPS (1961), ABC (1962), etc. Rand was clearly up to the task.
"The book itself was a big surprise," Jobs recalled, "I was convinced that each typographic example on the first few pages was the final logo. I was not quite sure what Paul was doing until I reached the end. And at that moment I knew we had a solution . . . Rand gave us a jewel, which in retrospect seems so obvious."
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." Jobs got the point.
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."