SEASON'S GREETINGS
GERTRUDE & ELKIN KAUFMAN
Paul Rand
Paul Rand: SEASON'S GREETINGS: GERTRUDE & ELKIN KAUFMAN [card titles]. [New York: Paul Rand, c. 1948]. Original editions. Set of custom Holiday Cards in various formats: 6.25 x 4.5 single fold card printed recto only in 3 colors; 6.5 x 5 card with deckled edges printed recto only in 2 colors; and 15.25 x 11.25 die-cut scored and folded [to 5.85 x 5.25] sheet printed recto only in 4 colors. The die-cut card also has an unpunched hole for hanging as an ornament. Rand signatures printed in facsimile. Faint red ink offset to verso of the die-cut card, otherwise all three cards in uniformly fine, uncirculated condition. An unrecorded set of singular rarity.
Set of Paul Rand-commissioned Holiday Cards from Gertrude and Elkin Kaufman, a couple heavily involved with the George Junior Republic, an all-boys Institution in western Pennsylvania that remains one of the nation's largest private non-profit residential treatment facilities.
With 70 years of hindsight these undated cards appear more a labor of love than a commission. Rand’s early Modernist techniques are fully displayed: the flat geometric color planes, collage and examples of handwriting in lieu of typesetting. The calligraphic gray ink on the woven cream paper, the colored dot pattern, and the overall playfulness of the images and compositions all point towards Rand’s eventual children’s books. A wonderful—and previously unknown—card set from early in Paul Rand’s storied career, produced by Postwar craftsmen to the highest standards of the day. A unique opportunity.
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.
László 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."