Understanding Paul Rand’s Corporate Branding Genius

Paul Rand was a leading figure in graphic design who made innovative visual identities for some of America’s major corporations and book and magazine publishers.

We all have seen Paul Rand’s designs at some point in our lives. He had a career spanning nearly seven decades. There is the seminal logo for IBM and ABC, the Westinghouse logo, and the logo for NeXT computers. There are posters and packaging, book covers, record covers, and a multitude of magazine covers.

Rand was said to hate academia but has been an influential professor at Yale University since 1956.

To design, he writes, “is much more than to simply to assemble, to order, or even to edit: it is to add value and meaning, to illuminate to simplify, to clarify, to modify, to dignify to dramatise, to persuade and perhaps even amusing. To design is to transform prose into poetry.”(from Principles of User Interface Design)

Early Work

Rand’s prolific graphic design portfolio spanned over half a century. His work symbolised the modernist design ethic of the postwar era. In the 1930s, American commercial art and advertising were dominated by in-your-face copy and realistic illustrations. Rand introduced the avant-garde art movements to visual communication and publishing.  His advertisements in the 1930s, 40s and 50s for such clients as Orbach’s department store, Disney Hats, Schenley Liquors, Playtex and El Producto Cigars, as well as hundreds of book jackets and covers for Alfred A. Knopf and other publishers, combined formal elements from modern painting with geometric purity of typography.

Corporate branding

He could combine art and design while still distilling the essence of a company or a product and discovering the nature of a brand. A talent gave a brand an instantly recognisable identity to consumers. They were imbued with a distinctive wit and logic yet entirely devoid of personal indulgences.

His notion of visual identity placed the viewer in a more active role. The viewer’s curiosity stimulated the viewer himself to complete the meaning of the message.

Rand says that the stripes for the IBM logo came from a desire to soften the bluntness of the three-letter logo, first introduced in 1956.  He says his inspiration was the striped background often used in legal documents at the time to prevent forgeries.

Stripes are a nearly universal design motif, but the IBM stripes have taken on a particular meaning.  Although Rand did not associate them with wiring or communication, others did.  Striped graphics became an understated, unintimidating signal of high technology.  Even without letters, stripes of a particular width and rhythm communicate the message “IBM”.

Photography and Montage

He used photography and montage, cut paper and asymmetrical typography. He did not avoid complexity. However, his ideas were often “distilled to their most salient form.”

His poster design for the film “No Way Out” was a nod to the 1950s-style cubist works. He was one of the few American designers to follow the modernist traditions of Cubism and the Bauhaus and was influential in working with the New Typography. He moved away from the thought of the sentimental type and layout treatment of the 1930’s.

Rand thought that good design does not date, but bad design does.

Rand often signed his design work. He insisted on this because he did not want to be subordinate to anyone.

The El Producto line of cigars was a classic example of his tasteful packaging. This campaign was designed for the 50th anniversary of Father’s Day in 1960. They illustrate that Dad was the centre of the family, with affection and attention.

In the Schenley label, Rand used arbitrary typographic elements. The label did not look too austere of using the marbled paper for the background.

Paul Rand, despite the commercial pressures and the ebbs and flows of the field, transformed it for thousands of designers. He never faltered, changed, or questioned the rightness of his mission. He, more than any designer, gave the design industry credibility as an essential tool for communication.

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