design legends you should know #2 Paul Rand

Paul Rand, who the heck was he?

In short, a legend.

Born in 1914, in NY, Rand was an art director, writer, graphic designer, and design professor (teaching at Yale, Pratt, and Cooper University). He was renowned for his logo design at IBM, AIGA, UPS, ABC, and Steve Jobs’ start-up NeXT.

He wrote a book in 1947, “Thoughts on Design”. It’s still used in classrooms to this day and lays out Rand’s ideas on what makes good design. But he didn’t stop at writing one book, he went on to write over eight more.

He was a fan of the Swiss style. It is “a minimalist design style, favoring a block layout, sans serif typefaces, and photographs.” (source) The overall purpose of Swiss style is to communicate an idea clearly and clean cut. You can see that a lot of Paul Rand’s work is no frills, it’s has its own style– yet it very simple.

Despite his death in 1996, his logos remain timeless– a true testament to his prolific design prowess.

(source)

I hope this little kernel of info was helpful! Is there anything else I should know or include next time? Let me know below.