Design Is | An Insight To Paul Rand

Paul Rand was an American art director and graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM and UPS.

You could say he lived the real Graphic Designer's life. Starting from the bottom with a part-time job creating stock images that were supplied to magazines and newspapers.

Simplicity, or Modernist Design, was at the core of everything Rand did. He said logos "cannot survive unless it is designed with the utmost simplicity and restraint." Simplicity takes restraint from the designer, and that's what makes it so complicated.

Design brings everything together, and creates an understanding for the person who sees it. Rand said "Copy, art, and typography should be seen as a living entity; each element integrally related, in harmony with the whole, and essential to the execution of an idea."

If your job is outside of design, it can easily pass you by - or at least you think it does. Design is everything, and it is everywhere. Whether you notice it or not, it is always doing its intended job.

I haven't changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it... It means integrity; it means honesty; it means the absence of sentimentality and the absence of nostalgia; it means simplicity; it means clarity. That's what modernism means to me. - Paul Rand

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