Paul Rand - Research

Paul Rand's graphic and illustrative work developed in the world of corporate design. Known for his 8-bar logo design for IBM as well as many other well recognised advertisements, Rand's sharp, modernist work has impacted graphic design greatly over the years. One of the main methods through which Rand went about creating his work was collage. 

Rand's practice focused on using multiple methods of manufacturing for his resultant imagery, thus leading the viewer to have to think, interact and interpret. His process of simplification and often abstraction has created a legacy of intriguing and timeless pieces. Along with his wife, Ann Rand, Paul created a few children's books. These books have been really useful to look at and analyse. His limited use of shape and colour allows for incredibly bold and eye-catching imagery that, when combined with short/digestible text, works really well for children's reading. In figure 1 you can see that a decision has been made to replace the body of a character with the text. This is very playful and engaging to see. 

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In his book, 'Thoughts on Design', Rand writes,

"Among the great contributions to visual thought is the invention of collage. Collage and montage permit the showing of seemingly unrelated objects or ideas as a single picture; they enable the designer to indicate simultaneous events or scenes which by more conventional methods would result in a series of isolated pictures." 

Here Rand manages to summarise the effectiveness of collage as a design process as well as it's capability of communicating complex information in an easily interpretable manner. This is a process that I definitely want to explore when coming up with ideas for this brief.