I first picked Paul Rand’s name from the list because I was drawn to his style. Whimsical and simple, he approached design in a lighter, non-pretentious way. Like Paul Klee and Joan Miro, Paul Rand never lost the sense of childlike imagination in their styles.
What I found out from the first few days of researching online was that while I could find hundreds of beautifully edited works by Paul Rand and the general stream of his career, I couldn’t find much about his personal life or personality. He was described in generalities as a creative genius, and a brilliant designer who’s success was predetermined by his genius.
The few bits and pieces I collected from made me come to the conclusion that there was so much more to his character than what the sources I found were telling me. While he was actually a brilliant designer, his successes had as much to do with the work and heart that he poured into everything as well as natural talent.
The book that made me look at Paul Rand in a completely different was was a book called “ Paul Rand, Conversations with Students.” This book really defined my perception of Paul Rand as a man of contradictions. While he was described in his reputation to be ornery, he was also described to be endearing curmudgeon and compassionate. More than looking into facts about his life, reading his conversations with his students and what they had to say about him determined the story line I wanted to pursue.
Graphs
The first few graphs began while I was in my research phase of reading books about him rather than the short biography found online.The graphs that I created about Paul Rand was driven by aesthetics or theme. I was working in a way I thought reflected his sense of style and characteristic. Instead of focusing on the actual content of the information, I looked more at unconventional ways to represent who Paul Rand was through graphs.
The graph started coming together when I began to organize it through a timeline. Paul Rand had a pretty linear life, with distinct stages. There were a few constants and diversions like children’s book illustrations and teaching, but his career was mostly linear.
Graph 2.0
Combining the two ideas of a spider web and a timeline.
issues:
Hard to read the timeline aspect of the graph, organization looks messy. hierarchy can be worked on. For some categories, I marked his well known works and the years it was created but for others, its more general in terms of the position he held or the years he worked as that category.
Post biography crits:
Natalie and Treat both commented on how much they really liked the unconventional intro. I want my layout to emphasize the intro because I think thats what gives the reader a sense of what Paul Rand was like. Treat also mentioned that he liked the ending because it was concise. I had originally intended to follow a more traditional biography ending with reference to his death but I realize I don’t need to get caught up on what is typical.
Below I explored with two different layouts for the first spreads, and kept it consistent for the second two. Looking at it now after crit with the class, I’m thinking it might need some more breathing room? Compared to a lot of my classmates, I did not leave much white space which makes it seem a little dense at the moment. Depending on whether or not I keep the density, I realize the biography could be a little bit longer? I haven’t had any feed back about the layouts from anybody so I will update my process post crit.
Layouts 2.0
Continued…
trying out different compositions of the same layout
questioning: which one sits better for the eye?
playing with styles and fonts : observing title, caption, quotes, body in both Avenir and Futura. I chose Futura because it was a font that Paul Rand favored.
Progress Update:
I am having a much harder time with the layout than I did the first time. With the second time around, I keep wanting to play with different ideas, and find myself getting stuck with certain styles that end up in a dead end. I keep making decisions that I am unable to justify and I keep having second thoughts about everything.
I have decided to stick with Avenir for now because Futura was looking too dense as a body text and coming off too strongly as a graphic block rather than as the main content. I have mixed feelings about the quotes. I liked having Avenir Medium Oblique but when in use in the spreads, I find it doesn’t quite deliver the impact I want it to. I find that its subtlety is more distracting than a serif font thats in italics. I need to play more with putting different fonts together beyond just playing with weights and styles.
Layout Updates
After the Tuesday Work day
Feed Back:
- body copy type looks better with the smaller type (9/12)
- A tighter grid needs to be established to make better relationships between the elements.
- The margins are looking a little tight
- subheaders should be implemented ( biography needs to still be organized into sections
- I should decide whether to work with two columns or one.
- Citations should be added ( page number fonts should maybe also be added )
Picture of grid before update
I have tightened the grid relationships by setting the margins at .5 inches from the edge of the page and have aligned everything to the 6 column grid structure or the .25 inch gutter. I have also aligned the body text to fit on one column.
There is more white space than I had originally anticipated but I feel comfortable with it. Since Paul Rand placed around a lot with negative space, I think there is a relationship established with the way I set up the elements in the page.
Stacie Rohrbach ^ With the last spread, I am having a hard time finding a place for the caption within the grid that has been established. It seems to play too much on its own because I had taken out the other captions I had in place.
Monday 3.21
Updated Style Sheet
Final Prints and Reflection:
For the final prints, I tried to incorporate a lot of Paul Rands style into the spreads to better help capture his essence. I think for the most part, I was generous with the white spaces, really marking a difference between landmarks and nodes within my spreads. Color was used to guide the eyes and play a role in hierarchy throughout my piece.
Although I liked the white spaces when the spreads were on their own, I had a few doubts once they compared with the rest of the book. I wondered if I needed to add more pictures or information to make it look more cohesive to the rest of the book but I decided that I was happy with the current relationship of my spreads and the grid.
The biggest changes I made since the last update was with the last page. I used the IBM poster to end the three page spreads rather than keeping the poster on the left. Having it as a final landmark worked better to package the Paul Rand section of the book and mimicked the footer image of the website. I also added more components from the wall to the spreads as design opportunities for the white pages. I matched the first set of spreads to have consistent baselines with the rest because there want a clear cap-line which I think helped to weigh the pages.
Captures from the website:
The website was a lot of fun to make once I overcame the difficulties of using a new medium. I kept the structure similar to the print with the column structure and incorporated some of the playfulness from the print piece over to the web. I tried to keep it consistent with banner images going across the website to give it some dynamic space. I also gave a nod to the hand illustration by adding a feature that shoots to the top of the page when the hand was clicked. I loved the fact that I got to showcase more of his work in the website and curate the pieces by reference to color. If I had to keep in mind some things for the next time, I would consider the spacing in between scrolls because there were some awkward cuts in between the web-pages.
