Thoughts on Design
If Paul Rand is a design god, then this is a sacred text.
I decided to read Thoughts on Design for this assignment after listening to my graphic communications professor—I won’t name any names—talk about her crush on Paul Rand.
It turns out I picked a good time to do so. After being out of print for almost 40 years, the book was re-issued this year to commemorate what would have been Paul Rand’s 100th birthday. It includes a foreword from Pentagram’s Michael Beirut, another one of my professor’s design crushes.
After initially finishing Thoughts on Design, I felt like I needed to read it again. To really understand this book, I needed some context. So, I decided to do some further research on its author.
Although Paul Rand was largely self-taught as a designer, today he is recognized as one of the most influential designers in the history of print. He is best known for creating lasting corporate identities such as IBM, UPS, and ABC.
Interestingly, his given name is Peretz Rosenbaum, a name he changed in his twenties in order to disguise his overly Jewish identity.
According to graphic design scholar, Roy. R. Behrens, “Rand’s new persona, which served as the brand name for his many accomplishments, was the first corporate identity he created, and it may also eventually prove to be the most enduring.”
Originally published in 1947, the content of Thoughts on Design is not exactly revolutionary — although at the time, it was.
It reads like a collection of, well, thoughts on design. The tone is not so much instructional as it is philosophical, which is perhaps why this text has withstood the test of time.
In his foreword, Beirut describes Thoughts on Design as a “manifesto”, and that seems to fit well.
Thoughts on Design opens with an essay Rand previously wrote entitled “The Beautiful and the Useful.” In it, Rand explains his definition of graphic design: “the embodiment of form and function, the integration of the beautiful and the useful.”
Rand says that a designer has three different classes of material to work with: the given material (product, copy, slogan, media, etc.), the formal material (space, contrast, proportion, color, line, etc.) and the psychological material (intuition, emotion, visual perception, instinct, etc.).
A designer’s problem (I would use the word challenge)is to simultaneously anticipate the spectator’s reactions and meet his own aesthetic needs.
The book includes Rand’s insights on a number of other topics like the imagination, typography and expression, contrast, the role of humor, symbols and something called a photogram. Thoughts on Design is not a textbook that you need to take notes on or a must-read guide for design tips — it’s a sacred text in the world of graphic design, something to turn to for inspiration or purpose.
Beautiful and useful, at the same time.
