PLAY TIME
The Paul Rand exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York is called Everything is Design, but it might better be called Everything is Delight. This great graphic designer, who’s best known for the brand identity he created for IBM in the 1940′s, did work that gives remarkable pleasure. All of it (corporate logos, advertising copy, book covers, cosmetics packaging, cigar wrappers) is characterized by candy colors, eye-popping geometries, and eccentric compositions that give a strong sense of play.
Make no mistake about it; this is high design. The familiar eight-bar IBM logo, when not orthogonal, is designed to sit at precisely 37 degrees from the horizontal. An instruction manual Rand wrote for the company (Use of the Logo/Abuse of the Logo) notes the text size, spacing and information fields on an employee’s business card with fascistic authority. While his graphics look like happy jumbles of words, pictures, photographs and glyphs, they’re composed rationally. Each element floating on a blank white or black background is located with ravishing precision.
Rand’s compositions erupt from the center of a page with child-like grace. There’s an ad for Frazer automobiles that features a super-sized hand playing with the vehicle as if it’s a toy. The designer creator the logo for Colorforms play sets, and illustrated several childrens books. At a time when branding is a business science, shaped by focus groups and market research, Rand’s work is an argument for exuberance.