Rand is best known for a set of logos that he did for
big American companies starting in the 1950s.
And the interesting thing about Paul Rand's logos, we often think
of corporate logos as being relatively abstract kind of little nuggets or
buttons that you recognize over time because of repetition.
Rand often sought to imbue his corporate logos with a kind of personality.
So Westinghouse Electric which is huge company,
gets a logo that really exists as a face.
It's a ‘W; in a circle with an underline under the W.
But it was designed in such a way that it could be animated on signage or
even on television, and you would get the sense of some kind of
glowing energy through the sort of animated nature of the logo.
One of his most famous logos, which was very unfortunately
replaced in the 2000s, was his design for the UPS logo.
For many, many years this logo was seen everywhere on the sides of
every UPS truck and label from one end of the country to the other.
And it is also considered to be one of the most classic logos of the time.
I want to talk about how to understand it.
The overall shape is a shape of the badge,
kind of like a police badge or a military badge.
And at the time Rand explained it to say that if you wanted to
know that your packages were going to appear on time,
that the UPS even though it was a private company had to appear kind
of governmental or almost like it had a military efficiency.
So that simple, strong three letter UPS sit inside the lower
two thirds of the logo but the upper part of the shield has a ribbon.
It's a box.
It's a present, clearly, with a bow tied on it.
So you have this notion of efficiency, regularity, and dependability connected
to the idea of the anticipation of [LAUGH] getting something that you really want.
It exemplifies the kind of symbol where with the simplest of forms,
Rand seemed to capture the complicated ideas that are connected
to the delivery of packages in a form that really was delightful and well known.
This is a group of logos, all designed by Paul Rand, and you see a crazy range.
Everything from the childhood toy Colorforms in the lower right-hand corner,
that with the circle, square, and triangle, looks as if it could have been
designed at the Bauhaus, to the ubiquitous IBM logo made of stripes.
All of these logos have in common a sense of life and
personality to them that came through the way that Paul Rand
was able to embed a lot of ideas into the simplest of forms.
And while some of his notions of universal symbolism don't seem
to really apply to the way designers think today,
definitely the idea of capturing the energy of a culture and
the way that people really think through the simplest of graphic
means still represents a very interesting practice.
Louise SandhausFaculty, Program in Graphic Design
Lorraine WildFaculty, Program in Graphic Design
