17 Facts About Paul Rand

Paul Rand was one of the first American commercial artists to embrace and practice the Swiss Style of graphic design.

Paul Rand was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972.

Paul Rand was born Peretz Rosenbaum on August 15,1914 in Brooklyn, New York.

Rand's father did not believe art could provide his son with a sufficient livelihood, and so he required Paul to attend Manhattan's Haaren High School while taking night classes at the Pratt Institute.

Paul Rand was largely "self-taught" as a designer, learning about the works of Cassandre and Moholy-Nagy from European magazines such as Gebrauchsgraphik.

Paul Rand's career began with humble assignments, starting with a part-time position creating stock images for a syndicate that supplied graphics to various newspapers and magazines.

Between his class assignments and his work, Paul Rand was able to amass a fairly large portfolio, largely influenced by the German advertising style Sachplakat as well as the works of Gustav Jensen.

Paul Rand is a painter, lecturer, industrial designer, [and] advertising artist who draws his knowledge and creativeness from the resources of this country.

Paul Rand is an idealist and a realist, using the language of the poet and business man.

Paul Rand is able to analyze his problems but his fantasy is boundless.

In 1936, Paul Rand was given the job of setting the page layout for an Apparel Arts magazine anniversary issue.

The cover art for Direction magazine proved to be an important step in the development of the "Paul Rand look" that was not as yet fully developed.

Paul Rand almost singlehandedly convinced business that design was an effective tool.

Paul Rand designed packaging, marketing materials and assorted communications for IBM from the late 1950s until the late 1990s, including the well known Eye-Bee-M poster.

Paul Rand devoted his final years to design work and the writing of his memoirs.

Dewey is an important source for Paul Rand's underlying sentiment in graphic design; on page one of Paul Rand's groundbreaking Thoughts on Design, the author begins drawing lines from Dewey's philosophy to the need for "functional-aesthetic perfection" in modern art.

In 1992, Paul Rand resigned his position at Yale in protest of the appointment of postmodern designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and convinced his colleague Armin Hofmann to do the same.