George's Art Heroes .... Paul Rand

This is going to be the first of many postings about my different art heroes.

Now just because my style of art is painting and drawing doesn't mean that all these heroes are just going to be 2D artists and illustrators.

The word 'artist' to me is a very flexible and wide reaching term. To sum up the word means for me anyone who is able to express themselves in a discipline or even multiple disciplines ... i.e .... developing and transmitting both a craft and any ideas behind it.

That probably is not the Oxford English Dictionary's meaning of the term. However, I don't really care as that is what it means to me, and so basically a lot of people I believe can fit into and be defined by the term 'artist' ... be them musicians, sculptors and dancers, through to others like business men, scientists, chefs, soldiers and well basically anyone really.

Anyway onto my first one .... Paul Rand.

"Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated."

Paul Rand

I won't bore people too much with his life, if you want to know his whole background just google and wikipedia him. But basically he is a legend in the field of graphic design. I'm sure if you ask any graphic designer about him they will start going all weak at the knees and start chatting about him for hours.

He was most famous for designing a lot of great company logos such as: IBM, UPS, ABC, Westinghouse and Next Computers. The latter one being the company the late great Steve Jobs set up after he was fired from Apple back in the 80's. Steve was a big fan of Paul Rand and there is an interview on Youtube of him singing his praises.

(www.paulrand.com)

Now what I like about Paul Rand was his thought process, his design taste and the way he always wanted to play around with the visual elements to make graphic design not just be boring shapes and type faces but much more like 'art' really. In short he was the thinking mans' graphic designer.

The best way to explain him and his approach is to let him do it himself, so here is a link to a short video posted on youtube by a company called imaginary forces .... http://www.imaginaryforces.com. that I believe was created for Paul Rand's posthumous induction into The One Club hall of fame.

Have a watch and enjoy! ...