ROSIE Paul Rand Logo Design

Paul Rand was one of the most influential designers in the area of logo design in the last century. Many of his corporate logo designs, including logos for IBM, Westinghouse, ABC and UPS are still recognised and used today even several decades after they were fist designed.

Rand's influence in the area of logo design was immense. It goes as far as being said by some that he, "singlehandedly convinced large businesses that design was a highly effective tool and was not to be ignored" if a company wanted to be successful.

In 1956 at age 42 Rand created the IBM logo, this was his first logo for a large multinational company. This logo has become one of Rands trademark logos, it was very successful and he was even able to update it in 1972 to the IBM logo we know today.

The sequence of images below shows the evolution of Rands IMB logo design. The top logo was IBM's original logo before Rand created the middle logo in 1956 then updated it in 1972.



In his Book 'Design, Form, and Chaos' Rand writes on his views of Logos.
"A logo is a flag, a signature, an escutcheon, a street sign.
A logo does not sell (directly), it identifies.
A logo is rarely a description of a business.

A logo derives meaning from the quality of the thing it symbolizes,not the other way around.

A logo is less important than the product it signifies;
what it represents is more important than what it looks like."

See this link below for quotes and insight from Paul Rand about Logo design.

www.lifeclever.com/paul-rand-thoughts-and-despair-on-logo-design/

Rand went on to create many logos for large companies and continued to design well into the later years of his life. Below is a look at several of his other famous logs.

Westinghouse Logo still in use (Unsure of exact date it was created)

NeXT Logo created in1986 (with a rumoured price tag of $100 000)

Ups Logo (created in 1961) has been updated recently but still in similar form to Rands original design

abc logo created in 1961(also recently updated but is still almast exactly the same as the original)

www.lifeclever.com/paul-rand-thoughts-and-despair-on-logo-design/

www.logoorange.com/logodesign-I.php

graphicdesign.about.com/od/history/a/timeline1.htm

www.logosdesigners.com/

www.logoblog.org/wordpress/paul-rand/

IAN massimo vignelli: typographer

• "The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness."
• "I don't think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word 'dog' with any typeface and it doesn't have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write 'dog' it should bark."
• "If you can design one thing, you can design everything."
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• There are people that thinks that type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from mine.
• You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it's really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work.
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• The first half hour Mr. Vignelli toured us through various of his designs related to “journeys” – including signage systems for subways, stations and airports; several logos; travel guides; street signs and so on. Then, suddenly there was a snap, and to our astonishment he started ranting and raving against the “thousands of rubbish typefaces” that polluted the visual landscape and created this “visual clutter” he couldn’t stop complaining about. He particularly had issues with digital distortions, and the fact that current type design went wide, not deep, meaning there was no depth nor research involved. Mr. Vignelli concluded by pontificating that all the world needed were six timeless typefaces that could cater to every single communication problem: Helvetica, Times, Futura, New Century, Garamond and Bodoni if I’m not mistaken. He ended his talk to rapturous applause, which puzzled me a bit as he had given a clear impression he didn’t regard the type design activities from most of the attendance very highly.
• www.fontshop.be/details.php?entry=87
• www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/275437.Massimo_Vignelli
• www.imdb.com/title/tt0847817/quotes
• www.vignelli.com/
• www.designboom.com/eng/interview/vignelli.html

ROSIE Paul Rand Typography

Balance, uniformity and equilibrium of spacing were the three common elements of Paul Rand’s typography related work. With his understanding of both visual content (image/illustration) and technical content (typography/typeface), he produced designs which have lasted decades.

In the 1940s, Paul Rand broke away from the conventional standards of typography and layout, and started incorporating Swiss style of design into his creations. He merged American visual culture into European avant-garde (modern art) design, integrating Cubism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus and De Stijl into his work.

Simplicity was a common element of everything Rand created, whether it was a page design, a magazine cover, an ad, or a logo. He was of the opinion that the design of a logo must be simple, in order to appeal aesthetically.

Rand was very successful at merging modern typography with nineteenth-century engravings. He sought to unite letters and found unique graphic ways of bringing together the letters of a word be it a name or title of a person or entity. This is seen in his logos for IBM, EF and Yale University Press

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Poster for the New York Subways Advertising Company, designed by Paul Rand in 1947.


Poster incorperating Rands Westinghouse Logo design

Quote by Paul Rand on typography:

“There are essentially two kinds of typography: The familiar kind for reading, and the other, simply for viewing, like a painting. Some say that readability is most important. There are really two important things about typography: readability and beauty; both are equally important. However, many readable typefaces are visually offensive. The design of a typeface, ugly or not, is only one aspect of the problem of readability. How a typeface is used is equally, if not more, important.”

below ia an image of pages from one of Rands childrens books 'Listen' . I think this is an example of his use of type for both 'readabilty and beauty'

Definition of Swiss Style design:

The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s that emphasizes cleanliness, readability and objectivity. Hallmarks of the style are asymmetric layouts, use of a grid, sans-serif typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, and flush left, ragged right text. The style is also associated with a preference for photography in place of illustrations or drawings. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in text, and it is for this that the style is named.

www.typeforyou.org

www.logoblog.org/wordpress/paul-rand/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Typographic_Style

post 3: logographics

POST 4: LOGOS AND TRADEMARKS

A logo is a graphic mark or emblem commonly used by commercial enterprises, organizations and even individuals to aid and promote instant public recognition. Logos are either purely graphic (symbols/icons) or are composed of the name of the organization (a logotype or wordmark). 
Using one of your existing designers or select another from the list below if your designer was not active in this area of graphic design. Discuss in two hundred words, 5 images and 5 links their contribution to logo design.

Henry Steiner
Ikko Tanaka 
Ken Cato 
Alan Fletcher
Clemont Mok
Tom Geismar 
Carlo L. Vivarelli 
Raymond Loewy
Michael Wolff
Woody Pirtle
Adrian Frutiger
Peter Behrens

ELLEN LUPTON

"If we are the foot soldiers in the battle of design enlightenment, Ellen Lupton is our fearless leader. This bodhisattva of typography tells us not to be attached to our exclusivity as designers, but rather spread our knowledge so that others can also experience the satisfaction that we feel when we see good kerning."

Reena Karia

Ellen Lupton was inspired by typography from when she first started Art School. She came from a family of English teachers so it seemed fitting she would be inspired by the 'visual art of writing'. She went on to found the Design Writing Research Lab with her partner and then became curator at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Her Curatorial work provided another arena in which objects, images and text functioned as both the method of communication and the subject of inquiry. And she has widely contributed to the theory of typography with essays like, " Science of typography ' and “Fluid Mechanics: Typographic Design Now,”

It was a little difficult to find information about Ellen's contribution to typography, as it seems she is mainly famous for writing about other people and theory surrounding typography, then her own typographical work.

Her 2004 book, "Thinking with type" seems widely acclaimed. This is a basic guide to typography which can be used by anyone. It is a part of her focus on bringing design awareness to a wider audience. She also uses websites, blogs and twitter to further this aim. "Thinking with type" and its accompanying website is especially popular for its "Crimes against Typography" segment, which as the name suggests, points out some common problems in the field.

Another project which attempts to democratise typography is her "Free font Manifesto" and blog. Her attempt to begin an open-source movement in the typeface design community was very controversial and raised some interesting issues about the social conditions governing typographical production.

E

Thinking with type, website

http://www.papress.com/other/thinkingwithtype/index.htm

Review of thinking with type

http://typographica.org/2004/typography-books/thinking-with-type-by-ellen-lupton/

Free Font Manifesto

http://www.designwritingresearch.org/free_fonts.html

Essay- "Fluid Mechanics"

http://elupton.com/2009/10/fluid-mechanics-typography-now/

Interviews

http://www.portfoliocenter.com/events/interviews/2009/5/Ellen-Lupton

http://www.planet-typography.com/news/typo/ellen-lupton.html

Typography - Neville Brody

Neville Brody has become famous for defining the past two decades with his trend setting original typeface designs. He is recognized as a "cutting edge designer" of the 20th century who has revolutionised the world of typography and graphic design.

As a typographer, Brody experimented with new typefaces, creating designs that display a use of aesthetic elements which he would develop into his own style challenging the form and function of traditional typefaces. His font designs ignore the traditional rules of the typeface size, standard distances between lines, mixes fonts with decorative elements and distort letterforms. With the introduction of the Apple Mac computers Brody was quoted as saying "Finally, we could......explore ideas that challenged our fundamental notions of what typographic language should be".

Brody has designed several fonts which have been used in different medias from advertising through to magazine covers such as The Face and Arena. During the period from 1987 to 1990 Brody worked for Arena magazine but refrained from designing his usual expressive style and produced non-decorative typefaces, as he felt his style was being “ripped off”.

Several fonts designed by Brody over his career include, Insignia, Industria, Arcadia, Blur, Gothic, Pop and Six and by the early 1990's he was recommending moving away from the legibility of typography.

Brody's first original fonts include:

INSIGNIA: constructed from basic, round and sharp forms incorporating extravagant fonts that retain legibility.

INDUSTRIA:. The forms have a visually mechanical structure with straight strokes and rounded outer corners and rectangular counter spaces.

INSIGNIA INDUSTRIA SOLID is described as strong, cool and reserved. INDUSTRIA INLINE is described as a vibrating and artful contrast.

ARCADIA: adopting elements of art deco style exhibiting tall, striking geometric forms that are extremely condensed and contrasting in form.

Today Brody continues to design outstanding dynamic fonts including his latest "Popoganda and Buffalo" which was released late 2009.

http://www.kettererkunst.com/bio/neville-brody-1957.shtml

http://www.linotype.com/669/nevillebrody.html

http://new.myfonts.com/person/Neville_Brody/

http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/designer/neville_brody/

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/brody/index3.html

http://www.researchstudios.com/category/typography

TYPOGRAPHY and Alvin Lustig

Alvin Lustig was a modern designer , who chose away from some moderns ,Ideally rejecting the sacredness of the classic frame and central axis of type, He was very aligned with humanism,Acknowledging the interplay between the past and the present , with allot of learning and self teaching the new finner elements of typography, practicing on an old print machine at the age of twenty ,kept in the back of a drug store where he tightened his stronghold on his own thought of typography.Thoroughly thought upon the production of typography to release itself of boundaries of form and contrast and let the form speak for itself . which wasn't to over power a client or buyer,with type but to stimulate and tell of emotion and story ,A year or so later he retired from printing to devote himself exclusively to design. He became a charter member of a very small group (including Saul Bass, Rudolph de Harak, John Foli and Louis Danziger) called The Los Angeles Society for Contemporary Designers, whose members were frustrated by the dearth of creative vision exhibited by West Coast businesss

Lustig created monuments of ingenuity and objects of aesthetic pleasure. Whereas graphic design history is replete with artifacts that define certain disciplines and are also works of art, for a design to be so considered it must overcome the vicissitudes of fashion and be accepted as an integral part of the visual language. Though Lustig would consider it a small part of his overall output, no single project is more significant in this sense than his 1949 paperback cover for Lorca: 3 Tragedies ,said as a masterpiece of symbolic acuity ,composition strength and typographic craft .

This structure in which Lustig created , consciously or not ,would be followed throughout book jacket and covers time and time again .

Lustig within his time was sourcing text and scripts from England, Germany and other places which were very hard to find and receive ,at the time, He would Photostat or cut and print, sometimes draw to his own liking , add his own little eclectic touch , thus creating his own outlook , for the purpose he intended.

As publisher of New Directions, Laughlin hired Lustig in the early 1940s and gave him the latitude to experiment with personal graphic forms. New Directions’ quirky list of reprints, which featured such authors as Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, was a proving ground for the designer’s visual explorations and distinctive graphic poetry.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/medalist-alvinlustig

http://www.casualoptimist.com/?tag=alvin-lustig

http://www.alvinlustig.com/ip_intro.php

http://faceoutbooks.com/149660/Alvin-Lustig-Covers

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/470-alvin-lustig-refused-to-design-down