5 ms·
He designed the IBM logo too? Literally my two favorite logos of all time! He's a genius.
by Mononokay 9y ago
He designed the IBM logo too? Literally my two favorite logos of all time! He's a genius.
- RickS 9y agoIt's shockingly hard to find a single list, but yeah, he was prolific and extremely effective. He also did the UPS, PBS, ABC, Enron, westinghouse, and surely many other big ones that slip my mind. PBS and westinghouse are especially favorites of mine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rand
- Mononokay 9y agoI found a single list! http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/identity/ http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/identity/
- no_u 9y agoThe Gentry Living Color makes me think of Google, the color palette, the g letter..
- mixmastamyk 9y agoI always liked the OS/2 logo, didn’t know why until now.
- shanghaiaway 9y agoTakeaways: 1. The IBM logo was iterated on. IBM clearly didn't love the first one and it was ugly. 2. The OS2 and NEXT logos are very similar. The clients wouldn't be happy if they saw them side by side like they're displayed on that page.
- karmakaze 9y agoI remember seeing that OS/2 circle on books and boxes and it never even occurred to me that it was 'the' logo. It appeared as if a single (OS/2) circle was a unit applied indiscriminately.
- drcode 9y agoLOL, that Enron logo was pretty sweet!
- abrowne 9y agoI like all the tilted square ones.
- jburgess777 9y agoI am sure the similarity with the E Corp logo in Mr Robot is pure coincidence (or maybe not) http://mrrobot.wikia.com/wiki/E_Corp http://mrrobot.wikia.com/wiki/E_Corp
- djur 9y agoI chuckled at that, too, but I have to admit: you could show me that tilted E and I'd recognize it as an Enron logo this many years later. Even scarred by infamy, it's a very memorable symbol.
- abrowne 9y agoThe Cabbages and Kings Catering one seems weirdly out of place.
- philwelch 9y agoHe really liked tilted squares, huh?
- jonathanleane 9y agoMost of these are beautiful, but there are a couple that make me cringe... The Cummins one in particular (http://www.paul-rand.com/assets/gallery/identity/logo_cummins_th.jpg http://www.paul-rand.com/assets/gallery/identity/logo_cummin...) has a very MS Paint feel to it to my admittedly untrained eye.
- cjmoran 9y agoYou don't have an untrained eye; you've looked at logos all day long for your entire life. Some of this guy's work was great, and some of it was crap. The same could be said of a collection of any person's work.
- coldtea 9y ago>You don't have an untrained eye; you've looked at logos all day long for your entire life That's like saying "you have had a body for your entire life, don't let any doctor tell you what's good for your health". People can listen to music for their entire lives and still have crap taste.
- jonathanleane 9y agoSure, but this is presumably just a small sample of his work that he's most proud of and has self selected. It's interesting / surprising / puzzling to me that someone who has spent a lifetime cultivating his craft and presumably knows far more about design than I do would choose to showcase something that appears to me to be a total eyesore, which makes me think I might be missing something.
- Mononokay 9y agoHe's dead, so they weren't self-selected—they were just what he's done. He did other things than logos.
- cfadvan 9y agoPBS logo is so great, so memorable. How many logos could most people draw from memory? How many are Rand’s? I’d guess a non-trivial percentage.
- sokoloff 9y agoPBS logo was done by Tom Geismar, not Paul Rand, though Tom studied under Paul.
- jkeat 9y agoTom Geismar also designed the Chase logo, which he talks about in a great episode of the design podcast 99% Invisible: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/making-mark-visual-identity-tom-geismar/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/making-mark-visual-id...
- city41 9y agoHe also designed the original UPS logo. I could never believe they willingly ditched a Paul Rand design.
- FreakyT 9y agoAgreed, the current logo seems like it was designed in the "Web 2.0" days. "It's a shield! Look at how gradient it is!