COLLAGE
A collage of Paul Rand's logos, various portraits, and letters in his first name.
I began by coming up with my theme of "The Iconic Vision of Paul Rand". I chose this theme because he was iconic in helping the business world see the importance of the designer and branding. He made icons (logos) for several prominent businesses and did all their branding. He was also a visionary because he brought modernism and the importance of type into design. He also always wore those thick black glasses. He was a teacher at Yale and taught his iconic vision to future designers.
I used his icons (logos) to tie into the icon theme, the glasses to tie into the vision theme, and the apple to support his teaching students and the business industry the importance of the designer. I made the whole image look 3D to establish his modern design philosophy.
Typography
A vision chart that uses his name and the year of the exhibit as focal points.
Patterned after Paul Rand's UCLA Summer Sessions promotional poster, I made his name and year of the exhibit stand out by changing the color of the letters. To incorporate an even stronger vision theme, I changed the letter "O" into a circular portrait of Paul in his iconic glasses, which I cropped in Photoshop. I strategically placed the exhibit slogan "Defamiliarize the Ordinary" right below his picture as that was one of his iconic phrases and he was great at defamiliarizing the ordinary in his designs, and I strategically placed the months and dates of the exhibit above the year for grouping and focal point. I followed his lead on the UCLA poster by purposely having the letters in the vision chart continue in the alphabet after the last letters of his names. I used a big thick sans serif type that represents his bold, modern style.
Photography
A compilation of various Paul Rand photographs with versions of his famous icons and his name.
I took the UPS logo and his photograph into Photoshop and masked them together to form the "P". I took the black circle and the lower case "a" from his ABC logo and turned it sideways to make an eye shape, then put another photograph of Paul inside the "A". I then took the logo he made for Cummins, which is a "C" with the word Cummins written diagonal across, and turned it up so that the "C" becomes a "U", then I added another picture of Paul on the "U". Finally, I took the IBM logo lines and incorporated those onto the "L", and put his last name next to the "L" to add dimension.
This design ties in with my theme of "The Iconic Vision of Paul Rand" because I used variations of his icons (logos) to represent each letter in his name, and I used several different pictures of Paul in his iconic glasses. It also ties into my theme and slogan of "Defamiliarize the Ordinary" because I followed his lead by taking ordinary letters and modernizing them to represent something else (the lower case A into an eye, the C into a U). The color scheme of black, white, and yellow are bold and make a statement that he was not affraid to be different and bring design into modern prominence.
