![]() This quotation, like all the others in these paragraphs, is borrowed-need we add?-from Paul Rand himself. Although Paul Rand says that ‘he finds the problem of writing very distressing’, words originally spoken of sound design might easily be applied to his texts: they are ‘marked by imagination and constraint, by brevity and wit’. The texts that accompany the graphic layouts are likewise by the designer. Colour is used where needful, and the booklets are always impeccably produced. ![]() Occasionally skilful use is made of ‘animated’ sequences. They then follow up with examples of use, from visiting cards and letterheads to large outdoor signs. The presentations usually begin with a lucid exposition of the thinking which has led to this particular trade-mark design. Believing that ‘graphic designers are really silent sales-men’, he thinks that trade marks should convince by their own impact and quality. Characteristically, Rand avoids what he calls ‘sound, music and lights presentations’. These custom-made booklets may go to anything from 25 to 100 top-ranking executives. Illustrated on these pages are some of the graphic layouts-usually made up into large booklets of some 20 to 40 pages-with which Paul Rand presents his trade-mark designs to his clients. And here is the rub: modern companies are usually topped by a hierarchy of executives, many of whom have little understanding of design, but who would hardly renounce their right to share in the choice of a company symbol. For however good a trade mark may be, it is certainly not the slightest use till it has been accepted by the company it is to epitomize. These requirements, redoubtable as they may seem, are not all. Its purpose is, after all, ‘to identify appropriately to lend authority, and to help create the right visual climate in which a company can operate’. It should be reproducible in one or two colours, in positive and reverse form, and in sizes as large as build-ing signs and as small as, or smaller than, calling cards.’ As a logotype it should be ‘legible enough to be read and unusual enough to be re-membered’. ![]() Furthermore, it should be practical and easily adapted to a variety of applications. Such a mark ‘should be distinctive, memorable, and reflect in some way, however abstractly, the nature of the product or service it represents. The design of a trade mark thus becomes an undertaking of the most exacting acuity. Not only must it serve as the focal point of corporate design programmes: it is often the only medium through which large sectors of the public identify a company and its products at all. The trade mark, which in the spacious days before the invention of the corporate image could afford to live in a measure of ornamental luxury, has today become a sharply functional thing, a bright weapon for the attack on the overworked and often sluggish attention of the public. Many of the articles are written by important artists, critics and scholars. These publications are also more valuable as they are the original documents. These periodicals are much harder to find than the well known Graphis Annuals, which are essentially pictorial “best of” collections and lack the depth and text of the originals. Erika Billeter, Zurich: The Riddle of Easter Island Allan Porter, Luzern: Photographis ’71.Stanley Mason, Zurich: How Paul Rand Presents Trade-Mark Designs to Clients.Erika Billeter, Zurich: Gervasio Gallardo ![]() Graphis is still being published, but the most influential and groundbreaking years are from the 1940s to the early 1960s. Each issue always showcased the best graphic and applied art, including advertising, typography, posters, printmaking, illustrators, book arts, ethnic art, etc, with a focus on modern European designers. Text in in English, French and German.Graphis was (and still is) one of the most important and influential European graphic design publication. 9.25 x 11.75 magazine with 102 pages of b/w and color examples of modern graphic design, circa 1947.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |