A DESIGNER'S ART

Paul Rand

Paul Rand: A DESIGNER'S ART. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. First edition. A fine hardcover book in a fine dust jacket: an exceptional copy. Interior unmarked and very clean.

Laid in are two [2] pieces of ephemera from the Yale University School of Art: a 5 x 7 embossed and letterpresses invitation to the Dean and Faculty celebration of the publication of A DESIGNER'S ART [January 17th, 1986] and a 7.5 x 10 grey felt single folded printed program of the evenings' festivities, including menu, music and guest list by seating arrangement. It looks like a night to be remembered.

7.75 x 10 hardcover edition with 240 pages and 153 b/w illustrations and 55 color plates of work samples by the author. 27 Collected essays and illustrations of the work of possibly the most influential graphic designer of them all. This book is a revised and updated version of THOUGHTS ON DESIGN, Rand's legendary first book from 1947.

Paul Rand was the first recipient of the Florence Prize for Visual Communication in 1987.

Contents:

  • art for art's sake
  • the beautiful and the useful
  • the designer's problem
  • the symbol in visual communication
  • versatility of the symbol
  • the trademark
  • seeing stripes
  • imagination and the image
  • integrating from and content
  • ideas about ideas
  • the meaningof repitition
  • the role of humor
  • the rebus and the visual pun
  • collage and montage
  • yesterday and today
  • typographic form and expression
  • about legibility
  • the good old Neue typografie
  • design and the play instinct
  • black black black
  • the art of the package: tomorrow and yesterday
  • the third dimension
  • the complexity of color
  • word pictures
  • the lesson of cezanne
  • politics of design
  • integrity and invention

"A monograph-cum-manifesto by Americašs leading modernist designer and corporate communications pioneer. . . . This book describes design as a formal, aesthetic, and conceptual marriage of rationalism and wit."

--Lingua Franca

. . . [He] describes his work with the same precision, economy, and passion he displays in his graphic designs, and he lets us understand the nature of his relationships with his clients, his audience, and his art."

--Alan Fern, New York Times Book Review

"The outstanding design book of the year."

--Thomas Hine, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"In a profession that is constantly pulled toward the banal, the trivial, and the predictable, the history of [Randšs] accomplishment keeps us honest."

--Milton Glaser

"In the future I will present this book to our Swiss printers as the measure of quality."

--Josef Muller-Brockman, Zurich

Spreads from this volume can be viewed here.

Price: $250.00
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