Simplicity is never a goal; it is a by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.
Paul Rand, From Lascaux to Brooklyn
| Tagged with: | Aphorisms, Graphic Design, Paul Rand, Stuff We Like |
For Paul Rand's posthumous induction into The One Club Hall of Fame, Imaginary Forces created this short film, combining original animation with a videotaped interview of Rand himself, that encapsulated his unique and timeless contribution to the design community.
| Tagged with: | Design, Inspirado, Paul Rand, Stuff We Like, Video |
We were just talking about this the other day. If a client asks for three options, there's usually only one the designer feels is the real solution. The other two are often filler.
In the end, the client will cherry-pick bits from all three and combine them into something awful that the designer is forced to build. Ultimately, neither the client nor the designer is happy with the result.
Rand had the right idea. Why mess around?
The punchline is disturbingly accurate.
File this under Interface Trivia, but I never made the connection that power buttons (right) are a representation of toggle states for a standard I/O switch. Also, did you know that the crescent moon-shaped Sleep icon is an ISO standard? Word.
The Economist writes about Georgia Tech researchers who are attempting to build drones with ethical programming in order to prevent civilian casualties.
Their plan involves connecting them to global databases, networking them to each other, and giving them learning intelligence. I know it's practically a cliche, but does this sound like a good idea?
| Tagged with: | Paul Rand |
Via.
| Tagged with: | Business Cards, Graphic Design, Minimalism, Paul Rand, Stuff We Like |
The first item on my list of open questions from Monday is an absolute whopper: "What is design?"
The term design encompasses so many aspects of our culture that it seems nigh impossible to come up with a definition that is neither so general as to be meaningless nor so specific as to exclude too much. But we've got to try. Why, exactly? Because when we say design ethics we mean more than merely, say, graphic design ethics, but less than ethics in general.
Many famous designers have subscribed to very broad notions of design. Among the most broad, Paul Rand claimed that "Everything is design. Everything!" But of course, even if that were true, it's not very helpful.
| Tagged with: | Design, Design Council, Jackson Pollock, Paola Antonelli, Paul Rand, Saul Bass, Steve Jobs, Victor Papanek, What is Design? |
I see shades of Paul Rand's advertising work in Johnson's portfolio.
| Tagged with: | Advertising, Blog Less, Illustration, Paul Rand |
In April of 2003, UPS released what has since become a very hotly debated brand update. Summarily, UPS retired Paul Rand's iconic 1961 package-and-shield logo and replaced it with "a two-tone, 3-D-look shield topped with a quasi-swoosh [and a wordmark] set in a customized version of [the common logo font] FF Dax..." (Source*)
* As evidence of how positively engaging this identity redesign was, the discussion on this article received its first comment April 7, 2003 and got its last one on November 9, 2007!
The responses to this re-branding varied from declaiming FutureBrand, the New York-based designers of the new logo as glorified Paul Gaskills to flat-out declamation that "the new logo is better," and subsequently that, "you typography/graphic/illustrator bullies need to relax." (Ibid).
| Tagged with: | Brand Design, Branding, Identity, Identity Design, Information Theory, Paul Rand, Signal-to-Noise Ratio |
Thibaut Sailly does not like the Amazon Kindle. Not the whole ebook-DRM thing (which is also broken), but the form factor itself. For example:
I don't have anything against asymmetrical designs... the volume itself is ok to me. But having symmetric elements (the keyboard and the screen) that give the most visual weight to an un-centered (left aligned) element in an asymmetric shape can only result as a mess. If you choose asymmetry, stick with it. For example, don't make a symmetric keyboard when you can do an asymmetric one. But first, don't choose it when the purpose of the object is to display a book page that looks like it has a center line (apparently they acknowledged this fact by placing the logo centered under the screen).
(Note: Edited a few words-- his English is not perfect.)
I’m inclined to agree with the guy, not only because of the clear arguments he makes with his visuals, but also because he follows a posting about the gorgeous video game Bioshock with a video about Paul Rand (“hero” tag, indeed!).
