 |
| 設計是什麼？：保羅˙蘭德給年輕人的第一堂啟蒙課 |
| 保羅˙蘭德（Paul Rand）為美國當今乃至全球，最傑出的logo設計師、 |
| Paul Rand | |
|---|---|
 Paul Rand on a Think Different poster in his later years | |
| Born | August 15, 1914 Brooklyn, New York, United States |
| Died | November 26, 1996 (aged 82) |
| Occupation | Graphic designer |
Paul Rand (born Peretz Rosenbaum, (August 15, 1914 – November 26, 1996) was an American graphic designer, best known for his corporate logo designs, including the logos for IBM, UPS, Westinghouse, ABC, and Steve Jobs’ NeXT. He was one of the originators of the Swiss Style of graphic design.
Rand was educated at the Pratt Institute (1929–1932), Parsons The New School for Design (1932-33), and the Art Students League (1933–1934). From 1956 to 1969, and beginning again in 1974, Rand taught design at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Rand was inducted into the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 1972. Rand died of cancer in 1996. He is buried in Beth El Cemetery in Norwalk, Connecticut.
Contents[hide] |
Paul Rand was born on August 15, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York.[1] He embraced design at a very young age, painting signs for his father’s grocery store as well as for school events at P.S. 109.[2] Rand’s father did not believe art could provide his son with a sufficient livelihood, and so he required Paul to attend Manhattan’s Harren High School while taking night classes at the Pratt Institute, Rand was by-and-large “self-taught as a designer, learning about the works of Cassandre and Moholy-Nagy from European magazines such as [Gebrauchsgraphik].”[3]
His career began with humble assignments, starting with a part-time position creating stock images for a syndicate that supplied graphics to various newspapers and magazines.[2] Between his class assignments and his work, Rand was able to amass a fairly large portfolio, largely influenced by the German advertising style Sachplakat (object poster) as well as the works of Gustav Jensen. It was around this time that he decided to camouflage (and abbreviate) the overtly Jewish identity telegraphed by ‘Peretz Rosenbaum,’ shortening his forename to ‘Paul’ and taking ‘Rand’ from an uncle to form his new surname. Morris Wyszogrod, a friend and associate of Rand, noted that “he figured that ‘Paul Rand,’ four letters here, four letters there, would create a nice symbol. So he became Paul Rand."[1] Roy R. Behrens notes the importance of this new title: “Rand’s new persona, which served as the brand name for his many accomplishments, was the first corporate identity he created, and it may also eventually prove to be the most enduring."[1] Indeed, Rand was rapidly moving into the forefront of his profession. In his early twenties he was producing work that began to garner international acclaim, notably his designs on the covers of Direction magazine, which Rand produced for no fee in exchange for full artistic freedom.[2] Among the accolades Rand received were those of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy:
| “ | Among these young Americans it seems to be that Paul Rand is one of the best and most capable [. . .] He is a painter, lecturer, industrial designer, [and] advertising artist who draws his knowledge and creativeness from the resources of this country. He is an idealist and a realist, using the language of the poet and business man. He thinks in terms of need and function. He is able to analyze his problems but his fantasy is boundless.[2] | ” |
The reputation Rand so rapidly amassed in his prodigious twenties never dissipated; rather, it only managed to increase through the years as the designer’s influential works and writings firmly established him as the éminence grise of his profession.[3]
Although Rand was most famous for the corporate logos he created in the 1950s and 1960s, his early work in page design was the initial source of his reputation. In 1936, Rand was given the job of setting the page layout for an Apparel Arts magazine anniversary issue.[2] “His remarkable talent for transforming mundane photographs into dynamic compositions, which [. . .] gave editorial weight to the page” earned Rand a full-time job, as well as an offer to take over as art director for the Esquire-Coronet magazines. Initially, Rand refused this offer, claiming that he was not yet at the level the job required, but a year later he decided to go ahead with it, taking over responsibility for Esquire’s fashion pages at the young age of twenty-three.[4]
The cover art for Direction magazine proved to be an important step in the development of the “Paul Rand look” that was not as yet fully developed.[2] The December 1940 cover (See Figure A), which uses barbed wire to present the magazine as both a war-torn gift and a crucifix, is indicative of the artistic freedom Rand enjoyed at Direction; in Thoughts on Design Rand notes that it “is significant that the crucifix, aside from its religious implications, is a demonstration of pure plastic form as well . . . a perfect union of the aggressive vertical (male) and the passive horizontal (female)."[5] In ways such as this, Rand was experimenting with the introduction of themes normally found in the “high arts” into his new graphic design, further advancing his life-long goal of bridging the gap between his profession and that of Europe’s modernist masters.[citation needed]
Rand’s most widely known contributions to design are his corporate identities, many of which are still in use. IBM, ABC, Cummins Engine, UPS, and the now-infamous Enron, among many others, owe Rand their graphical heritage.[3] One of his strengths, as Moholy-Nagy pointed out,[2] was his ability as a salesman to explain the needs his identities would address for the corporation. According to graphic designer Louis Danziger:
| “ | He almost singlehandedly convinced business that design was an effective tool. [. . .] Anyone designing in the 1950s and 1960s owed much to Rand, who largely made it possible for us to work. He more than anyone else made the profession reputable. We went from being commercial artists to being graphic designers largely on his merits.[2] | ” |
Rand’s defining corporate identity was his IBM logo in 1956, which as Mark Favermann notes “was not just an identity but a basic design philosophy that permeated corporate consciousness and public awareness."[6] The logo was modified by Rand in 1960. The striped logo was created in 1972. The stripes were introduced as a half-toning technique to make the IBM mark slightly less heavy and more dynamic. Two variations of the "striped" logo were designed; one with eight stripes, one with thirteen stripes. The bolder mark with eight stripes was intended as the company's default logo, while the more delicate thirteen stripe version was used for situations where a more refined look was required, such as IBM executive stationary and business cards. Rand also designed packaging, marketing materials and assorted communications for IBM from the late 1950s until the late 1990s, including the well known Eye-Bee-M poster. Ford appointed Rand in the 1960s to redesign their corporate logo, but afterwards chose not to use his modernized design.[4]
Although his logos may be interpreted as simplistic, Rand was quick to point out in A Designer’s Art that “ideas do not need to be esoteric to be original or exciting."[5] His American Broadcasting Company trademark, created in 1962, epitomizes that ideal of minimalism while proving Rand’s point that a logo “cannot survive unless it is designed with the utmost simplicity and restraint.”[5] Rand remained vital as he aged, continuing to produce important corporate identities into the eighties and nineties with a rumoured $100,000 price per single solution.[3] The most notable of his later works was his collaboration with Steve Jobs for the NeXT Computer corporate identity; Rand’s simple black box breaks the company name into two lines, producing a visual harmony that endeared the logogram to Jobs. Steve Jobs was pleased: just prior to Rand’s death in 1996, his former client labelled him, simply, “the greatest living graphic designer.”[1]
Though Rand was a recluse in his creative process, doing the vast majority of the design load despite having a large staff at varying points in his career, he was very interested in producing books of theory to illuminate his philosophies. László Moholy-Nagy may have incited Rand’s zeal for knowledge when he asked his colleague if he read art criticism at their first meeting. Rand said no, prompting Moholy-Nagy to reply “Pity.”[2] Heller elaborates on this meeting's impact, noting that, “from that moment on, Rand devoured books by the leading philosophers on art, including Roger Fry, Alfred North Whitehead, and John Dewey." These theoreticians would have a lasting impression on Rand’s work; in a 1995 interview with Michael Kroeger discussing, among other topics, the importance of Dewey’s Art as Experience, Rand elaborates on Dewey’s appeal:
| “ | [. . . Art as Experience] deals with everything -- there is no subject he does not deal with. That is why it will take you one hundred years to read this book. Even today's philosophers talk about it[.] [E]very time you open this book you find good things. I mean the philosophers say this, not just me. You read this, then when you open this up next year, that you read something new.[7] | ” |
Dewey is an important source for Rand’s underlying sentiment in graphic design; on page one of Rand’s groundbreaking Thoughts on Design, the author begins drawing lines from Dewey’s philosophy to the need for “functional-aesthetic perfection” in modern art. Among the ideas Rand pushed in Thoughts on Design was the practice of creating graphic works capable of retaining but face recognizable quality even after being blurred or mutilated (see Figure D), a test Rand routinely performed on his corporate identities.[5]
During Rand's later career, he became increasingly agitated about the rise of postmodernist theory and aesthetic in design. In 1992, Rand resigned his position at Yale in protest of the appointment of postmodern and feminist designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and convinced his colleague, Armin Hofmann to do the same.[8] In justification of his resignation, Rand penned the article Confusion and Chaos: The Seduction of Contemporary Graphic Design where he denounced the postmodern movement as "faddish and frivolous" and "harbor[ing] its own built-in boredom".
Despite the importance graphic designers place on his book Thoughts on Design, subsequent works such as From Lascaux to Brooklyn (1996), compounded accusations of Rand being “reactionary and hostile to new ideas about design.”[2] Steven Heller defends Rand’s later ideas, calling the designer “an enemy of mediocrity, a radical modernist” while Favermann considers the period one of “a reactionary, angry old man.”[2][9] Regardless of this dispute, Rand’s contribution to modern graphic design theory in total is widely considered[4] intrinsic to the profession’s development.
The core ideology that drove Rand’s career, and hence his lasting influence, was the modernist philosophy he so revered. He celebrated the works of artists from Paul Cézanne to Jan Tschichold, and constantly attempted to draw the connections between their creative output and significant applications in graphic design.[citation needed] In A Designer’s Art Rand clearly demonstrates his appreciation for the underlying connections:
| “ | From Impressionism to Pop Art, the commonplace and even the comic strip have become ingredients for the artist’s cauldron. What Cézanne did with apples, Picasso with guitars, Léger with machines, Schwitters with rubbish, and Duchamp with urinals makes it clear that revelation does not depend upon grandiose concepts. The problem of the artist is to defamiliarize the ordinary.[10] | ” |
This idea of “defamiliarizing the ordinary” (or "making the familiar strange," a strategy commonly credited to Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky) played an important part in Rand’s design choices. Working with manufacturers provided him the challenge of utilizing his corporate identities to create “lively and original” packaging for mundane items, such as light bulbs for Westinghouse.[11]
A view of St. Peter’s Basilica from the Vatican Museums.
IT was just after 8 p.m., by now dark outside the walls of Vatican City, and a small group of us were following a guide through the maze that is the Vatican Museums. We had wandered for 40 minutes through galleries crammed with 15th- and 16th-century Italian paintings, courtyards displaying Greek and Roman sculpture, and seemingly endless hallways lined with ancient maps and musty tapestries, before passing through a small doorway I had not noticed on my previous visits here. I glanced up and realized we had arrived in the Sistine Chapel.
Visiting the Gallery of Maps, where 40 maps are frescoed on the walls, on a night tour of the Vatican Museums.
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on a night tour of the Vatican Museums.
And just us: the nine members of a tour group, one guide and a Vatican guard. Our guide, who had hustled us along with a chattering narrative through the rest of the museums, went theatrically silent as our group stopped, startled by the slow recognition of where we were. We walked the length and breadth of the chapel, heads tilted back and mouths open, enjoying each discovery of a new perspective from which to appreciate the frescoes that arched above us and covered the walls. Only our footsteps broke the silence. We had the place to ourselves.
As anyone knows who has endured a visit to the Sistine Chapel during the day — the shoulder-to-shoulder scrum of tour groups, the guards barking “no pictures, no pictures,” the fight for seats, the pressure to move on to make way for the crush behind you — this was an indulgence of the highest order. With little fanfare, a few tour operators have in recent years arranged for after-hours group tours of the Vatican Museums, culminating with the Sistine Chapel.
Not surprisingly, the private tour we took comes at a heart-stopping cost: 275 euros (about $388 at $1.40 to the euro) per person in a group limited to 15 people, though it may be possible to negotiate a lower per-person rate if there are several people in your own group. (Regular admission to the museums starts at about 15 euros.)
Is it worth it?
I had toured the chapel twice before on trips to Rome, and my lasting memory of those visits was less the “Creation of Adam” and more the clatter of tourists — and this was before the restoration of Michelangelo’s ceiling drew more people through its doors.
This place where popes are elected had all the intimacy and spirituality of Grand Central Terminal at rush hour. In my mind, at least, it made the Sistine Chapel a check-the-box, been-there, done-that tourist stop; impressive, yes, but impossible to absorb or really appreciate, with little reason to return.
But my friend and colleague at The Times Ian Fisher, who had done a tour as the paper’s Rome bureau chief, informed me that there was really only one way to see the Sistine Chapel, and put us in touch with Helen Donegan, an Irish expatriate and the charming entrepreneurial force who arranges one of the smaller (and thus pricier) tours that are floating around the Internet.
From the moment I made contact with Ms. Donegan, the whole experience had a kind of vaguely illicit aura to it; reminiscent less of visiting one of the great museums of the world and more of gaining admittance to an after-hours club in New York.
Ms. Donegan told us — my partner, Ben, and me — to show up at 6:30 p.m. at the offices of her tour agency on Via Vespasiano, a short walk from the entrance to the Vatican Museums. We arrived to find the front door locked, seeming to confirm my fear that this was not for real. But suddenly, Ms. Donegan burst from a storefront next door, offering a platter of bruschetta and glasses of wine as we joined the rest of our gathering group. The tour would begin at 7.
It was short walk from Via Vespasiano to the Vatican. The sky was purple, the street in front of the museum was deserted, and the soaring doors that lead inside were sealed. It was most assuredly closed. But at precisely 7 p.m., as promised, we heard the jangle of keys from inside and one of the doors swung open slowly, spilling light onto the empty street. Without saying a word, a guard whisked us in — we passed an exiting stream of museum staff members heading home for the night — and swiftly the door shut behind us, lest a less-entitled passer-by inquire just what was going on here.
The quiet was almost spooky. Like most major European cities these days, Rome has become overrun with tourists. Passing through the doors of the Pantheon at dusk a few evenings later was like trying to navigate Seventh Avenue outside Madison Square Garden a half-hour before a Springsteen concert. Inside the museum, there were only us and a skeletal night staff.
First things first: this is not a tour for those who crave predictability or order. As our guide, Jay Good, made clear from the outset, we were at the mercy of the Vatican guards and whatever personal relationship they have with the guides. The guard can decide — in advance or just on a moment’s whim — which rooms to open, where we can stand and for how long. Keys in hand, they walked ahead to open galleries, and we could hear them lock the doors behind us as we left. “It’s an absolute monarchy,” Mr. Good, an expatriate from the United States, said. “We have certain guards who are better than others. It depends on what they feel like doing.” The one promise, Mr. Good said, is that visitors will see the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms.
The tour lasts precisely two hours, and it was obvious from the guard who kept an eye on his watch — and flashed an impatient look at Mr. Good as the half-hour mark arrived in the Sistine Chapel, which is a long walk from the entryway — that this is one firm deadline. That had logistical implications as well; at various points, the tour felt something like a sprint. (It is simply impossible to see the museums in two hours.)
Mr. Good said that, depending on the desires of the guards and his own interests (he often leads three Vatican tours in a day), he chooses different rooms and galleries along the way to the Sistine Chapel. Like the Gallery of Tapestries. “This doesn’t look anything like it looks during the day,” Mr. Good said. “There are normally 150 people here.”
This gave us not only the space and silence to view the artwork, but also to smell it: musty, pungent and aromatic, a sensory experience that I suspect would have been difficult to appreciate in a room packed with tourists. In the octagonal courtyard in the Pius-Clementine museum, we stopped to inspect the striking white marble sculpture of Laocoön and his sons struggling with sea serpents, attributed to three Rhodian sculptors working in the first or second century B.C.
If I had had any complaint, I wish there had been more time for our guide to discuss the work of Michelangelo, Raphael and Botticelli that surrounded us during our half-hour in the chapel. As it was, the return walk felt like a footrace, Mr. Good gently pulling us along as he walked briskly backward.
Yet that is a quibble. Our group of nine could sit anywhere, walk anywhere and even (shhhh) take photographs (no flashes. please). This is the kind of privilege that previously had been afforded mainly to prominent political leaders and celebrities. “I don’t know how celebrities get in there, but I know it sure seems to be easy for them,” said Ms. Donegan, who said she spent years negotiating with Vatican officials to arrange these tours. (Until recently, the tours took place about once a week; now they are more episodic.)
Our tour ended just as furtively as it began. The guards opened the door, ushered us quickly out, and closed it just as quickly. Ms. Donegan was waiting outside to take us back to her office and send us off for a late supper.
IF YOU GO
We used the tour company Italy With Us, which provides a variety of tours of Italy, including private after-hours tours of the Vatican Museums.
Tours average about one a week, though the schedule varies depending on demand and availability. Reservations should be made at least a month ahead; they are now being accepted for dates in April, May and June, as well as later in the year.
Cost: 275 euros per person (about $388) for a two-hour tour, though group rates are negotiable. Groups average 20 people, with a guide for each 10.
Italy With Us, Via Vespasiano 16-18, Rome; (39-06) 3972-3051; www.italywithus.com/vatican-after-hours.php.)
A recent Web search turned up other tour options. They, too, provide evening tours of about two hours.
Viator Tours (www.viator.com/Rome/d511/vatican-tours), starting about $460 per person, for groups of up to 20 people.
Context Travel (www.contexttravel.com), 280 euros per person. Each group of about six people has its own guide.
Bill Moggridge, a founder of the design firm IDEO who is widely credited with designing the look of the first commercial laptop, has been named director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York.
Bill Moggridge, new director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, created the look for the first commercial laptop.
The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion.
The GRiD Compass, and a sketch of its design, from the early 1980s.
Mr. Moggridge, who is to start in March, will be the first design practitioner to run the Cooper-Hewitt, bringing decades of experience as a businessman and industrial designer but none as a museum administrator. He replaces Paul W. Thompson, who left in July after eight years to become the rector, or president, of the Royal College of Art in London. (Caroline Baumann, the museum’s deputy director, has been acting director.)
Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s under secretary for history, art and culture, described the appointment as part of an effort to raise the visibility of the Cooper-Hewitt. “We look to Bill as someone who has a national and international reputation in the design world,” said Mr. Kurin, who was chairman of the search committee. The museum has long been regarded as somewhat stodgy by many in that world and hemmed in by the bureaucratic constraints of the Smithsonian.
Mr. Moggridge, 66, spent the first 20 years of his career, starting in the late 1960s, designing many high-tech products like the GRiD Compass from the early 1980s — the first commercial laptop — and has focused more recently on coordinating interdisciplinary design teams at IDEO. He said that he was ready for a new, more far-reaching challenge. “I really thought my main goal in life was to design stuff,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “To have a national opportunity on a much greater scale is very exciting.”
Others in the design world seem hopeful about his prospects. Murray Moss, founder of the SoHo design store that bears his name, applauded the choice of “someone who’s been successfully and intensely engaged with design.”
“A neutral bureaucrat would not be the way to go,” he said. “A vision comes from someone who has a passion and has not taken a step back from the subject.”
Chee Pearlman, a design consultant and a former editor of I.D. magazine who has worked on several projects with Mr. Moggridge, said, “People will respond to him because he’s got a fresh take.” Interest in the museum is “quite minimal relative to the importance of design right now,” she said, and Mr. Moggridge should help give it “a much larger presence in and interaction with the design community and the public.”
His lack of museum experience will be a benefit, Ms. Pearlman said, “because he won’t know where the fence is.”
Donald Albrecht, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of the City of New York, called the appointment “an eye-popping move that could really redefine the institution and design museums in general.”
On the other hand, he added, it’s potentially risky. “It would be like hiring Charles Eames — a practitioner and a thinker,” Mr. Albrecht said. Mr. Moggridge is “idea based, and whether that’s going to work out for the Cooper-Hewitt remains to be seen,” he added. “The two cultures may not mesh.”
Mr. Moggridge will take over the Cooper-Hewitt, based in the former Andrew Carnegie mansion at 91st Street and Fifth Avenue, during the largest renovation in its history. The $64 million project — financed partly by money from the museum’s endowment — will create at least 60 percent more exhibition gallery space, a new library and additional classroom space for the museum’s master’s program in decorative arts and design. It will also require the museum to close for construction from spring 2011 to 2013, downtime that Mr. Moggridge said would give him time to become familiar with the Cooper-Hewitt and work on expanding its influence with more traveling exhibitions and an enhanced Internet presence.
Ms. Baumann, the acting director, said the Cooper-Hewitt, had raised 86 percent of its capital goal for the renovation, which still leaves it short a significant amount. Although Mr. Moggridge has limited fund-raising experience, his connections and prominence in the corporate and West Coast design worlds may prove valuable resources for the museum.
Mr. Moggridge, who studied industrial design at the Central St. Martins College of Art and Design in London, founded a design firm in that city in 1969 and added a second office in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1979. In 1991 he merged his company with those of David Kelley and Mike Nuttall to form IDEO, a global design firm with offices in Palo Alto, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, New York, London, Munich and Shanghai. It is responsible for designs that include an early Apple computer mouse and an insulin pen. It also created a broad strategy for the Acela high-speed train.
Last year Mr. Moggridge received the lifetime achievement award at the Cooper-Hewitt’s National Design Awards at the White House. He has been an adviser to the British government on design education in the 1970s, a trustee of the Design Museum in London in the 1990s, and a consulting associate professor in the design program at Stanford University since 2005. Along with his wife, Karin Moggridge, a textile designer, he will be moving from Palo Alto to New York for the job.
Mr. Moggridge said he was not coming in with “preconceived notions” about how to change the Cooper-Hewitt. “One of the things I like to ask is, ‘How might we ...?’ questions,” he said. “They imply a collegiality.”
