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IBM corporate identity by Paul Rand
Eye Bee M poster designed by Rand in 1981 for IBM.
Excerp from the Paul Rand’s wikipedia page.
Pictures took from the collection of the Georges Pompidou Center, many packagings are avaible via the gallery.
Rand’s most widely known contributions to design are his corporate identities, many of which are still in use. IBM, ABC, Cummins Engine, Westinghouse, and UPS, among many others, owe Rand their graphical heritage. One of his primary strengths, as Moholy-Nagy pointed out 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.
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.” The logo was modified by Rand in 1960, and the striped logo in 1972. The stripes were introduced as a half-toning technique to make the IBM mark slightly less heavy. Two variations of the “striped” logo were chosen (one with thicker lines, one with thinner lines), the mark with thicker lines has become the company’s default mark. Rand also designed packaging, marketing materials and assorted communications for IBM from the early 1970s until the early 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.
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.” 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.”
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