Paul Rand quotes

Paul Rand was an influential American graphic designer, celebrated for his iconic corporate logos such as IBM, UPS, and ABC. His minimalist approach and innovative visual communication helped shape the modern identity of major American brands. He continues to inspire generations of designers worldwide. Here are 20 of his quotes:

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

Paul Rand

Design is a way of life, a point of view. It involves the whole complex of visual communications: talent, creative ability, manual skill, and technical knowledge. Aesthetics and economics, technology and psychology are intrinsically related to the process.

Paul Rand

Asymmetric balance creates greater reader interest. Pleasure derived from observing asymmetrical arrangements lies partly in overcoming resistances, which, consciously or not, the spectator adjusts in his own mind.

Paul Rand

Pictures, abstract symbols, materials, and colors are among the ingredients with which a designer or engineer works. To design is to discover relationships and to make arrangements and rearrangements among these ingredients.

Paul Rand

If I was influenced by anything, it was architecture: structure having to do with logic. If you don't do it right, the whole thing is going to cave in. In a certain sense, you can carry that to graphic design. Fortunately, however, nobody is going to die if you do it wrong.

Paul Rand

Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.

Paul Rand

Everything is design. Everything!

Paul Rand

You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.

Paul Rand

So that is the design process or the creative process. Start with a problem, forget the problem, the problem reveals itself or the solution reveals itself and then you reevaulate it. This is what you are doing all the time.

Paul Rand

Design is the silent ambassador of your brand.

Paul Rand

A logo doesn't sell directly, it identifies.

Paul Rand

Design is everything. Everything!

Paul Rand

Any system that sees aesthetics as irrelevant, that separates the artist from his product, that fragments the work of the individual, or creates by committee, or makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.

Paul Rand

Artistic tricks divert from the effect that an artist endeavors to produce, and even excellent elements such as bullets, arrows, brackets, ornate initials, are at best superficial ornamentation unless logically employed.

Paul Rand

Graphic design, which evokes the symmetria of Vituvius, the dynamic symmetry of Hambidge, the asymmetry of Mondrian; which is a good gestalt, generated by intuition or by computer, by invention or by a system of coordinates, is not good design if it does not communicate.

Paul Rand

The reason I always insisted on signing my work was not to be subordinate to anyone.

Paul Rand

Providing, meaning to a mass of unrelated needs, ideas, words and pictures - it is the designer's job to select and fit this material together and make it interesting.

Paul Rand

I never did calligraphy... But handwriting is an entirely different kind of thing. It's part of the syndrome of modernism... It's part of that asceticism.

Paul Rand