Thoughts on Design

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Paul Rand

Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1970 (revised); originally published 1947 (Wittenborn), English

Nonfiction, Graphic Design

8.5 x 10.75 inches, hardcover, 164 pages, 94 halftone illustrations and 8 color plates

ISBN: 9780289798362

From the Publisher (1947). Rand is aware of the complexity of the designer's function: he stresses this again and again. He has no patience with slickness, with facility; he is a severe critic of the hackneyed and the insincere. All this is dead wood to be cleared away.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a pioneer typographer, photographer, and designer of the modern movement and a master at the Bauhaus in Weimar, may have come closest to defining the Rand style when he said Paul Rand was “an idealist and a realist using the language of the poet and the businessman. He thinks in terms of need and function. He is able to analyze his problems, but his fantasy is boundless.”

On list of 9 Books from the Good Design Movement.

Both the 1947 and 1970 editions are out of print. A reprint of the 1970 edition of Thoughts on Design with a new foreword by Michael Bierut will be released August 19, 2014 by Chronicle Books.

On 3 book lists

Michael Bierut

On Michael Bierut’s Book List

His first book and still the most concise and accessible.

Tom Geismar

On Tom Geismar’s Book List

The first Rand book, and still the best.

George Lois

On George Lois’s Book List

The book that propelled me through the High School of Music and Art.

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