Book review: Thoughts on design. This edition of the book has Rand’s…

This edition of the book has Rand’s original 1947 essays with modifications made for 1970 edition. As mentioned on the inside of the book’s front jacket — “Word for word and page for page, the text with its original fonts, typographical style, sources and footnotes, captions and prefaces, appears as it did in the original”.

This book is all about how to think like a designer or rather a “good” designer according to the author, Paul Rand; who was and is a towering figure in the design industry. This book is only 95 glossy pages thick with excerpts from Rand’s work done over decades from graphic posters, book/magazine covers, newspaper advertisements to label designs and logos of prominent companies like IBM, ABC, Westinghouse, UPS.

Paul Rand remains quite assertive about the idea of doing good design and doesn’t shy away to call out on shortcomings of design or designers. Like he asserts — “Graphic design… is not good design if it does not co-operate as an instrument in the service of communication.” He presents the fundamental aspects and participants in design or design process like beauty, utility, symbol, humour, typography, logo shapes, reader’s attention.