Things I learned from Paul Rand: 19 – Prediction
As much of a brilliant designer, art director, and writer that he was, at least one of Paul Rand’s predictions doesn’t seem to be coming true.
A lot of printing
When Paul and I were working on his last book, From Lascaux to Brooklyn, we were relying heavily on his HP inkjet printer. I can’t recall how many times we printed every page over and over, until he was happy with what he saw. (He also often changed his mind later, even after being happy for a moment.)
I also recall working on poster designs and annual report covers including these with that printer:
One day, we were working on his book, I noticed him looking kind of mesmerized at how immediately he could see his designs getting printed on a small home printer. He then said something like, “Boy, one of these days, everybody is going to have these printers, and people don’t have to go to a bookstore to buy books.
Born in 1914
How he saw the future was really interesting, and it stuck with me. Now, we have to remember a couple of things here:
1) This was around 1994 – 1995. It was before Steve Jobs even had the idea of an iPhone. Amazon was just getting founded and it didn’t become public until few years later. People were regularly going to Barnes & Noble to buy books.
2) He lived his entire life through the era of printing and publishing revolution.
Paul was such a master of print. He dedicated his entire life to it. I think it was very difficult for him to imagine a decline of printing, and people reading books and news articles from notepads and smart phones.
Today, it will be pretty obvious how impractical it would be for us to print an entire book on our printer (with the cost and time for all the papers and ink and all). But if you think that thought is funny, I also do wonder what are we taking for granted today that would look and sound pretty silly in few decades?
