Things I learned from Paul Rand: 20 – Henryk Tomaszewski
When Paul Rand was still alive, I think a lot of people were under the impression he was rather arrogant. However, I’ve had the opportunity to see another side of him. For example, I once asked him if he thought he was, indeed, the best like a lot of people touted him to be. Without hesitation, he answered there’s a lot of people better than him.
One artist he held in high regard was Henryk Tomaszewski. Tomaszewski was a Polish artist, largely known for his poster designs.
Conversations with Paul Rand
In a short documentary titled Conversations with Paul Rand by Preston McClanahan (who also happened to be my graphic design professor at RISD), you can get a glimpse of Paul Rand’s office where he had this poster prominently displayed. (Click here for the exact part of this video I’m talking about.)
As awful as it gets
In the video, while pointing at the CYRK poster above, he asks a group of visiting design students, “Can you imagine something like this? This is for circus. You know those posters in America? You have these two elephants looking at each other? I mean, this is about as bad as you can get. I mean, it’s really awful!”
Very very bright
Paul continues in the video, recommending, “You should look at this guy’s work. Tomaszewski (pronounced tom-a-SHEV-ski). He’s very very bright.”
So let’s do look at this guy’s work:
Father of Polish Poster School
Tomaszewski is also known as the Polish Poster School. He was a professor at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts from 1952 until 1985, influencing international poster designers.
Although a little different in style, I think you can feel a similar spirit to his work that you can get from Paul’s work, especially the earlier work. Paul himself wasn’t a fan of representational art, in the likes of Norman Rockwell. Paul thought those type of work was boring and predictable. He preferred more expressive abstract style, with typography.
Here are some more of Tomaszewski’s work. Enjoy:
