Things I learned from Paul Rand: 22 – Solutions
When Paul Rand hired me, he had me work on all sort of things: Computer design assistance for his last book From Lascaux to Brooklyn, as well as posters and logos for clients like UCLA, Cummins Engine Company, and Accent International. He also had me organize his archives, including his old posters and prints. He even had me help his drive his wife around when she had a bunion surgery, or raking the leafs in his huge backyard.
But when his book was getting close to being finalized, I think he felt like he was going to run out of things for me to work on, he got me a job at Ogilvy & Mather (now just Ogilvy) to work in their brand new digital department.
However, even after I got a full-time job at Ogilvy, he still had me come over to his house to help him with his book and other files, so I almost had two jobs during that time.
O&M
Ogilvy & Mather, who also called themselves O&M at the time, was burning red-hot. The famous agency just won the $2 billion global IBM advertising account, and they just launched a huge advertising campaign, with the tagline “Solutions for a small planet.” (You can watch the now nostalgic tv commercials here.)
“Solutions for a small planet”
One time, a group of people working on IBM Trade Show event approached us in our department, asking for a logo that worked with the theme, “Solutions for a small planet.” After several sketches and ideation, I thought I had a pretty cool idea, and was working on something that looked like this:
The master’s comment
As mentioned above, I was also still working for Paul at the time. I was at his house, probably after hours one evening, helping him update some of the pages in his book design, he asked me what I was working on at Ogilvy. I happened to have a printout of the design. He looked at it, and immediately asked me, why aren’t you using the IBM logo? I was a little confused at first, but what he meant was, why was the bulb socket realistic, and not graphic? Especially when it’s supposed to relate to his famous IBM logo. So I tried it the next day.
He was right
I felt like I was had. Bummed that he made it look so easy to make things better. At the same time, there was also a sense of awe. Not only did the updated logo associate better with the IBM brand look, it also worked much smaller.
I think both the designers and the clients oversee this aspect quite often. We get caught up with what is “realistic” or truer to our preconceived notion of what something is supposed to look like, and underestimate the power of abstraction. Something I definitely learned.
I do remember Paul looked satisfied when he saw the updated version. Amazing how Ogilvy was getting free creative direction work from Paul Rand at the time. (Although, I think Paul more than got paid when he worked on USSB and the notorious Enron project through them.)