31 August, 2014

Paul Rand - From Lascaux to Brooklyn

From Lascaux to Brooklyn was published in 1996, the year Paul Rand passed away. Here's a short snippet from the jacket description:

In this lively and visually arresting book, Rand awakens readers to the lessons of the cave paintings of Lascaux – that art is an intuitive, autonomous, and timeless activity – and he shows how this is conveyed in works of art [...] all of which are aestheticially pleasing no matter what their era, place, purpose, style or genre.

The format of the book is like most of his other books: Short texts with lots of examples of his own work.

I enjoy Rand's work because it balances a very freehand and artistic process with a more systematic and functional design approach. He found freedom within his own constraints in a way that very few designers has managed to do, and even though his own work has a very specific style, this book – with its thoughts on design principles as a foundation for all art forms – can be an inspiration to anyone looking to apply a system to their own artistic process.