Paul Rand

I mean, I'm not in design, but the nostalgia for that kind of thinking about that kind of design.

Like I just came across an old Rand book, like a Paul Rand book.

And it's just so tactile and like the design element is so considered.

And I feel like that's all been kind of exploded into this.

The designers that we grew up and worshiped understood this.

I mean, Paul Rand literally called design a problem-solving activity, and Massimo Vignelli talked about understanding the problem before finding the solution.

These guys, they weren't famous because they knew how to push pixels better than everybody else.

The making was the result of the thinking, and yet we spent thirty years trying to fight to protect the making while the thinking was quietly walking out the back door.

Yeah.

Every once in a while, I'll dust off the Paul Rand books or go down the rabbit hole of that kind of design from the 60s, which I think is just amazing.

Oh, completely.

I agree

And so one of the first things that Steve does is he sets out to craft a logo.

So he only wants the best logo from the best graphic designer in the country, a man named Paul Rand.

And so Steve approaches Paul Rand and says, "I want you to give me the best logo you can." And Paul Rand's response is, "You'll pay me $100,000 for the logo, you only get one shot, and you can't change your mind.

That's that."

Whether you use the logo or not, which...

Here's a few things that I designed over the years, and it's funny because this was really a north star for the Macintosh group, but when I reread it in the last couple of days, it just kind of reminded me of AI and so many things that are being developed now.

And Paul Rand is a celebrated graphic designer, no longer with us, who did the UPS logo and IBM logo and so many images that have persisted.

And I was lucky to work with him, and something he told me was, "Always focus on making things meaningful and memorable." And I think the heart of that is have a good idea, and then the form will follow.

Um, I was a total art major, didn't know anything about computers, and was lucky enough to work at Apple on the Macintosh as the Macintosh artist.

And now I wanted to share some advice that I've been given by people that I met.

Not, it's not a Google project, um, and I'm always looking to add to it, so I welcome any, any good advice that you wanna send along, um, by people that really influenced me.

And this Paul Rand I mentioned earlier, um, just a terrific designer who started working, I think, for magazines when he was around 15.

And he said that, um, he was kind of like, "All this stuff with all these new fonts, it's like you don't need that many..." He, he was kind of brusque.

And I actually remember in my senior year, there was also a graphic design class.

I'll be honest, I actually didn't enjoy it very much because I felt like it was studying more and, you know, like seeing examples and like Paul Rand and things like that, which is amazing.

But at that age, you're just kind of like...

The fine art approach where you're like, I'm just going to do what I want.