The New York School

Americans had created new forms and concepts to the European designs in the 1940s, the difference between the European design and American design are as follows, American designers sought for: pragmatic, intuitive and less formality in its approach to organizing space, whilst the European design was theoretical and highly structured. New York City served as cultural incubator in the middle of the twentieth century, it nurtured creativity.

Paul Rand was one of the Pioneers who developed the American approach to modern design, when he was just twenty-three years old; he began the phase of his designing career as a promotional and editorial designer for the magazines Apparel arts, Ken, coronet and others.  He broke the traditional American publication of design, his early designs were influenced by Klee, Kandinsky and the cubists, he invented shapes, both symbolic and expressive, as a visual communication tool, he manipulated visual form.

 In addition to his skillful analysis of communications content, reducing it to a symbolic essence without making it look dull, he was a very highly influential designer and was still at a very young age. Rand understood the values of ordinary, universally understood signs and symbols as means of translating ideas into communication, in order to engage the audience and memorably communicate with them he knew that the designers needed to rearrange and juxtapose the signs and symbols. He had a good sense of contrast, red against green, organic shapes against geometric type, photographic tone against flat colour and textural pattern of type against white, he also created new ideas and techniques. 

Paul Rand had influenced many designers another leading artist at the time was Saul Bass, Saul Bass created many title sequences, the new design started moving from New York and made itself to Los Angeles thanks to Saul Bass who in the 1950 opened a studio, Bass usually used a single image to dominate his designs, he was commissioned by Otto Preminger a film director to create graphic design for his films, for examples: logos, posters, advertising and animated film title sequences. He made the title sequence of “The man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder and Psycho.

Reference

Art of the title, Saul Bass[online] ,   available :http://www.artofthetitle.com/designer/saul-bass/ [accessed 11^th December 2013]

Moda 2013, Paul Rand: Defining design [online], available at: http://www.museumofdesign.org/2013/02/paul-rand-defining-design/ [accessed 11^th December 2013]

Alex Bigman  2012, 4 principles by Paul Rand that may surprise you [online] available at: http://99designs.com/designer-blog/2012/09/04/4-principles-by-paul-rand-that-may-surprise-you/ [accessed 11^th December 2013]

Meggs P. B. and Purvis A. W. 1998. 5th Edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons , Inc.