Paul Rand, Steve Jobs, and NeXT

Ask anyone on the street if they know who Paul Rand is and chances are they’ll be clueless. Now ask those same people if they can recognize the logo of such brands as ABC TV, IBM, UPS, Westinghouse, and Cummins and you’ll most certainly get better responses. That’s because these logos are part of Rand’s body of work.

Back in the mid 90s, Rand delivered a lecture on graphic design at MIT. Of particular interest was Steve Jobs’ reaction after Rand showed him the proposed NeXT logo:

Rand’s lecture drew much laughter from the audience. He told many stories about his different logomark presentations. One that particularly stuck out was the story for the NeXT computer logomark. Rand spoke about how as Steve Jobs turned each page of the presentation booklet Jobs’ smile seemed to grow bigger and bigger until finally he reached the last page and asked Rand, “Can I hug you?” and Rand replied “Sure.” He then commented, “You know you’ve made a good logomark when your client wants to hug you.”

A few days after the lecture, Rand passed away after being offered a position at the MIT Media Lab.

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