Flickr Friday: Rand Does Mencken
Yesterday, Christopher and I had a “business” meeting out in Scottsdale. On our way out there, we stopped at the local Goodwill. The ‘will in Scottsdale is a pretty interesting place, since it’s huge and tends to have some older stuff (78 RPM albums, pre-WWII era books) that one usually doesn’t find in thrifts. One such item I picked up is this paperback book, H. L. Mencken’s Prejudices: A Selection, with a cover designed by modern design icon Paul Rand. Although I’ve seen this cover reproduced in design books, one thing I didn’t notice until buying this copy is that Rand actually put his signature in the design. How unusual is that? Either Rand had a big ego or the book’s publisher thought his name would help sell books.
In looking through his work, I noticed that Rand signed his work as early as 1938. I suppose he was an early adopter of the concept of branding.
