The legendary Paul Rand is celebrated in a great-looking new exhibition

Designs that transcend time, the fripperies of fashion and taste and the brand they’re attached to are ones that ensure their place in the canon; and one man who created such work is Paul Rand.

The graphic designer is now being celebrated in a new show opening at the end of the month at The Museum of the City of New York entitled Everything in Design, which will showcase the breadth of Paul’s work, from magazine covers for the likes of Idea to his famed IBM rebrand. It’ll span his entire career, starting with his 1930s work designing magazine covers including those for Apparel Arts and Direction, which City Museum reckons “introduced European modernism into American graphic design.”

Paul’s advertising career work is covered in the Transforming Madison Avenue section, which traces his career at William H. Weintraub during the 1940s and early 50s, when he honed his style of blending text, imagery and photography. Some of our favourite work though is Paul’s book covers. There’s a joyfulness to the imagery, combining simplicity, geometric shapes and skilfully-placed text composed to perfection.

Donald Albrecht, the Museum of the City of New York’s Curator of Architecture and Design, says: “Paul Rand once said ‘The problem of the artist is to defamiliarise the ordinary’ and it’s a motto he took risks with throughout his career.

“For example, he would pair images of radically different scale or media, unusual colour combinations, and bold typefaces with delicate hand lettering. The result would be a visually stimulating, memorable, problem-solving approach to design.”

Everything is Design: The Work of Paul Rand is at the Museum of the City of New York from 25 February to 19 July.