Before defining the IBM company’s graphic look in 1956, Paul Rand had never designed an entire corporate identity. The American graphic designer had created many trademarks for advertising clients, but IBM was his first foray into the conservative realm of big business communications, as well as a turning point for him. This manual, a facsimile reprinting of Rand's graphic standards, offers an in-depth look at the further evolution of IBM’s house style in the 1970s and ’80s, from logotypes, fonts, numerals, and type specimens, to highly detailed information on imprinting binders, signage, packaging, and related material. It shows how the graphic designer selects and fits together material to produce visual relationships.

Rand's guidlines for the “IBM Graphic Design Program” were documented and updated in a physical folder organized into various sections. This folder—known as an iconic, rare, and little documented object—is the core of this facsimile project. Undertaken in collaboration with the archive team at IBM New York, and with the Kandinsky Library of the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, the high-resolution scans reproduced in this volume are a celebration of Rand's legacy and of IBM's iconic visual identity.

With a preface by Steven Heller. 

Designed by Syndicat (Sacha Léopold and François Havegeer with the assistance of Francisco Gaspar and Kévin Lartaud)

Published by éditions Empire

Bilingual, text in English with French translation

292 pages (with booklet in French, 44 pages), CMYK + 9 Pantones, 9.25 × 11.6 inches 

ISBN: 979-10-95991-07-6