Ogilvy France has surprised us this week with a branded advertising campaign for IBM which literally drinks from the original sources of the company's visual communication. That is to say, from Paul Rand.
The New York designer, one of the fathers of graphic design today, was the creator of the IBM logo; if you have ever wondered why those white lines that form the letters IBM, the answer is simple, Rand was based on the rows of a keyboard. But Rand is better known than for his logos, for his work as an advertiser, and one of his most recognized works was the famous ad/poster he designed for IBM in which with simple strokes and simple shapes he "insinuated" the IBM logo by writing only the final M.
Replacing the I he drew a simple eye, while the B was replaced by a bee: eye, bee, M. For Westinghouse (who invented computer-controlled traffic lights) he created a similar ad, with three large circles one below the other visually forming a traffic light, then the text of the ad and finally, in line with the top three colored circles, the logo, also circular, of Westinghouse (which he also created, by the way).
As a tribute to Rand's simple way of communicating, the trinomial formed by Noma Bar, Tanya Holbrook and Sid Tomkins, from Ogilvy Paris, have created 11 illustrations for IBM in a brand campaign that wants to reflect how the technology developed by the American technology giant makes life easier for people in different areas, such as education, security or transportation, all over the world.
Excellent work by this Ogilvy team that will surely win many awards in the coming months for its initiative to "rescue" the original way in which IBM began to make itself known to the general public, its first visual communication campaigns by the hand of the great Paul Rand.
Agency: Ogilvy, Paris, France
Creative Director: Susan Westre
Art Director: Ginevra Capece
Copywriter: Fergus O'Hare
Graphic Design: Noma Bar
Illustration: Tanya Holbrook
Typography: Sid Tomkins
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