14 April 15

A Master of Design and a Good Lunch
Paul Rand at the Museum of the City of New York
and The East Pole 

The Upper East Side has so many exciting museums like the Metropolitan, Guggenheim, Cooper Hewitt — they’re all worth a visit. I wanted to visit the Museum of the City of New York to see the exhibition “Everything is Design: the work of Paul Rand.”

I took the No. 2 train (red line) to 110th Street in Harlem and walked through Central Park to the Museum on 103th street. It’s very nice up on the northern edge of Central Park, by the Harlem Meer, as it is much more quiet than some of the more well-traversed areas of the park.

The museum is a beautiful place to visit. I love the light art and the movie telling the four-hundred year-long story of New York in twenty minutes. It’s my third time there, but each time is awesome.

A friend of Brian’s, London-born designer Martin Perrin, designed the Paul Rand show. He and the curator divided Rand’s work into four sections: advertising, book covers and magazines, corporate identity, and design education; it was all very informative and well-designed. Brian donated several books and items of memorabilia to the exhibit as Paul Rand has been important to him since his early days as a designer. 

Paul Rand was America’s most important and influential graphic designer, reinventing the role of the art director in advertising and bringing the ideas and ideology of European design to the US. He is the man behind the CBS, IBM and original UPS logos, among others. He grew up in a strict Orthodox Jewish family, with the expectations of a future in the family business, and his dad was not fond of his decision to become a creative. His real name was Peretz Rosenbaum but he changed it to Paul Rand to avoid the anti-Semitism endemic to the early days of Madison Avenue. 

This day called for a nice lunch. For a long time I have wanted to eat at The East Pole on 65th Street but it’s not so often I’m in the neighborhood. That was a good choice that I can really recommend. The East Pole has the same owner as The Fat Radish and has the same cool ambience but with a theme of an expedition across the vast oceans.

Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave, New York, NY 10029
mcny.org

The East Pole Kitchen and Bar, 133 E 65th St, New York, NY 10065
theeastpolenyc.com/home/