Swipe File – Paul Rand gets Jacked

Swipe File – Paul Rand gets Jacked

There used to be a great feature in the magazine The Comics Journal called the swipe file, where a classic piece of comic art was held up next to a more recent piece that usually resembled it a bit too much to be mere coincidence. The best know modern version is, of course, the You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice, But We Did… blog. Here’s a classic I stumbled across today while digging through a library sale trying to complete my collections of John Le Carre novels and Speedball Pen calligraphy manuals:

On the left we have: Paul Rand‘s cover to Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind from Vintage, 1953

On the right is: Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad: A Pseudoclassical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition by Arthur L. Kopit, A Spotlight Dramabook, 1960. Cover design by Alex Tsao.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions…

1 Comment

  • Robert Boyd Posted February 21, 2011 2:13 pm

    As the originator of “Swipe File” (really! that and “Minimalism” were my two enduring contributions to the Journal), I have to say that Paul Rand is surely among the most swiped designers in history. Not only specific images like this (good catch, by the way), but his whole style.

Comments are closed.