Ford background reflection

A proposal
to Ford Motor Company
for a
new House Mark
by Paul Rand

1903 was the year the Wright Brothers successfully flew their airplane at Kitty Hawk.

It was also the year Henry Ford built his first motor car.

It was a time of startling contrasts. Dynamic technological progress vied with the elaborate and sentimental habits of a post-Victorian age. It was an era characterized by potted palms, velvet mohair, and handlebar moustaches.

It was natural, then, that the artistic conventions of the time should attach themselves to the new technology.

Ford background reflection

And it was inevitable that machine ornamentation, trademarks and signatures should draw inspiration from the art forms of the day.

Graphic identification was viewed more as artistic embellishment than functional necessity. Business logotypes had a kind of ‘raised pinky’ elegance inspired by a variety of 17th century Copperplate scripts, weighted and vulgarized to suit the needs of commerce.

Fanciful type