Arthur Paul

As Playboy Magazine’s founding art director, Art Paul used his three decades there to revolutionize illustration. It’s said that no magazine art director has commissioned more illustrators, persuaded more artists to illustrate (Warhol, Dali, and Rosenquist among them) or won more honors in giving illustration the daring and integrity of fine art. Among artists and designers Art has mentored or worked with he’s an unusually beloved and revered father figure.

But Art is unique also in having been not just an art director and graphic designer (in particular of Playboy’s rabbit logo), but also an illustrator, fine artist, curator, writer, and composer.  And there’s been a surge of interest just now in both his past and present, with recent talks, books, and a documentary on him, exhibits of his art, and performances of his writing and music.  At 91, he’s now putting his drawings and writings into book form, with projects focused on race, aging, animals, and graphic whimsy.

Marketer: The first playboy cover and use of the playboy logo

"The first cover of Playboy, since there was no advertising to announce the magazine, had to stand out on the newsstands. Magazine distributors insisted white covers could not be sold, so there were none, and so I made our cover white. Advertisers insisted covers be crowded with plugs of type, so I used very few. Photographers promoted an expression, on models and celebrities, of arrogant distain, but our smiling Marilyn Monroe was waving in the photo we bought of her in a ticker-tape parade. I painted the background out and integrated our few cover plugs into the design as 'confetti' surrounding Marilyn. Amid the type-cluttered, color-clogged, smug 'sophistication' of the other covers, this strategy worked.

"As a logo needs the broadest possible use to promote its recognition, I began using ours wherever possible. To familiarize our readers with it, I used it in particular in some way on every cover, making this into a game of sorts - and who can resist a game? At first it was sometimes the rabbit 'mascot,' but increasingly the bunny logo. Throughout the 29 years I was there, we kept our covers graphically daring and mentally engaging but approachable, a sign that we did not take ourselves too seriously - and key to this sense of playfulness and engagement was this game of integrating the logo into each cover design.

"Proof this worked was the steady stream of letters from readers with snapshots of where else they'd found the bunny logo: in clouds, x-rays, shadows - everywhere imaginable. Finally, we received a letter from California with nothing on the envelope but the logo. Ultimate proof that the log's spirit of playfulness was really taken to heart." –Art Paul