Art Paul

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Art (Arthur) Paul (b. January 18, 1925 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American graphics designer and the designer of the Playboy bunny logo.

Art Paul studied at the Art Institute of Chicago (1940-1943) and after WWII service in the Air Corps attended the Institute of Design, "Chicago's Bauhus", at the [Illinois Institute of Technology](1946-1950). He was working as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator when in 1953 he was contacted by Playboy founder Hugh Hefner who needed an art director for a magazine he was developing. Together, they created the first issue of Playboy, with Paul creating the look of the magazine, and continuing to design and art-direct it for nearly thirty years. The magazine's famous rabbit-head logo was developed by Paul during his work on Playboy's first issues.

In 1978, Paul was elected a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale. The Institute of Design, IIT, honored him with its professional achievement award in 1983, and in 1986 he was elected to the Hall of Fame of the Art Directors Club of New York. Two books have been published on Paul's work: VISION:ART PAUL was published in Japan, and THE ART OF PLAYBOY, published by Alfred van der Marck, surveys many years of his art direction at Playboy. He organized many years of Playboy illustrations and special projects he'd directed into an exhibition which toured the US, Europe, and Asia. The exhibition included artists such as Andy Warhol, Larry Rivers, Salvador Dali, Leroy Neiman, James Rosenquist, and Tom Wesselman.

During Paul's years at Playboy, the magazine won hundreds of awards for excellence in graphic design and illustration. Paul has been credited for helping create a revolution in illustration (what Print Magazine called the "illustration liberation movement") by insisting that graphic design and illustration need not be "low" arts but could, when approached with integrity and emotional depth, and in a spirit of experimentation, be as "high" an art as any. With illustration work, he supported the early careers of many fine artists, such as Chicago's Ed Paschke.

After leaving Playboy, Paul did graphic design, posters, and logos for a number of clients in magazines, advertising, television and film. For the last ten years he has concentrated primarily on drawing and painting, exhibiting most recently at the Chicago Cultural Center and at Columbia College in Chicago. He has served on boards of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, the Association of Art Curators in Chicago, and the Illinois Summer School of the Arts. At present he is working on two books of his drawings. Paul currently lives in Chicago.Institute of Design alumni