Rudolph de Harak, also Rudy de Harak (April 10, 1924 – April 24, 2002), was an American graphic designer. De Harak was notable as a designer who covered a broad spectrum of applications with a distinctly modernist aesthetic. He was also influential as a professor of design.

Career

De Harak was born in Culver City, California

Culver City, California

Culver City is a city in western Los Angeles County, California. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 38,883, up from 38,816 at the 2000 census. It is mostly surrounded by the city of Los Angeles, but also shares a border with unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. Culver...

. After serving in World War II, de Harak was influenced by two lectures given by Will Burtin

Will Burtin

Will Burtin was a graphic designer and art director for Fortune Magazine. He designed for Union Carbide, Eastman Kodak, The Smithsonian, and Upjohn. In 1971, he received a gold medal from AIGA...

 and György Kepes

György Kepes

György Kepes was a Hungarian-born painter, designer, educator and art theorist. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus in Chicago...

 which compelled him to pursue graphic design. Along with Saul Bass

Saul Bass

Saul Bass was a Jewish-American graphic designer and filmmaker, best known for his design of motion picture title sequences....

, Alvin Lustig

Alvin Lustig

Alvin Lustig was an American graphic designer and typeface designer. He studied at Los Angeles City College, Art Center, and independently with Frank Lloyd Wright and Jean Charlot. He began designing for books in 1937. In 1944 he became Director of Visual Research for Look Magazine. He also...

 and others, de Harak helped found the Los Angeles Society for Contemporary Designers before he moved to New York to become art director for Seventeen

Seventeen (magazine)

Seventeen is an American magazine for teenagers. It was first published in September 1944 by Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications. News Corporation bought Triangle in 1988, and sold Seventeen to K-III Communications in 1991. Primedia sold the magazine to Hearst in 2003. It is still in the...

for just 18 months . At the same time, de Harak drew illustrations for Esquire

Esquire (magazine)

Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

and soon began his long tenure in teaching . De Harak served "as the Frank Stanton Professor of Design, for a quarter century at the Cooper Union

Cooper Union

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...

, and visiting professor at Yale

YALE

RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...

, Alfred University

Alfred University

Alfred University is a small, comprehensive university in the Village of Alfred in Western New York, USA, an hour and a half south of Rochester and two hours southeast of Buffalo. Alfred has an undergraduate population of around 2,000, and approximately 300 graduate students...

, Parsons

Parsons The New School for Design

Parsons The New School For Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is the art and design college of The New School university. It is located in New York City's Greenwich Village, and has produced artists and designers such as Marc Jacobs, Dean and Dan Caten, Norman Rockwell, Donna Karan, Jane...

, Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 and other schools."

De Harak is a member of the 1989 Hall of Fame of the Art Directors Club . He was the recipient of a 1992 AIGA Medal.