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Joe Switzer who worked in advertising as a package designer on Madison Avenue was the first to hire Rand. Switzer paid Rand $10.00 a week, his responsibilities included newspaper ads for Squibb Pharmaceutical Company and Hormel Meats.

In 1936, at just 21 years of age, he was hired to lay out an anniversary issue of Apparel Arts, a men's fashion magazine published by the Esquire-Coronet magazines. His covers were unlike any on the news stand. A year latter he was offered the job of art director of the New York office of Esquire-Coronet. He refused, insisting that he wasn't ready. However a year latter he accepted the responsibilities for a special section in Esquire - primarily fashion.

In 1938 he was offered creative freedom to design covers for Direction, a cultural magazine with an anti-fascist bias. He did photography on a copy camera at the engravers plant and used handwriting instead of type to save money. This cover art would prove to be an important step in the development of the "Rand look".

“Can you think of anybody before 1920 who did anything that was remotely abstract
in this country in terms of graphic design?”