The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

Integrated Package Design, film and cameras, 1958

Many of the packages I designed, circa 1958. Click on image to enlarge photo.

Polaroid film package design, 1958

Some of the film boxes I designed in 1958. They include packaging for roll film as well as 4 x 5-inch film that was used in holders for view cameras. Professional photographers working for Polaroid such as Ansel Adams and Marie Cosindas used this format.

Now fast forward to 50 years later.

Sunday morning, 17 February 2008.

It's a grab shot from TV just taken an hour ago. That's the blog on the screen in the background. Below, my congenial interviewer and CBS Science and Technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg mentioned how simple my designs were and I responded "You know long it takes to do simple? About ten times longer than fast and dirty." The last two words were cut probably because fast and dirty is too much of an inside joke among designers and ad people to describe their frustration with clients who invariably want everything yesterday.

Anthony Laudato (scroll to image 07) was the production manager on the shoot. It was his phone call on last Wednesday that made it all happen.

Friday, 15 February 2008.

I spent yesterday, Valentines Day, getting myself up to the Harvard Business School, among all the banners promoting its 100th Anniversary, for a taping by CBS news relating to the future of the Polaroid name. After two hours of trying to remember to smile -- as requested by my dear wife -- the interview ended with my being awfully tired of listening to myself talk. Alas, the long-suffering crew of very considerate young men who had a Polaroid story to put together so they had to persist with their questions in order to cut and edit their story. Perhaps I'll learn tomorrow when the piece will air. The tentative date was to be Sunday morning the 17th but there was the ghastly multiple murder and suicide at that Northern Illinois University that might be a lot more newsworthy. So that's about all I can give you in the way of heads-up for now. More, later.

Polaroid camera packaging prototype, 1958

This was the package design prototype for all camera models that I developed in 1958.

Polaroid Package Design, Before and After

The photo below was my solution to getting Polaroid into some decent packaging with a chance of developing product identity and the "branding" we hear so much about today. Gray was retained only for continuity, the black end panels to subdue Kodak yellow that saturated every marketplace and had upstaged the drab over-all gray and soap bubbles of prior Polaroid packaging.

POLAROID was purposely set in caps to give a consumer help in identifying and perhaps even remembering the brand name. I took a lot of flak in meetings from resident MBAs who had read business guru Ernst Dichter, who had proclaimed from on high that black was a morbid color and should not be used in the marketplace*. Fortunately, Stan Calderwood overruled them. He could see the importance of fighting back against Eastman and how well the end panels would show up on television, where he had planned to spend some money. It must be remembered that television images were only black-and-white at the time.

_*It took only about ten years for black packaging to become very popular for photo products.

Photos by Mel Goldman Studio, Boston