The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

More early Polaroid Product Displays, 1961

The J33 is hand-lettered and was quite a struggle for me. The electric display also required my hand-lettering, another chore which took a lot of time and concentration. There was a small electric motor hidden inside the display which completed a revolution in exactly ten seconds. Up until the introduction of this film, a full minute was required to fully process a Polaroid photo before it could be peeled apart from its paper negative. Click on image to enlarge.

Polaroid Starter Pack

This package is significant because it was the first venture into designing packaging for color film, which eventually became the ubiquitous Polaroid color stripes. The date had to be 1961, a year in advance of the introduction of Polacolor, the first Polaroid color film, which at that time was in roll-film format.

Early Polaroid Counter Card, 1961

This was quite effective as a counter card. It promoted a free picture along with a demo of a new camera, the first of the Electric Eye models. Green was not used for the bottom because the budget called for only a two-color job. A type drop-out of green would not be as legible as white against black, and what would I have done with the word free?