The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

Metafilter calls this work "The Apple® of its Day"

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The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977 in print

 

Click on image to enlarge it. I thought you might like to know that I've run another printing of The Branding of Polaroid. It's 180 pages 8.5 x 11 inches in size in black and white plus full color covers on coated stock with square "perfect" binding and it contains much more information than is here on the web log. There are five pages of photos of my studio workshop and another six of designs that influenced me.

You can buy the book by clicking on the link to Lulu, below.

Here's an unsolicited email I recently received from a professional colleague and buyer of the book:

Hi Paul,

I got your book and read it through last night.

Your philosophies about design are very much my own as well. It was incredible to read about how you and Mr. Calderwood were able to convince Polaroid to go with your simple and beautiful designs without forcing you to add copy and bursts and exclamation points.

As an often frustrated freelancer, I know very very very well the pressures of sales departments on us designers. Nearly every single commercial package I've ever designed has been bastardized in some way by these people.

I often make a "last stand," claiming to my clients that this type of thinking is fearful and even mildly condescending. And that, often subconsciously, the marketplace sees this type of over-hype as weak and pandering - not strong and confident. I point to your-era Polaroid and current-day Apple as prime examples that "less is more". Of course - almost every single time - their answer is "Well, we're not Polaroid/Apple and we need our [product] to "pop" off the shelves." At which point I tell them, laying on the sarcasm as thick as possible, that they should rig up a proximity sensor to a spring so that when a customer walks in front of it, it will pop.

I feel like my (our) points are even more true today. With any sort of information on any product at your fingertips via the Internet - most buyers are well-informed today and aren't looking to be sold-to. They're looking for some combination of price/performance/cache/need and know full well what their options are before entering a store.

So once again - cheers to you! Rest assured that many of us are carrying the "less is more" torch.

oh - by the way... I used to own one of those Tonka dumptrucks you picture in the book. I was pleasantly surprised to see that you did the logo. My brothers and I tried our damnedest to destroy that truck as we got older. Finally resorting to sitting in the bed, riding it down our street and bailing out before it crashed into something solid - like a rock or telephone pole or wall. We called that little game "Stuntman" and we never did destroy the truck completely. And the logo never totally came off either. Those things were BUILT, I tell ya.

The first Kodachrome package design

Somebody called my attention to an old Daily Kos post showing this, the first Kodak Kodachrome package design, which appeared about 30 years before my Polaroid Polacolor stripes. You probably don't know that when Eastman Kodak did their package design for their instant color film, they used color stripes on that package as well. This early packaging used sun's rays as a design device. Did the Japanese Rising Sun flag have any influence here?

35 mm. film was a by-product of color film used in movie making, created in effect by just snipping off strips and packaging it in little metal cans that went into the little yellow boxes.

The film cost $5 per roll in the late 1930s and had to be sent back to Rochester, New York for processing. If I recall, we all had to do that well into the 1970s. It was great film. I have perfectly good Kodachrome slides from 1957 that don't seem to have ever faded, unlike Kodak Ektachrome transparencies.

Kodachrome taken by me of my young wife in 1957.

Back to film box package design. It's been 40 years since my Polacolor designs. Have we made as much progress with film box packaging in this equivalent period of time?

A Random Map of The Branding of Polaroid Viewers

Courtesy, thanks and copyright © my.statcounter.com

Click on image to enlarge it.

Imagine. I'm being quoted!

Never in a million years would I believe that someone would quote a few words I said off the top of my head during the CBS News Polaroid interview, at 00:34 to be exact.

I don't know who to thank for this, but if you link to it and scroll down to quotes between Stephen Hawking and Ralph Waldo Emerson, there it is.

Paul Giambarba
You know long it takes to do simple? About ten times longer than fast and dirty.

Thanks, jf.backpackit.com wherever you are.