The first impression you make is a lasting impression.
Not in Polaroid's case. It took us 20 years to build an image and just a few years for some bozos to tear it down. Now, 32 years later, you can assess the impression that's left while I offer some examples of what led up to it.
Click on images to enlarge them.
(The black Pronto!S box and the film boxes are my designs.)
The diagonal stripes of the hardware do not identify which film the hardware uses. So why diagonal stripes unless they have a specific meaning? They're gratuitous. Considering all the other marketing problems that exist -- who needs gratuitous?
Here we see diagonal stripes used to identify both a 2000 line of camera models, and a Super Clincher, as well as a carrying case. The typeface for 2000 is disturbing and the type for Super Clincher is too weak.
This is what happens when an art director designed packages. The top flap copy is upside down. Not just once, but on all of them. I offered my services and was rebuffed. Lesson to be learned: a good manager stays in the dugout and runs the team. He doesn't try to pitch.
I can only guess how many boxes were printed before someone noticed that they opened the wrong way.
This package has my stripes and POLAROID in News Gothic, but it needs a lot more, as in -- how about a design? There's no tension, no focus. Anyone can fry an egg by dropping one into a pan but to make a souflée or a good omelet takes skill.
It seemed to me that Polaroid International's art director couldn't resist changing my product and corporate identity solutions. Flanking my film boxes is a display that challenges the traditional Polaroid and veers off on a tangent.
These two examples show just how far this same guy went in negating the unique design that Bill Field did for the original Swinger identity (scroll two down). Directly below is an enlargement of the shelf panel of the package on the left, where it is amost impossible to read that it contains a Super Colour Swinger III. Next to it, he went haywire with a package for the EE66.
The Polaroid Swinger, design by Bill Field, who could art direct and design at the same time.
More work by Polaroid International's art director. I read EE66 as EEGG. It's also bad lettering for a design that looks similar to something you might see on the wall of an optometrist.
I have no idea what this is all about, except that it's an end panel for an EE66 hardware package.
This was all happening circa 1978 when anyone of consequence had left. Then, year after year, mindlessness destroyed all that Stan Calderwood, Peter Wensberg, Bill Field and I had achieved.
The Polaroid Blues
There was this inside joke that began in the Calderwood days, 1958 or thereabouts, whereby one of the MBAs -- and it didn't matter if they were from Harvard or MIT, or Wharton, or Tuck -- would come into a meeting where I would be showing off my package designs, and they would quote Ernst Dichter about black being a morbid color. Yes, I know, I mentioned that before. Well, once they realized that this was the way it was going to be with black end panels, one of them would invariably come up with the non sequitur that his wife, in point of fact, likes blue. Not indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, turquoise, just blue. Thereafter, every time things got hairy, someone would break up an argument with "you know, my wife likes blue," and peace was restored.
So, you can imagine my chagrin when, after 25 years of the designs you've seen elsewhere here, and within months of my being sent into exile, various deep tints of blue became the background for all of Polaroid's hardware and film packaging. I had never realized how insidious this had become until just yesterday when I began searching on the Internet and found the examples which follow.
This is what happened when Polaroid management in its wisdom decided that a logo would solve all of their problems. They got rid of that freelance designer who did what he called product identity, and let their in-house art department do it all with the logo at the top, or, uh, you know, somewhere, and those numbers, which meant so much to all of them.
I've recently forced myself to look into what Polaroid had been doing after I was let go, and it's quite a shock to see just how clever management was and the fun they had playing with package design as if it were a hobby like finger painting. What better place to find examples of their skills than by surfing eBay for photos of the products they introduced. So, with thanks to the good folks at eBay -- here are just a few of the many, many.
These are from Polaroid UK
Love that blue and orange, chaps. Well done.
Somebody saved some big bucks on this box printing.
There was even a Barbie Polaroid camera.
Once again, my thanks to eBay for the educational use of these photos.
