The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

Additional Kudos

Yahoo! Picks
Branding of Polaroid, 1957-1977
Creating a global brand out of thin air is like trying to harness the power of the tides. The marketplace can come crashing down on you, leaving you high and dry. This fascinating look back at how Polaroid forged its brand from 1957 to 1977 demonstrates the power of design, function, and intelligence. Illustrious designer Paul Giambarba, the man who began Polaroid's corporate image development in 1958, uses a weblog format to post his thoughts on different subjects of Polaroid brand history every day. Start at the beginning to see how a change in typeface made a huge difference, and then trace the history of Giambarba's colorful designs for the camera company. Or you can browse through the categories for a linear jaunt through Giambarba's time at Polaroid. Whatever path you choose, you'll be exposed to an utterly fascinating story. [July 24, 2004]

Coudal Partners
Great account by Paul Giambarba, head of Polaroid's identity and packaging at the time. These posts are full of smart thinking and interesting details, none of which seem out of date today.

Armchair Media
Paul Giambarba added some color to Polaroid's packaging, sent sales through the roof and secured his place in graphic design history. His tell-all blog goes behind the scenes and gives us a glimpse of a period in American graphic design where everything was in blooming color - even your TV.
-- posted by Stefan Kjartansson

Additional Kudos

As announced in the brilliant UK publication Grafik for August 2005, The Branding of Polaroid, 1957-1977 was published in book form.

For an Adobe Acrobat .pdf file of the article, click on this link: Download G131_Polaroid.pdf

Quotes from the article by John Weich, Grafik, August 2005 --

"Like Apple today, Polaroid supplemented its superior product with superior branding. . . ."

"In 1958 the company decided to hire freelance designer Paul Giambarba with a view to revitalizing the brand. This was the start of a relationship that was to last an amazing twenty-five years—Giambarba changed the face of Polaroid. He was responsible for creating packaging for Polaroid's Colorpacks, its SX-70, Square Shooter and Square Shooter 2 and the OneSteps. Giambarba's first initiative was to transform the logo into an uppercase News Gothic, and his second was to give the company's B&W film shelf distinction by way of black end panels, which were easily discernible in its TV spots (which, of course, were black and white).

"The first round of rebranding lent Polaroid some design credibility, but its second, more significant evolution elevated the brand to design icon. . . ."

Thank you, John and thank you, Grafik Editor Caroline Roberts. Grafik is the UK's only magazine dedicated entirely to showcasing the most exciting new graphic design work every month. It's also an essential tool for a designer in search of information and inspiration.

Stanford M. Calderwood, R.I.P.

An Unabashed Tribute to Stan Calderwood (1921-2003)

This is how I want to remember Stan. The year was 1973 and Stan had been three years away from Polaroid and his boss, Edwin H. Land. We were at my favorite Boston restaurant, Café Budapest. (Yes, I know the photo is out of focus but so probably was I.)

Upon leaving Polaroid Stan immediately took over as president of WGBH-TV in Boston. Within months he had consumated a fortuitous deal with the BBC to import Masterpiece Theatre; and then convinced Mobil Oil to fund the series. During the same brief period he arranged for Julia Child to introduce her series, The French Chef, to American television audiences. With this kind of phenomenal success, we were all sure that it wouldn’t be long before Stan Calderwood would be running the entire Public Broadcasting network.

Little did any of us know that before the summer’s end in 1970 that he would be embroiled in a no-win situation with activists in Boston’s black community. It was about the use of socially unacceptable profanity on prime time television.

The irony here is that PBS lost a good man who had done what he could to help recruit minorites, especially blacks, at Polaroid. Along with being insulted and jostled at confrontations, he began receiving death threats for cancelling the show. Responding to public pressure, WGBH reinstated Say Brother and called the prior cancellation a “mistake.” Stan quit in disgust.

In 1972 he joined a money management business controlled by Yale University and found his comfort level among kindred spirits in corporate management and the shepherding of institutional pension funds.

In 1981 he had accumulated enough personal wealth to buy control of Trinity Investment Management of Boston. By this time we rarely saw each other anymore, let alone socialize with our wives as we once did, so I have no first-hand knowledge of him or Norma Jean in the last two decades of his life.

I choose to remember Stan the cowboy from Chugwater, Wyoming, via Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and Boulder, Colorado. I’m sure he would prefer to be remembered as a Harvard Fellow and Brahmin benefactor who, with Norma Jean, has endowed more University chairs and museums than any of his philanthropic contemporaries.

Finally, it's my prejudiced opinion that if Edwin Land had not insisted that his successor be a fellow engineer and had encouraged and groomed Stan to run the company upon his retirement, Polaroid would never gone belly up into Chapter 11 as it did.

Stan departed this life on 10 May 2003 at Massachusetts General Hospital, where, typically, he was a significant benefactor.

Rest in Peace, Big Spender from Chugwater.

Peter C. Wensberg

Peter spent 24 years at Polaroid directing U.S. marketing and communications during which time he was appointed Executive Vice President. He left the company two months after Edwin Land retired in 1982. He then joined Warner Communications as president of Atari Tel, a division of Atari. Since 1987 he has been a consultant and writer, author of “Land’s Polaroid,” and a novel, “The Last Bastion.” He departed this life in November of 2007 after a brief illness.

Bill Field

Bill left Polaroid as Design Director in 1970 to return to his native Santa Fe, New Mexico to start his own shop, William Field Design. He was recently appointed Director of the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, Santa Fe’s newest museum, which opened on 21 July 2002, and is the first of its kind to celebrate the rich cultural life of Spanish New Mexico. Click on http://www.spanishcolonial.org

Paul Giambarba

And then there’s me. The photo was taken in 1970 by my wife in San Gimigniano, Italy, one of its picturesque towers reflected in the sunglass lenses. Yes, I liked to smoke those little Dutch Ritmeesters. Those were the days.

I chose not to be a Polaroid employee because I had already enjoyed the freedom of freelance life for ten years before I met up with Stan Calderwood. He delighted in chiding me with, “Gee-yam, you’re just not made for corporate life!” whenever I complained–and it was often. He was right. I did a lot of travelling that was not business travel, and it was an education I would recommend to any young designer.

In the years 1960 through 1963 I built myself a home and a studio on Cape Cod, fishing and swimming whenever my work load and weather permitted. I had the great experience of being with my wife and watching my children grow without the lost hours of commuting and working elsewhere but home. I attended meetings in Cambridge only when necessary. After expat adventures in Switzerland and Italy and nine years of publishing in Northern California I returned to Cape Cod where I court a similar muse of these Branding of Polaroid years.