The Branding of Polaroid, 1957 - 1977

A few words on the subject of instant photography

I was asked just the other day to contribute a thought or two about Polaroid instant photography.

No wordsmith, I, this is what I came up with.

For your amusement, then --

Instant photography is a gift. It didn't exist before Edwin Land made it happen. He made a lot of people happy, especially his young daughter, who asked him to invent the camera one sunny day in December of 1943 when he and his family were vacationing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. You all know the story, it's been rewritten thousands of times. 

Now with the advantage of hindsight I think the camera should have been named the Jennifer. 

Land made lots of other people happy and rich, his original investors and his corporate officers, some of his managers, but mostly young gun-slingers as they were called on Wall Street at that time. 

Land made a lot of young lovers happy photographing each other in poses they would have been reluctant to expose on conventional film left off for processing at the corner drugstore. I met a young writer who built a novel around that theme. He assured me that it was the key to Polaroid's success. I failed to convince him that instant film was a boon to real estate agents and insurance adjusters.

A much younger me at 119 Tech Square in August of 1970. Photo by John Wolbarst testing Polaroid Type 87, a coater-less black-and-white film, if memory serves me. 

Professional photographers used Polaroid black-and-white film to check their lighting long before the invention of Polaroid backs for their studio cameras. I can attest to the use of Polaroid photos by my fellow illustrators who saved time and the meager funds available to them for conventional photography of models. An instant Polaroid photo was often projected to be drawn over for a final illustration, after correcting for shortening and parallax problems.

Polaroid instant photography was a great boon to all concerned. It was only slightly more expensive than conventional wet-chemistry processing, and you could continue shooting until you got what you wanted, something that had never been possible before 1949.

That's the good news. We all know the bad news of 2008.

Since then, a glimmer of hope has emerged with Impossible Gmbh of Vienna, Enschede, and New York. Florian Kaps and André Bosman are perfecting a totally new version of instant analog film. It won't replace digital film but it will go a long way in bringing back to life one of the most impressive achievements of the last century.

 

Gone in Sixty Seconds

Click on image to enlarge it.

Thanks to Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners excellent and well-read web log, who consistently has had nice things to say about this web log, I linked to the excellent piece by Phil Patton on the AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) web site.

This is what Jim had to say:

"...essentially a one-of-a-kind object, like an oil painting or daguerreotype." Gone in Sixty Seconds, an excellent essay by Phil Patton for AIGA, on the legacy of Polaroid. jc-today

Speaking of Polaroid, pretty much any excuse will do for a relink to The Branding of Polaroid, Paul Giambarba's first-hand account of the company's corporate image and product identity development. Required reading. jc-today

16: Is Graphic Design Art or Industrial Waste?

I don’t know if graphic design is art, but I do know that it can be simply one more form of industrial waste. And, like any reasonable person, I’m against further pollution of our environment.

With all the lip service that is paid to originality and “doing one’s own thing,” it is hard to explain the periodic avalanches of manneristic and “trendy” material that may initially have had some charm but which is soon lost in indistinguishable and pervasive sameness.

The worst pollutants are the mindless displays of material that do not even approach this “me, too” level. They bring visual discomfort to our everyday lives and one endures them like the noise and foul air. One has only to try to fill a shopping list in a supermarket or attempt to get from one part of a major U.S. city to another to experience the chaos that is contemporary packaging, promotional material, and signage.

My own personal philosophy is that I should like to make every day as good as it can be, because each opportunity passed by is lost forever. Accordingly, I try to make each design assignment something more than just another job. I get deeply involved in the problem and I utilize all the time that I can to arrive at the best possible solution because I know I will ultimately reject much of what I do.

I believe in working intuitively. This requires many thumbnail sketches and rough layouts but the extra work has a great reward: the problem takes on another dimension, has a life of its own, so to speak, and good things happen that never would have without the effort to bring them forth out of the subconscious.

From an essay in IDEA magazine #120 (Tokyo) for September 1973