Walter Landor
Portrait of a pioneer
Walter Landor, the son of prominent German architect
Fritz Landauer, was born in Munich on July 9, 1913. Young Walter
was greatly influenced by the Bauhaus and Werkbund design movements
flourishing in Germany at that time, as well as by his father. At
the age of 18, he had already recognized the powerful potential of
design to affect human emotion and decided to go into this field to
“concentrate on designing everyday products that would make life
more pleasant and more beautiful and appeal to the mass
audience.”1
Walter left Munich in 1931 and completed his studies at
Goldsmiths College, University of London. Along with Misha Black
and Milner Gray, he founded Industrial Design Partnership (IDP) in
1935, the first consultancy of its kind in England. A year later at
the age of 23, Walter became the youngest fellow of the Royal
Society of Arts.2
Walter and the IDP design team traveled to the United States in
1939 to install part of the British Pavilion at the New York
World’s Fair. There he met industrial design giants Raymond Loewy,
Walter Teague, and Henry Dreyfuss. With war rapidly approaching in
Europe, Walter decided to travel across the country to study
American industrial design. He wanted to see for himself how his
American counterparts “had succeeded so miraculously, so
dramatically, more than we had in London.”3 Walter made
his way to the West Coast and visited San Francisco, where he
immediately decided to settle. “For me, it was a city that looked
out on the whole world, a city built on the cultural traditions of
East and West.... How could I live anywhere else?”4
A firm is born
In November 1939, Walter was introduced to Glenn Wessels of the
California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland. Wessels invited
him to teach in the college’s new department of industrial
design.5 The curriculum Walter developed emphasized
practical solutions to concrete problems. Outside the classroom, he
conducted a forum in which “practicing designers, teachers,
architects, and business executives [could] study the latest
developments in the field.”6 Walter taught his first
class in January 1940, and there sitting in the front row was
Josephine Martinelli. They fell in love and soon married. In 1941,
Walter established Walter Landor & Associates (WL&A) in a
small flat in the Russian Hill area of San Francisco, with Jo as
the “associate.”7
In 1945, Walter and Jo relocated their office and studios to 556
Commercial Street, near San Francisco’s Chinatown, and expanded
their team to include new members. Walter continued teaching design
fundamentals at the San Francisco School of Fine Arts (today called
the San Francisco Art Institute). There he met Rodney McKnew, a
student and freelance artist who soon came on board as an
associate. Graphic illustrators Francis Mair and Lillian Sader,
both formerly of Chicago, also joined WL&A. McKnew, Mair, and
Sader were to remain with Walter for over 40 years as design
associates and senior staff.8
The company’s earliest contracts came from locally based
clients. Walter and Jo collaborated on interior designs for the
Joseph Magnin department stores, the Pony Lounge in the Hotel Don,
and Lester’s Market.9 Walter’s first retail label
project was for S&W Fine Foods in San Francisco. The shortage
of metal during World War II had forced canners of fruits and
vegetables to switch to glass containers, and S&W needed an
innovative yet functional label. Walter’s design placed the brand
name at a consistent location on each label, with the product name
in the label’s center. This made the containers easier for
customers to read and for grocers to mark prices
on.10
By the late 1940s, Walter and Jo were seeking new business
opportunities and expanding beyond the San Francisco area. Together
they headed up the Pacific coast to Seattle. Jessica Myerson, a
Landor associate during the 1980s, described Walter and Jo's trip
in search of new clients: “Walter and Jo got in the car just
determined to find business. And they drove to Seattle and they got
Sicks' Select. And that was the beginning of the beer
stuff.”11
Sicks’ Select became WL&A’s first beer label redesign as
well as its first client outside California. At the Small Brewers
Association (SBA) annual label competition in 1948, the design for
Sicks’ Select took first prize. Walter went on to earn at least one
major SBA award each of the next several years.
The Sicks’ Select design drew the attention of other breweries
and turned WL&A in a new direction. These labels not only
brought Walter his earliest design awards, they also opened doors
to new clients across the country during the highly competitive
1950s. He was no longer just a San Francisco designer; now he had
successfully expanded into the Northwest as well.
Rewriting the rules
From the outset Walter favored a client-driven approach,
becoming one of the first to apply consumer research to package
design. During the early 1950s Walter, wearing a white lab coat,
began to take his packaging and label designs into supermarkets to
solicit in-store responses from shoppers.
Lewis Lowe, an associate from 1950 to 1971, accompanied Walter
on these excursions to neighborhood supermarkets where “we’d go in
and then we’d start putting out our designs on the shelves and move
things around. And then people would come up and we’d ask them to
[tell us] which one they’d pick and everything. And I would have to
be there with a pad and a clipboard and marking down and checking
off which one of the designs they liked, ours or the competitor’s.
And pretty soon the people would start crowding around, and then
the manager starts thinking, ‘Wow, this is disrupting our
business,’ and then they come and kick us out.... And then we had
to find another store.”12
The one supermarket where Walter had no difficulty pretesting
his designs was Safeway, “because we did so much Safeway product
that they would set it up through the management, so they had to
accommodate us.”13 By physically going into stores and
speaking directly to customers, Walter became keenly aware of the
significance of packaging as a marketing component. He realized
that packages needed to identify old favorites or entice consumers
to try new or improved products. 14 With the package as
an assurance of quality from the manufacturer, it became a promise
or commitment to the consumer. 15
“The package must do the talking”
Walter’s work arose from and helped stimulate the consumer
movement of the post-World War II era. “Fifteen years ago, a sales
clerk might recommend a brand of soap, paint, peas, or candy.
Today, the package itself must do the talking.”16 His
designs incorporated traditional forms and recognizable symbols,
but also employed newer materials such as cellophane and metallic
foils. Using these elements combined with new retail marketing
strategies and venues, Walter was influential in creating a modern
commercial aesthetic.
In 1951, Walter moved his growing company to a larger office
space at 143 Bush Street, where he attracted a loyal talent pool of
commercial designers and artists.17 Don Short, a
freelance artist who did occasional work for Walter, joined
WL&A as studio director. According to Rodney McKnew, Short
became Landor's “executive officer-sort of the first lieutenant-and
he ran the ship.”18 Among Short’s early achievements was
the establishment of a studio to photograph food and other
products, an institution that continues at Landor
today.19 Walter and his designers made good use of the
studio when developing labels for Bel-air, Safeway’s house brand of
frozen foods. For the first of many Safeway designs, photographs of
different vegetables were used along with the abstract outline of a
leaf to project the idea of freshness.20
Meanwhile, Walter’s success with beer labels continued. In 1952
he was invited to deliver the keynote address at the annual meeting
of the Brewers Association of America (previously the Small Brewers
Association), held in Chicago. In “Gentlemen, Your Label is
Showing. Is It Selling Beer for You?” he emphasized the importance
of a well-designed label for sales and brand recognition, outlining
the steps for creating such a design. With the heads of breweries
in attendance at the association meeting, this exposure increased
Landor’s clientele to include Midwestern brewers in Milwaukee and
St. Louis, as well as Eastern ones in New York.21
That same year Walter became a founding member of the newly
formed Packaging Designers’ Council (PDC). At a time when most
industrial design firms were headquartered in New York or Chicago,
Walter’s membership in the PDC put him in an ideal position to
promote his services nationally-primarily as an underdog. Two years
later he boldly declared in a press release, “New York’s title as
the top design city in the nation is being challenged by San
Francisco. Landor has been bringing a fresh western approach and
new imagination to the field of design.”22
For Walter no two projects were alike; there was no
cookie-cutter approach to design at WL&A. Each graphic had to
express the product or company uniquely and reach the consumer in a
positive, meaningful way. The challenge was always communication:
“We find it much, much simpler to arrive at a design solution which
satisfies us aesthetically and emotionally than [one that] truly
communicates to a mass audience.... That is our
responsibility.”23
A shot of bourbon
In 1955, the owners of Stitzel-Weller Distillery wanted to
market a Christmas decanter for their Old Fitzgerald bourbon.
Walter required his team of designers to go beyond the basics and
take the decanter concept in new directions. The final design,
called Candlelight, was selected from among 50 possibilities.
The Candlelight decanter achieved popularity not only because of
its contemporary look but also for its innovative utility. The
packaging allowed the gift decanter to function as a
candleholder-one of its many “after-uses” in the home.24
In Minneapolis, it was reported that women bought additional
decanters to make candleholder sets, thus augmenting Old
Fitzgerald’s sales.25
And a splash of water
Arrowhead & Puritas of Los Angeles, a leader in bottled
water for commercial venues, wanted to introduce half-gallon glass
bottles to the home and restaurant market. Glass containers of this
size were unwieldy and heavy, particularly when filled, making them
awkward for people seated at a table to lift. The bottle's design
had to overcome this difficulty.26
The designers studied in depth how the product worked, how it
was made, and how the consumer used it. The “tilt bottle” Landor
developed, which had two flat surfaces, did not have to be lifted
to refill an empty glass, nor did it require a handle to be passed
from person to person. The bottle’s classical curves resembled the
shape of early nineteenth-century glass flasks, and its rocking
motion made the container easy to use. The design’s main advantage,
Walter stressed, was that “the user-by tilting the bottle-[could]
pour without lifting.”27 Walter’s team of designers had
created an elegant and practical decanter for storing and serving
bottled water.
The container performed well as a self-promoter of sales in
retail stores and restaurants and in people’s homes. After drinking
the water, the consumer could save the bottle for other uses,
creating an in-home reminder. The design increased product
recognition and resulted in greater sales for Arrowhead &
Puritas while providing Walter with awards and critical
acclaim.
With a beer chaser
By 1956, with the increase in clients as well as staff, a larger
space was again needed and Walter moved his company to a waterfront
building on Pier 5. These expanded quarters included offices,
studios, and meeting rooms for newly formed research groups. In one
area Walter installed “a mock retail environment to help designers
and clients visualize the new packages in the real-life context of
grocery shelves.”28 From an inconspicuous location,
researchers could watch shoppers as they passed through the aisles
with their carts, and later interview them about the packages they
chose. Walter used this method of consumer research and feedback
extensively to test package designs.
During the late 1950s, Landor entered the Asian market with a
redesign of Sapporo beer, the oldest and best-selling brand in
Japan. After 83 years, Sapporo had begun to package its beer in
cans for the first time. The key visual element was the trademark
red star that evoked images of the Japanese flag. Substituting the
flag’s red circle, Walter placed the star on a white background.
This red-and-white symbol identified the product as distinctly
Japanese.
For export packaging, Landor provided several other color
combinations. Hong Kong’s design used a copper star and a
cream-colored background intended to reduce the visual impact of
Japan’s national colors in this British-controlled region. The
curving gold band developed by Landor’s designers served several
purposes. The stylized S for Sapporo created a background
graphic resembling the Asian yin-and-yang symbol.29 The
brand name, printed in English and dominating the lower half of the
can, highlighted the American influence on Japanese products
following World War II.
All aboard!
In 1964, Walter bought the retired ferryboat Klamath
for $12,000, had its interior turned into office space, and
relocated his company on board. This move greatly enhanced the
firm’s reputation for innovation and creativity; it also provided
more room to expand design and consulting capabilities, including
the discipline that became known as corporate identity. Mixing
business with pleasure, the
Klamath hosted business symposia, cultural events, and
parties. Although the company eventually outgrew the ferryboat in
the late 1980s and moved to its present headquarters at 1001 Front
Street in San Francisco, the Klamath remains its
distinctive corporate symbol.
By the 1970s the firm had changed its name to Landor Associates,
established offices in Asia, Europe, and South America, and
garnered worldwide acclaim. Graphics for international and domestic
airlines became the newest area of expertise.
During the wave of corporate mergers prevalent in the 1980s,
companies were being renamed, reconfigured, and repackaged to an
unprecedented degree. Once again Walter expanded his consulting
services, this time to include product and company naming, retail
interiors, signage, and external store design in addition to
corporate identity and package design—all driven by consumer
research.
In 1989, at the age of 76, Walter basked in his retirement while
retaining the title of company founder. But this was more than an
honorific; Walter continued to play an active role with the
company, both by visiting the San Francisco headquarters regularly
and by traveling to remain in touch with clients, projects, and old
friends.
A far reaching legacy
Walter Landor was a guiding force in the field of corporate and
brand identities, logos, and packaging. A visionary who pioneered
the use of design and graphic imagery as business and marketing
tools, Walter helped create and develop some of today's best-known
brands. Thanks to groundbreaking creativity backed by solid
consumer research and rigorous strategic thinking, Landor
Associates now enjoys a position as one of the world’s preeminent
design firms.
Thousands of the logos and product identities people encounter
every day around every part of the globe, were generated at Landor
Associates. Walter’s dream of enriching human experience through
design lives on in the company that bears his name.
About the author
Bernie Gallagher is senior documentation
specialist at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
His expertise lies in data mapping historical object information
for publications and museum web projects.
Bernie has worked at the museum for over 20 years, overseeing
the cataloging of objects by curators, specialists, volunteers, and
interns and maintaining proper data standards in the database
systems. His specialties include the collections of information
technology and communications and work and industry.
Bernie earned an MA in history museum studies from the
Cooperstown Graduate Program at the State University of New York,
College at Oneonta, where he wrote his thesis on Walter Landor, “A
Brand Is Built in the Mind: Walter Landor and the Transformation of
Industrial Design in the Twentieth Century.” His research and
subsequent thesis form the basis of this article.
Notes
1. Ken Kelley and Rick Clogher, “The Ultimate Image Maker,”
San Francisco Focus (August 1992).
2. Veronique Vinne, “The Brand Named Walter Landor,”
Graphis, no. 321 (May/June 1999), and Lindsay Arthur,
“Industrial Designer Turns His Talents To Own Use,” San
Francisco Call-Bulletin (19 November 1956).
3. Carla Marinucci, “Designing Man,” San Francisco
Examiner (1 October 1989).
4. See note 1.
5. See note 1.
6. “Landor Goes to Oakland,” Art Digest, vol. 14 (15
January 1940).
7. See note 1.
8. Rodney McKnew, interview by Jessica Myerson (13 April 1993),
transcript from the Landor Archive Project, Landor Design
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American
History.
9. “Walter Landor,” San Francisco Art Association
Bulletin, vol. 13, no. 8 (October 1947), reprint from the
Landor Archive Project, Landor Design Collection, Archives Center,
National Museum of American History.
10. “Labels on Glass…a Design Analysis,” Modern Packaging
(March 1945).
11. Jessica Myerson (interviewing Donovan Worland, Landor Director
of Exhibit Designs) (11 August 1993), transcript from the Landor
Archive Project, Landor Design Collection, Archives Center,
National Museum of American History.
12. Lewis Lowe, interview by Jessica Myerson (20 April 1993),
transcript from the Landor Archive Project, Landor Design
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American
History.
13. See note 12.
14. “Packages Must Speak for Themselves,” San Francisco
News-Call Bulletin (23 November 1956).
15. Thomas Hine, The Total Package: The Secret History and
Hidden Meanings of Boxes, Bottles, Cans and Other Persuasive
Containers (Little, Brown and Company, 1995).
16. See note 14.
17. See note 2.
18. Rodney McKnew, interview by Jessica Myerson (8 July 1993),
transcript from the Landor Archive Project, Landor Design
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American
History.
19. See note 2.
20. See note 1.
21. Walter Landor, “Gentlemen, Your Label is Showing. Is It
Selling Beer for You?” Brewers Association of America,
bulletin no. 1139 (12 February 1953).
22. Walter Landor & Associates, “Western designer wins top
awards,” press release (October 1954), Landor Design Collection,
Archives Center, National Museum of American History.
23. “Pioneers: Walter Landor,” Communication Arts
(January/February 2000).
24. “New Decanter Shown For Old Fitzgerald,” Advertising
Requirements (December 1955), reprint from the Landor Archive
Project, Landor Design Collection, Archives Center, National Museum
of American History.
25. “Dealers on Decanters,” Tide (28 January 1955),
reprint from the Landor Archive Project, Landor Design Collection,
Archives Center, National Museum of American History.
26. “So What’s New about Water,” Good Packaging, undated
reprint from the Landor Archive Project, Landor Design Collection,
Archives Center, National Museum of American History.
27. “Creativity,” Display (September 1960).
28. See note 2.
29. “Leading Japanese Brewery Comes to U.S. for Design,” The
Brewers Digest, undated reprint from the Landor Design
Collection, Archives Center, National Museum of American
History.
© 2009 Bernard Gallagher and Landor Associates. All rights
reserved.