The Branding Of Polaroid: Paul Giambarba
In the late 1950s, Polaroid was the technical leader in consumer photography with the Edwin Land instant camera system. But the company was still getting hammered at point-of-sale by Kodak’s ubiquitous, highly visible yellow boxes. Their dull, conservative, silver-and-red packaging simply had to go.
Polaroid in-house designer Paul Giambarba was part of the team that developed an American classic — Polaroid’s “rainbow” brand identity. One little old lady in Upstate New York liked the new design so much, she bought it, sent back the product and kept the box.
Giambarba discusses the evolution of Polaroid’s brand identity from its 1960s high through to the late 70s failure of Polavision instant movie film — true tales from the advertising Creative Revolution instigated by the Doyle Dane Bernbach agency. The story starts here on his spiffy TypePad blog.
He’s also got a lot of other articles about art and design, well worth reading.
January 4, 2005 12:45 PM
Hey, those square boxes remind me a very popular product from Apple. I’m pretty sure back in the 70’s owning a Polaroid was like today for someone who’s owning an iPod. Polaroid’s camera were cool device, eyecandy and with a new way to use an old medium like photography.
wrote Antoine on January 4, 2005 6:36 PM