History Walter's Story - Landor Associates

History
2001
www.landor.com downloads
1913 to 2001

Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Klamath
3. 1913 to 1949
4. 1950 to 1969
5. 1970 to 1989
6. 1990 to present
7. Walter’s Story
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History Introduction
Overview
Our company was founded in San Francisco in 1941 by German expatriate Walter Landor, who is widely
regarded as a pioneer in the development of branding and visual identity as a strategic business tool. Walter
steadily built Landor over the next few decades to become the first truly international branding and design
firm, opening offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the United States. Today, Landor Associates works with
hundreds of clients on six continents, combining the resources of a global company with the access and
familiarity of a local partner to provide a world of branding expertise.
History The Klamath
Our Icon of Innovation
Built in 1942, the Klamath was a working ferryboat on San Francisco Bay for 32 years until it was retired in
1956. Walter Landor found the Klamath sitting in the mudflats at the port of Redwood City, California, and
purchased it at a bankruptcy sale for $12,000. After renovating the boat, he turned it into the home of
Landor Associates.
Past, present and future generations of Landor employees carry the creative legend and lore of the ferryboat.
From 1964 until 1987, our corporate headquarters was aboard the Klamath, which provided an innovative
atmosphere that inspired the imagination of both employees and guests. The Klamath rapidly became the
destination of choice for visiting celebrities, dignitaries and Landor clients. Author Tom Wolfe once dubbed
the Klamath ”the flagship of packaging design.”
In 1988, we finally outgrew the Klamath and moved to our current headquarters at 1001 Front Street in San
Francisco. The Klamath is now owned by the Duraflame Corporation and is located in Stockton, California,
yet its image as Landor’s own corporate symbol still remains an icon of creativity and innovation.
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History 1913 to 1949
Important milestones in our history: Walter Landor’s birth to 1949
July 9, 1913: Walter is born in Munich. As a youth, he is influenced by the Bauhaus and Werkbund design
movements.
1931: Walter leaves Munich to complete his studies at London University’s Goldsmith College School of Art.
At 22, he becomes founding partner, along with Misha Black and Milner Gray, in the first industrial design
consultancy in England: Industrial Design Partnership (IDP). At 23, he becomes the youngest Fellow of the
Royal Society of Arts.
1939: Walter travels to the U.S. , on behalf of IDP, as part of the design team for the British Pavilion at the New
York World’s Fair. After traveling across the U.S. to familiarize himself with contemporary American industrial
design, he decided to settle in San Francisco.
1941: Walter Landor & Associates is founded (later renamed Landor Associates).
1941: S & W Fine Food is the new company’s first major national client.
History 1950 to 1969
1951: Trans-Mountain Oil is first corporate identity program.
1959: Sapporo is first Japanese client.
1964: Walter establishes Landor Associates as social and creative center of San Francisco when he moves
the company headquarters to the ferryboat Klamath. A two-day launch party ensues.
1964-1987: Walter works and entertains on the Klamath, which houses Landor’s Visual Communication Center,
Consumer Research Center and Museum of Packaging Antiquities. Celebrities, educators, marketing experts,
corporate leaders and designers come from around the world to visit. Partygoers on the Klamath include
Marshall McLuhan, Tom Wolfe, George C. Scott, Andy Warhol and the Grateful Dead.
1967: Italian office is established with Montedison as its first major client, marking the first significant Landor
project in Europe.
1968: Levi’s famous ”batwing” identity designed.
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History 1970 to 1989
1972: Tokyo office opens.
1972: Landor establishes representative network in Europe. Countries covered are Italy, Spain, Germany, France
and Benelux. Early major projects include a highly influential corporate identity program for La Caixa in Spain.
1973: Cotton Incorporated identity designed.
1973: Mexico City office opens.
1976: New York office opens.
1983: SAS Airlines project marks Landor’s expansion into the Scandinavian market.
1983: Landor wins prestigious project to design the British Airways corporate identity prior to its privatization.
1984: London office opens. Work is completed on a major dealership program for Mercedes-Benz.
1986: Hong Kong office opens.
1988: Landor conducts first ImagePower® survey.
1989: Landor Associates acquired by Young & Rubicam Inc.
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History 1990 to present
1990: French design agency, Beautiful, becomes Landor Paris.
1990: Environmental and signage work for Expo ’92 in Seville, Spain.
1992: Identity designed for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
1993: Identities designed for France Telecom and for Casino, one of France’s biggest retailers.
1994: Clay Timon named Chairman, President and CEO.
1994: Comprehensive global identity program completed for FedEx.
1994: New holistic identity program completed for Cathay Pacific Airways.
1994: Smithsonian’s Museum of American History completes the Walter Landor Collection of Design Records
and Packaging to document and permanently house Walter Landor’s legacy.
June 9, 1995: Walter Landor passes away.
1996: Name and corporate identity created for Lucent Technologies, the $20+ billion telecommunications
systems and technology company created by the ”trivesture” of AT&T. Lucent completes the largest initial
public offering of stock in U.S. history.
1996: Landor redesigns identity for Reuters, the global news and business information organization.
1996: New identity and design introduced for Brazil’s national airline, Varig.
1996: Landor selected (in partnership with EvansGroup) to create the entire design program for the
2002 Olympic Winter Games to be held in Salt Lake City.
1997: Landor’s opens a full-service design and consulting office in Hamburg.
1997: New identity unveiled for Brazil’s Banco Bradesco, Latin America’s largest private bank.
1998: Landor conducts third ImagePower survey, the groundbreaking brand measurement study originally
conducted in 1988. The new ImagePower, focusing on business-to-business brands, is produced jointly with
Louis Harris & Associates, the opinion research and polling firm.
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History 1990 to present ( continued...)
1998: Landor expands its portfolio and launches branding and identity system for clients such as Andersen
Consulting, GeoCities, ITT Industries and Hewlett-Packard.
1998: Landor wins awards for its work with FedEx and Visteon.
1999: New identity launched for Canadian Airlines.
1999: Landor announces formal affiliation with Sydney-based branding and design consultancy, LKS, and
new full-service office opens in Irvine, California.
2000: Landor acquires St. James, a Chicago-based brand consultancy.
2000: BP re-branded after the merger of BP, Amoco, Castrol and ARCO.
2001: New identity launched for bmi british midland, Europe’s largest independent carrier.
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History Walter’s Story
A remarkable man, an enduring legacy
A creative visionary who pioneered the use of design and visual imagery as strategic marketing and business
tools, Walter Landor helped create and develop some of the world’s most recognized brands and corporate
identities, including Coca-Cola, Levi's, Cotton Inc., Kellogg’s, GE, Fujifilm, Saturn, Miller Lite, Alitalia, 20th Century
Fox, Philip Morris, Singapore Airlines, 3M, the World Wildlife Fund, Pacific Telesis, Wells Fargo Bank, Dole Foods,
Del Monte, Safeway Stores and Bank of America.
Born in Munich on July 9, 1913, Walter was exposed in his youth to both the Bauhaus and Werkbund design
movements. At 18, he decided to focus his career on designing for mass audiences so that the greatest
number of people could benefit and ”become more alive to what is enriching and enjoyable in our everyday
world.”
Walter left Munich to complete his studies at London University’s Goldsmith College School of Art in 1931.
At 22, he became a founding partner, along with Misha Black and Milner Gray, in England’s first industrial
design consultancy: Industrial Design Partnership (IDP).
In 1930, Walter traveled to the United States as part of the design team for the British Pavilion at the New York
World’s Fair. He subsequently went to 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?”
In 1941, Walter established Walter Landor & Associates in his small Russian Hill apartment, with his wife
Josephine as his first ”associate.” As his company grew, Walter became one of the first to use consumer
research in packaging design, and he is widely credited with establishing the economic value of design and
effective visual communications in business. Over the next decades, groundbreaking creativity backed by
strategic thinking saw Landor Associates become one of the world’s leading branding and design
consultancies, working with some of the world’s best-known companies.
In 1964, Walter moved his firm to the ferryboat Klamath, anchored at San Francisco’s Pier 5. The move to the
Klamath greatly enhanced the company’s reputation for innovation and creativity, and it also provided more
space to expand the firm’s design and consultancy capabilities.
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History Walter’s Story (continued...)
Although Landor Associates eventually outgrew the ferryboat in the late 1980s and moved to its present
headquarters at 1001 Front Sreet in San Francisco, the Klamath remains the firm’s corporate symbol.
In 1994, The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History completed The Walter Landor
Collection of Design Records and Packaging to document and permanently house the legacies of Walter
Landor and Landor Associates to 20th-century American design. According to John Fleckner, Director for the
Smithsonian’s Center of Advertising History, ”Walter Landor’s pioneering work in corporate communications,
marketing and the use of symbols and visual imagery is an essential part of the broader story of American
culture and society in the last half century.”
Walter died on June 9, 1995 at the age of 81.
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Landor Associates 2001