Lucerne Half and Half Carton

Description:

In 1939, Walter Landor arrived in the United States to help install the British training pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. At twenty-six years old, Landor had left his home in Germany to study art and design in Britain, where he became the youngest Fellow of the Royal Society of Industrial Artists. With whispers of war circulating around Europe, Landor decided to stay in the United States and travelled to the West Coast in search of design work. In 1941, Landor and his new wife Josephine Martinelli founded Walter Landor and Associates (today Landor) in their San Francisco apartment. The company specialized in packaging and label design for a number of iconic brands ranging from Marlboro cigarettes to Aunt Jemima to Sara Lee. As the company expanded, Landor’s base of operations moved from his home through several locations until it settled in 1962 on the Klamath, a docked ferryboat in the San Francisco Bay that would become an iconic part of Landor’s own brand.

Safeway as a company has its roots in Idaho. Begun in 1915, the company expanded over the years, merging its chain of grocery stores Skaggs with Safeway (formerly Selig) stores. Throughout the century, Safeway continued to absorb other grocery chains including Vons (Southern California and Nevada), Randals, Tom Thumbs (both in Texas), and Carrs (Alaska).

Safeway’s store brand, Lucerne, focused on dairy products. Landor redesigned Lucerne’s cartons in 1967. Landor meant for these cartons to be “as fresh, bright, and appetizing as the products themselves.” Landor sought to unify the brand through a new design, resulting in a color-blocked theme that worked on large and small cartons as well as tubs. Landor color coded each product for easy shelf identification, such as this purple half & half. After the redesign, Safeway printed full-page, colored newspaper advertisements to assure customers that they would find the same high-quality product in the modern, fashionable cartons.