Lucky Lager Beer Bottle

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.

In 1933, Lucky Lager contracted Landor to rework their brand image. Because Lucky Lager was already a popular brand, Landor only updated the design to look more modern, but did not completely rework it. To keep the brand design familiar, Landor kept the red ‘X’ and the brand name moved below the X to be more easily readable. This design appeared not only on the cans and cases, but also on the displays to keep the brand design unified.

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