Rainier Beer Can

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 1952, Sicks’ Rainier Brewing Company of Seattle asked Walter Landor to redesign its entire line of packaging. The success of Landor’s brightly colored designs inspired the company to continue the Jubilee series intended to evoke the feeling of celebration. The Jubilee cans spurred sales to such heights that Rainier continued various series of them for over a decade. The third sequence featured the work of famous cartoonists such as Bob Osborn, William Steig, and Virgil Partch. While the first three series centered around events at which a consumer would normally be drinking beer, the fourth run focused around Rainier’s own themes of brewing, such as “Brewed Naturally” and “Choicest Ingredients.” Bright colors remained the trademark of the brand throughout the rest of the Jubilee series. In 2013, Rainier brought back the first seasonal Jubilee can in fifty years as a call back to their classic design.

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