In March I posted a couple of examples of how design studios sold themselves in the sixties. Here are two more examples from 4916 Kelvin, named after their location in Houston. I think there are still some graphics folk there today.
The first item is a long hanging calendar for 1960, 22 by 11 inches. Strictly a selling job because it was only for the last six months of that year so why not cut 1960 in half, as on the cover.
The second is their 1963 Annual Report and diary, 11 by 8.5 inches. The studio wasn’t a public company but used the format to have some fun and give their work a pseudo business feel. The diary pages are cleverly joined to the Report by ring binding so that the whole book folds out to 24 inches wide. The nine partners get a diary spread each to design as they liked. The remaining spreads cover the studio facilities, client list and an all important spread for the book’s printers so the studio got a cheaper print job.
I kept these because I liked the designs, especially the Report cover and thought they were good examples of the effervescent style of creativity back then.
Annual Reports usually look pretty dull, only to be expected as they are legal financial documents with the first few pages outlining a companies progress for the previous twelve months. There are companies though, that are brave enough to go for something visually different, usually start-ups with their first Report, companies with few shareholders or companies who cover the youth market, like Domino’s Pizza.
I’ve five of their Reports from the eighties and they look stunning. Designed by Group 243 in Ann Arbor where Ernie Perich was the Creative Director. The one below, for 1983, used a design collage with all sorts of clever visual ideas: a handwritten President’s letter; typewritten copy with spelling mistakes and proofreader’s marks for the corrections; using Domino’s pencils for a bar chart; even though financials are sacred these pages are given a lift by combining them with still life items; using business cards for company officers.
I thought the ’83 Report was creatively brilliant and hard to top but that was until I saw the one for ’84 (see the July Archive) a beautifully made dark wood box with a set of dominoes under the slim spiral bound Report. Annual Reporter broadsheet newspaper, in six sections and in a delivery boy’s bag (unfortunately I never got the bag) told the good news for 1985. ’86 produced a school textbook on glossy paper with sectional plastic tabs. Perich+Partners produced the ’87 version, perhaps a little less exuberant than the others: a twelve inch square box with a ten inch, forty-eight page Report and under that a jigsaw puzzle of Domino’s logo made out of cardboard.
The Reports are shown above and I’ll post them over the coming months. Another company that put creativity first for their Reports was Miami’s Orange Bowl Corporation. Beautifully designed by Frank Schulwolf, you can see 1972 and ’73 in August 2011 and 1974 and ’75 in September 2011 archive.
