Saturday, December 3, 2011

Sunkist brochure / 1974

Whoever designed this sixteen page brochure had a clever idea to make it interesting: use old orange crate labels to provide the eye-candy. The pages promote the Sunkist brand to the retail food industry though the copy doesn’t take up much space but the wonderful labels do.
    Another clever idea was to include four life-size (ten inches deep by eleven wide) reprinted labels in a flap inside the back cover. Include there is a bit of label history stating that of the 250 Sunkist packing houses in California each one had five or six label in regular use. Early labels were printed using stone litho with the images created by hand for each color with some labels using up to eight colors.
    The art of the label slowly declined through the Forties and Fifties and ended in 1956 when wooden crates were replaced by cheaper cardboard.  With such elaborate and colorful designs it's hardly surprising that these are very collectable though I'm not aware of many books that cover this little corner of graphic design.  The hundreds and hundreds of different labels are just waiting for some art book publisher. 













2 comments:

  1. I've always loved these labels for their visual clarity and impact. The only book I have is Fruit Crate Art by Joe Davidson (1990) but there are others around.

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  2. I was thinking more of a thick, chunky Taschen type book or even a Rizzoli. I've got the Davidson one.

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