International Paper Co. Logo, 1958
Lester Beall's 1958 logo for International Paper Company.
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International Paper Company (IP) was formed in 1898 from the merger of 17 pulp and paper mills scattered across northeastern United States. These ranged from small mills with 11 ton daily production outputs to advanced industrial facilities with over 150 tons. Growth followed, and the corporation became a major exporter with sales offices in London, Paris, Zurich and Johannesburg. By the late 1950s IP began planning an expansion into overseas production.
Ahead of this, IP undertook an extensive study of its paper users and paper merchants. Despite having become the world's biggest manufacturer of printing papers, the study revealed that the corporation and its products were not well-known. Additional research suggested that the absence of a cohesive corporate image across packaging, signage, trucks, letterheads and business forms was a key cause of such poor recognition. Alongside this, it was felt that the current trademark had proven to be impractical and hard to use, and not well-suited to the diverse reproduction needs of the company, from severe enlargement (signage) to reduction (stationery). Further, it was not simple enough to support recognition and recall.
In order to address the issues of recognition and usability, IP advertising manager Richard Wiechman invited designer Lester Beall to develop a new logo and corporate identity programme. From an initial study, it was revealed that paper merchants and consumers referred to International Paper Co., simply as ‘I.P.’ This discovery became the focus moving into the design phase.
Beall devised a logo that creatively combined the spruce tree of an earlier trademark–the raw material for much of the corporation’s products–with the initials IP, and placed this within a circle. A single consistent line weight links each element to form a whole. The international reach of the company and its desire for continued growth can also be understood in the tree and circle also being read as an arrow and a globe. This new logo was applied at scale and consistently where it hadn’t before, due to its simplicity and scalability.
The logo was described as the keystone of the IP Identification Program, and a projection of the ‘strength’, ‘quality’ and ‘extent’ of the corporation, its people, and its products. And functioned as a ‘meaningful tool for identification and marketing purposes’. In order to expedite and maintain its acceptance and remembrance, the symbol would be used with ‘consistency’ and ‘discretion’ throughout.
Venus Extended was used as IP’s corporate typeface. And the condensed sans-serif Cairoli formed the secondary typeface. This combination afforded the company a new flexibility when it can to long and restrictive contexts. The extended logotype would run the entire length of vehicle liveries, and the condensed sans-serif would then used for printed items with limited space such as business cards and newsletters.
The introduction of the new logo involved widespread application across a variety of contexts. Within a year of finalising the design, a comprehensive Style Manual was developed, from which the images illustrating this post have been drawn from. This covered all aspects of the logos’ usage across letterheads, business cards, forms and promotional items as well as trucks, signs, water towers and other usage areas.
Under the leadership of Richard Doane-elected president in 1954 and chairman in 1961-International Paper established a creative marketing centre to build on the work Beall had done developing its corporate identity, and followed this with the launch of an innovative sales training program. The logo was awarded in the first ever trademarks exhibition to be held in the USA, alongside works by Paul Rand and Raymond Loewy. This was used until 2023 when, on the 125th anniversary of IP, it was replaced.
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I feel completely drawn in by the 1958 logo design for International Paper Co. It's got plenty of value.