ReadyMade Magazine - August/September 2010

HOW DID YOU GET THAT
go!
F*&%ING AWESOME JOB?

Five decades after creating Polaroid’s product identity,
the 81-year-old graphic designer says intellectual
curiosity is the key to his continued success.

WRITTEN BY SONIA ZJAWINSKI ILLUSTRATION BY CIARA PHELAN

OCCUPATION

Graphic Designer

LOCATION

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

If I did I wouldn’t have
gone to Europe with my
wife for seven months
a;er the first gig!

FIRST JOB In 1945, for the art department of the old Boston Post masking ads for reproduction.

'Why do you think your Polaroid packaging designs were so successful? My theory was: You have the buying public’s a;ention for a nanosecond, so you be;er make a striking image for them to recognize. At the time, package designs were a four-color process photo of grimacing people enjoying the product with a bunch of copy all over the box. That’s not a grabber.

BEST JOB

The best design I think I ever did was for the Kyoto Boston Sister City Committee. After throwing away more sketches than ever, I ;inally ended with the Futura [typeface of Kyoto and Boston] going up and down, left and right, and it worked beautifully.

GREATEST CHALLENGE It’s no question: doing the work for Polaroid.

STARTING SALARY

$25/week at the Boston Post

SITE

giambarba.com

'Hi, Paul Giambarba. How did you get that f*&%ing awesome job? In 1955 I was a successful cartoonist who was selling to national magazines like Sports Illustrated, True, and This Week Magazine. One day, while walking down Newbury Street in Boston, I bump into Frank Etienne, a fellow cartoonist, who tells me he’s working with this neat guy, Stan Calderwood, over at Polaroid. He can’t do the work anymore and asks if I would like to go see Stan. Well, I meet with Stan, do the job, and he likes it.

' What made your packages a grabber? I like to think I was creating a poor man’s paper sculpture. I can’t say color stripes were original for me; what was original was pu;ing them on a box to sell film and cameras. The god’s eye design came from my daughter, who was doing macramé at the time. The most impressive way these packages were used was stacked as a display in the big box stores as traffic builders.

Dr. Florian Kaps [The Impossible Project’s founder and CMO] found my blog, The Branding of Polaroid, and got in touch. We met up on the Cape for lunch and hit it off. He wanted me to be his art director, but I didn’t want to go to Vienna— I’m too old to travel anything but business class, which gets very expensive—so he le; saying he was going to send me some work, and he did.

' When you worked with Polaroid, you did everything manually; what was it like to work on packaging in the digital age? I could not have done anything for Doc Kaps the old-fashioned way. All the stuff I used to do laboriously by hand, I now press a key and the color changes. I was able to produce 20 packages in 20 days, where in the past, one package would have taken several days in itself.

typefaces available on
every computer. It’s
no wonder the kids are
confused.

'Did you ever think that would lead to a 26-year contract with Polaroid?

'After 32 years away from the instant film market, you’ve produced a similar line of instant film packaging for The Impossible Project. How did that happen?

'Is there a drawback to designing in digital? The computer is wonderful, but it’ll run away with the job you’re working on. In the old days, we were working with only about 50 typefaces in the United States. Today there are 2,000

'What’s the secret to not only still working at 81, but also still being contemporary in your designs? There’s no secret. All one needs is intellectual curiosity.

my life. All the good work I’ve ever go;en has been through word of mouth. I’m not a college graduate. Mentors taught me, and I promote that as a way to go. It certainly saves money. RM

'Have you ever had a full-time job, or have you always been freelance? I’ve been freelance all

To learn more about Polaroid’s last year in production and the start of The Impossible Project ( theimpossibleproject.com), check out Time Zero (fullfra.me), a documentary by Grant Hamilton.