The Campbell's Soup can, label design, brand, colors & imagery came to my mind this evening during a lecture on visual code.
The label design has not seen a dramatic change since 1898.
Ask yourself why?
History
Campbell's was founded in 1869 by Joseph A. Campbell and Abraham Anderson, an icebox manufacturer. The company was originally called the "Joseph A. Campbell Preserve Company" and produced canned tomatoes, vegetables, jellies, soups, condiments, and minced meats
By 1896, Anderson left the partnership, leaving Campbell to reorganize and form a new company, Joseph Campbell & Co. In 1897, a nephew of one of the new Campbell partners, Dr. John T. Dorrance, began working for the company at a wage of $7.50 a week. Dorrance, a gifted chemist with degrees from MIT and Göttingen University, Germany, developed a commercially viable method for condensing soup by halving the quantity of its heaviest ingredient: water.
In 1898, Herberton Williams, a Campbell's executive, convinced the company to adopt a cherry red and bright white color scheme, because he was taken by the crisp colors of the Cornell University football team's uniforms. To this day, the layout of the can, with its red and white design and the metallic gold medal seal from the 1900 Paris Exhibition, has changed very little.
Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, displayed in the Museum of Modern Art, New York
Campbell Soup became one of largest food companies in the world under the leadership of William Beverly Murphy. He was elected executive vice president of Campbell Soup in 1949 and was president and CEO from 1953 to 1972. While at Campbell's Soup Company, he took the corporation public and increased its brand portfolio to include Pepperidge Farm's breads, cookies, and crackers, Franco-American's gravies and pastas, V8 vegetable juices, Swanson broths, and Godiva's chocolates.
Campbell Soup invested heavily in advertising since its inception, and many of its promotional campaigns have proven value in the Americana collectible advertising market. Perhaps best known are the "Campbell Kids" who though color scheme represented the recognizable soup. Ronald Reagan was a spokesman for V8 when it was first introduced. A "pretty groovy deal" in 1968 offered a paper Souper Dress available for $1.00 and two labels. Also produced were Campbell's Menu Books and Help for the Hostess series of cookbooks. One of the longest lasting recipes, but certainly odd to modern tastebuds, is the recipe for a maroon colored Tomato Soup Cake.
some slogans:
"m'm m'm good"
"look for the red and white label"
this is very impressive when you are standing directly in front of it. the piece covers a large wall in moma, ny.
2004 limited edition soup cans. celebrated andy warhol's americana / pop art.
When the art critic G.R. Swenson asked Warhol in 1963 why he painted soup cans, the artist replied, "I used to drink it, I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years.
In Pop Art
The ubiquitous red-and-white icon became fodder for Andy Warhol, the 1960s pop counter-culture artist, in his famous series of iconic Campbell's Soup Can images from 1962 to 1968. Each can, hand painted to perfection and almost machine like in quality glorified the simplistic white and red cans with their gold seal as an American icon. Every detail was considered just as the original down to the gold and black script of the word ‘SOUP’ to the simple red print of each flavor. These images are some of the artist's best work, many of which are on display at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
To celebrate this, in 2004, the company released a series of four limited edition cans, with different labels than the regular red and white. The new ones were in silkscreen colors, the top half being one shade and bottom another. Orange and pink were one combination, and shades of blue another. This marked one of the few times thus far in the company's 100+ year history that the labels have deviated from their standard look.
{http://en.wikipedia.org}
