Walter Landor

S and W Fine Foods (founded in San Francisco in 1896), became one of Landor’s first major clients when he began designing packaging for them in 1941. In 2007, S and W was purchased by Del Monte Foods, another major client of Landor Associates.

In addition to packaging and logo designs, Landor also worked in interior design. From the late 1940s to the early 1950s, Landor was engaged in styling Joseph Magnin department stores, including one in San Mateo. The first Joseph Magnin department store was founded in San Francisco in 1913, and at one point there were as many as 16 stores throughout San Francisco and the greater Bay Area (as well as several others throughout the rest of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Hawaii). The company succumbed to bankruptcy and closed all stores in 1984. Shown here are the interiors of a store in San Mateo, designed by Landor.

Levi Strauss & Co. was founded in San Francisco in 1853. Almost 170 years later, the company remains headquartered in San Francisco, at Levi’s Plaza in the Telegraph Hill neighborhood. The iconic Levi’s “batwing” logo, still in use today, was designed by Landor in 1967. The ”batwing” shape is a subtle nod to the shape of the stitching on the back pockets of Levi’s jeans.

From its founding in 1886 until 2015, Del Monte Foods was headquartered in San Francisco. The cannery known as Del Monte Plant No. 1 was built in the Fisherman’s Wharf area of San Francisco in 1907 and quickly became the then largest fruit and vegetable cannery in the world.

“Both the graphic design and the color scheme (2, 7) were inspired by the city’s sunsets and golden poppies and are intended to be warm and friendly.”

”According to Landor, the design also subtly evokes images of San Francisco- its hills, bridges, even the crookedest street in the world, Lombard Street. The continuous flow of the design was meant to suggest Muni’s comprehensive day and night service.”

Spade & Archer’s 50 Maps of San Francisco, published in 1991, was a guidebook to the SF Bay Area that featured maps created by prominent Bay Area figures. Other maps in the book included a guide to “Gay SF” by author Armistead Maupin, and a guide to local farmers markets by chef Alice Waters. Shown here is Walter Landor’s guide to the Exploratorium at its former location in the Palace of Fine Arts. The Exploratorium moved to the Embarcadero in 2013.

Landor collaborated with a group of designers to produce Walter Landor’s San Francisco Little Black Book, which highlights some of the designers’ personal favorite “sights and tastes” of San Francisco.

SF Focus: Do you think you could have accomplished what you did with the same flair in any city other than San Francisco?
Landor: I doubt it.
SFF: Why is that?
L: Well, we have in San Francisco the most culturally varied population. We have an ideal climate that excites you every morning. We have a way of spending our evenings with so many choices. What more does a human being need? The stimulation that I have gotten from this city from the beginning comes from all over the world, from the different cultures and races that surround us.
SFF: Can you compare the energy, flavor, and creativity of San Francisco to New York and Los Angeles?
L: Well, creative work like the design business requires cohesiveness among people... San Francisco has become a creative center because people gather after work for an hour or two, because there are continuous stimuli as you walk around. In San Francisco, you have experiences. In New York you have meetings.
- Interview with Walter Landor, San Francisco Focus Magazine, 1992