Overview
Container Corporation of America
Quick Reference
(CCA)
(established 1926)
This leading American packaging manufacturing company distinguished itself through its high premium on design and high‐quality advertising. Much of the impetus for this came from the company's founder Walter Paepcke, whose commitment to progressive design thinking was underlined by his support for the Institute of Design, Chicago, and Aspen International Design Conference, both of which were significantly influenced by European Modernism. The appointment of Egbert Jacobsen as director of design at CCA in 1936 was a landmark, followed by the development of an effective company Logotype and the institution of a positive corporate identity programme. Many well‐known European artists and designers were commissioned by the company, including A. M. Cassandre, Herbert Bayer, László Moholy‐Nagy, Jean Carlu, Fernand Léger, Gyorgy Kepes, and Herbert Matter. A number of notable advertising campaigns ensued, including the wartime ‘Paperboard Goes to War’ (Jacobsen, Carlu, and Matter) and ‘Great Ideas of Western Men (1950). CCA's corporate identity was updated in 1957 by the design director Ralph Eckerstrom, with further visual, particularly typographic, changes being enacted in the following decade by John Massey, who became design and advertising manager in 1961 and replaced Eckerstrom as design director in 1964. In 1967, further underlining CCA's commitment to design innovation, Massey established a subsidiary for the development of corporate identity schemes for external clients, the Centre for Advanced Research in Design.
