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| Other Beer brands: Miller Lite, Sapporo |
From the outset Walter favored a client-driven approach, becoming one of the first to apply consumer research to package design. During the early 1950s Walter, wearing a white lab coat, began to take his packaging and label designs into supermarkets to solicit in-store responses from shoppers. By physically going into stores and speaking directly to customers, Walter became keenly aware of the significance of packaging as a marketing component. He realized that packages needed to identify old favourites or entice consumers to try new or improved products.7
In 1951, Walter moved his growing company to a larger office space at 143 Bush Street, where he attracted a loyal talent pool of commercial designers and artists.8 Meanwhile, Walter’s success with beer labels continued. In 1952 he was invited to deliver the keynote address at the annual meeting of the Brewers Association of America (previously the Small Brewers Association), held in Chicago. In “Gentlemen, Your Label is Showing. Is It Selling Beer for You?” he emphasized the importance of a well-designed label for sales and brand recognition, outlining the steps for creating such a design.
That same year Walter became a founding member of the newly formed Packaging Designers’ Council (PDC). At a time when most industrial design firms were headquartered in New York or Chicago, Walter’s membership in the PDC put him in an ideal position to promote his services nationally-primarily as an underdog. Two years later he boldly declared in a press release, “New York’s title as the top design city in the nation is being challenged by San Francisco. Landor has been bringing a fresh western approach and new imagination to the field of design.”9 For Walter no two projects were alike; there was no cookie-cutter approach to design at WL&A.