PBA Galleries

Typed Document Signed on Landor's simple stationery, San Francisco, Sept. 1, 1941. 1 pg. Collaboration Agreement with Lowell Groves on the presentation of an interior design for rooms in the new NBC Building, O’Farrell and Taylor Streets, San Francisco.

German-born and British educated, 26 year-old Landor had come to America in 1939 on the British design team for the New York World’s Fair. After becoming Associate Professor at the California College of Arts and Crafts,(where he met the young woman he would soon marry), he decided to settle in San Francisco. In partnership with Groves, then a young interior decorator. Their unsuccessful proposal for design of the new NBC Building (which included vague plans for the future medium of television) must have been one of Landor’s last efforts before he began working as Landor Associates, destined to become an internationally famous firm, founded that year by Landor and his wife working from the living room of their Russian Hill apartment.

Landor would in time become a legend of commercial design, famous for devising classic brands for such diverse companies as Coca Cola, Levi Strauss, General Electric and Shell Oil. Before his death in 1995, he would see the Smithsonian establish a permanent collection of his designs and packaging. This rare letter, more than 50 years earlier, represents the very beginning of his illustrious career.