Lester Beall: A Significant American Corporate Identity Program

Lester Beall closed his New York office in 1955 and worked from a farm in Brookfield Center, Connecticut. This 18-page profile covers the work of his studio: trade exhibits, packaging, trademarks and identity programs for Caterpillar, International Paper, Rohm and Haas, Martin Aircraft and Connecticut General Life Insurance. The Connecticut General Style Book of 1958 gets the most attention. The author calls it an early example of a corporate identity standards manual, meaning a bound set of instructions for how the company's letterhead, forms and publications should look. Beall is grouped with Paul Rand, Herbert Bayer, Will Burtin and Ladislav Sutnar, designers who made trademark work systematic between the early 1950s and the late 1960s.