Bloomingdales packaging [back view]

Photograph of bags and boxes for Bloomingdale's department store.

Bloomingdale’s department store was celebrating their 100th anniversary in 1972 and hired Massimo Vignelli to give them a new graphic identity. This new identity included a custom typeface, Bloomingtype, which combines the typefaces Avant Garde and Futura.

Text from design: Vignelli exhibition label:
Bloomingdale’s, Graphic and Packaging Program, New York, 1972.
The concept we came up with for Bloomingdale’s packaging program was that of portraying and recollecting the shopping experience particular to this extraordinary department store. Boxes of different solid colors are distribute throughout the areas of the store. Only an elastic band carries the store name. The box is identified as it leaves the store, but once at home, the band gets discarded and the box can be used again as a plain beautiful container for storage.

The shopping bags are divided into two categories: permanent and temporary. The first, plain with the store name, relates to the graphic program; the second differs from the program as much as possible, portraying the fashions and suggesting a sense of change, or else promoting the store’s special programs. We call this approach “identification without branding.”