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Mid-Century Corporate Identity

c. 1950–1970

Design Movements · EXPLORE

Illustration for Mid-Century Corporate Identity

As American business went global, designers like Paul Rand, Saul Bass, and Ivan Chermayeff showed that a company could be recognized by a single mark — a slashed IBM, a spiraling Chase octagon, a leaping cat for Jaws.

This era established corporate identity design as a discipline: research, strategy, and a simple, memorable symbol applied consistently across everything a company touched.