People can spot a Crate & Barrel bag from a glance halfway down the block.
Adman Tom Shortlidge is to thank for the distinctive design.
“I can point to four or five people who really made the company a success in the early days and Tom was definitely one of them,” said Crate & Barrel co-founder Gordon Segal.
Their relationship was a bit roundabout.
Shortly after graduating from the University of Kansas with a graphic design degree, Mr. Shortlidge took a job with at Young and Rubicam, an ad firm now known as VMLY&R. To earn extra cash, he also got a job as floor salesman with Crate & Barrel.
It was 1968. The homewares store had been open for six years on Wells Street in Old Town and was doing well, but still a ways off from the behemoth it would become in the ensuing decades.
“I was looking to redo our logo and packaging and was meeting with known designers and I was very frustrated because they couldn’t quite catch what we were,” recalled Segal.
“And I remember having a conversation with Tom and telling him ‘They just don’t get it,’” he said.
Mr. Shortlidge offered to try his hand.
“He took a few months and came back to me and I immediately said ‘Tom, that’s it.’”
Mr. Shortlidge went on to design the company’s print ads, catalogues and store signage in a professional relationship with Segal that lasted more than 30 years.
Mr. Shortlidge died Jan. 20 from cancer. He was 80.
The minimal yet elegant and bold logo uses Helvetica typeface, but Mr. Shortlidge customized the “C” in Crate & Barrel, softening it to a near perfect circle. He set the logo on packaging to bend around the corner of boxes and bags. Mr. Shortlidge was of Norwegian heritage and was influenced by Scandinavian designs.
“He set a tonal quality for the company that became the underpinning of the store designers who worked for me,” Segal said. “It was the imagery of who we were. I think it was very important to Crate & Barrel’s success.”
Mr. Shortlidge went on to work as an executive and creative director for several ad agencies, including N.W. Ayer Chicago, and Hackenberg, Normann & Partners.
His creative vision influenced ads for everything from beer and bologna to contact lenses and hotels. His clients included Adidas, Allied Van Lines, G. Heileman Brewing, Miller Brewing, Pabst Brewing, John Deere and Sears, where he created “The Softer Side of Sears” campaign.
His work received a number of advertising and design awards, including several Clio awards, considered the Oscars of advertising.
“He loved architecture and he loved type and a clean aesthetic, but still had a kind of romantic edge to that,” said Mr. Shortlidge’s wife, Carole Shortlidge. “And he was a perfectionist, he could spend days writing an email to a friend. He had a sense of bringing the best he could to everything he did.”
Mr. Shortlidge, who worked in both print and film advertising, was a longtime Evanston resident. He moved to Lakeside, Mich., after he retired.
“He started seeing paintings in his dreams so he decided it was time retire and and pursue that,” his wife said.
He enrolled at the School of the Art Institute in order to pursue painting and built an art studio in his winter home in Tucson, Arizona.
Mr. Shortlidge was born Nov. 19, 1943, and, because his father served in the military, moved around a lot until his family settled in Park Ridge when he was a teenager. He graduated from Maine East High School.
He also loved golf and reading, especially biographies on U.S. presidents.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Shortlidge is survived by his daughter Chelsea Comer Shortlidge and his son Adam Shortlidge.
Family plans to host a celebration of life this summer.
