Brands And Chilean Graphic Heritage In The 20th Century: An Approach To The Case Of The McKay Brand

Abstract

In this article, we intend to analyze the McKay brand from 1892, the year the company was founded, to 1988, when the owning family sold it to Nestlé Chile. The McKay brand, given its iconic condition in the dry biscuit or cookie category, constitutes a revealing example of the transformations that graphic design underwent in Chile, and the retrospective study of the brand’s development, can be considered a significant contribution to understanding our visual heritage. The analysis of the graphic pieces was carried out from a qualitative approach, through which we sought to deepen into the meaning of the pieces
from two dimensions: the iconic-textual sense and the context of production and circulation of the pieces. Among the main results, we can point out three relevant aspects: one, the development of the McKay brand cannot be understood without taking into consideration the immigrant status of its founder and the cultural value associated with the know-how at the level of products and brand creation; two, the iconography related to the brand was a reflection of the historical-cultural context in which it developed and the transformations that Chile experienced as a country; and three, McKay’s permanence
and leadership over time can be explained by the entrepreneurial talent of its owners, as well as their ability to interpret the trends of that time through their graphic-communicational proposals.