A paper company’s school-supply line.

Five Star comes out of the school-supply business of Mead, a paper company with roots in Dayton, Ohio. English Wikipedia, citing a 1946 newspaper report on the company’s centenary, dates the business to 1846, when it began under the name Ells, Claflin & Co.; the International Directory of Company Histories (1998) names Colonel Daniel Mead and his partners as its founders and says the firm made book and other printing papers at a mill in Dayton, as our Mead guide sets out. In 1966, Wikipedia says, citing newspaper reports from that year, Mead acquired Westab, a school-supply company whose products included the Big Chief tablet, the Spiral Notebook brand and Hytone notebooks.

The 1998 Directory lists Mead School & Office Products among the corporation’s principal divisions and describes Mead as a maker and distributor of school supplies in the United States and Canada. Five Star belongs to that school-supply business, alongside the Mead notebooks and the Trapper Keeper binder. In ACCO Brands’ 2016 press releases, the brand’s web address was meadfivestar.com, placing the two names side by side.

The corporate parent changed shape in the 2000s. English Wikipedia says MeadWestvaco was formed in January 2002 through a merger between The Mead Corporation of Dayton and Westvaco, a merger the Wall Street Journal reported as agreed in August 2001. The new company made packaging, specialty papers, specialty chemicals and consumer and office products, and Wikipedia says it moved its headquarters to Richmond, Virginia, in February 2006 and began using MWV as its brand in 2008, while keeping MeadWestvaco as its legal name. Archived copies of the Mead website show the arrangement: a brands page captured in December 2008 lists Five Star beside Trapper and Mead, describing it as a range of notebooks, binders and accessories, and a Five Star page captured in February 2011 carries a copyright line for MeadWestvaco Corporation dated 2010.

The 2011 page also shows how the brand was being sold to students at the time. It promoted the Five Star Flex Hybrid NoteBinder, described as part binder and part notebook, invited visitors to play a game about forming a band and touring, and offered points in a rewards scheme called Mead Money Madness for every Five Star product bought.

Covers, patterns and a hybrid binder.

Five Star’s visual identity is carried on the covers of its notebooks and binders, and ACCO’s releases present new cover designs as part of each year’s back-to-school range. Two press releases issued by ACCO Brands through PR Newswire on 17 May 2016, both datelined Kettering, Ohio, set out the year’s back-to-school ranges. One introduced the Five Star Style collection, which the company said used sketched, expressive line work drawn from painterly brush strokes, and geometric patterns redrawn in a modern way with bright colours. The same release described Five Star Graphics, a line that ran from camouflage to plaid with digital pixel effects layered in bright or contrasting colours, intended for both boys and girls.

The 2016 Style range, the company said, covered the Flex Hybrid NoteBinder, expanding files, folders, binders, pencil pouches, Advance and spiral notebooks, planners and composition books.

The second release concentrated on product design. It described the Flex Hybrid NoteBinder as something that acts like a notebook and works like a binder, with a plastic cover that folds over to lie flat and what the company called patented TechLock rings that open so that paper and dividers can be added. The NoteBinder came with NotePocket and NoteProtector dividers and with college-ruled and quad-ruled paper, in solid colours or designs. The same release introduced Five Star Reinforced Filler Paper, loose-leaf paper with triangle-shaped holes that the company described as patent-pending.

The product names in the releases — NoteBinder, NotePocket, NoteProtector, TechLock — are compound words written with a capital letter in the middle, and each is printed in the releases with a registered-trademark sign, as are the names Five Star, Mead and Advance. The releases close with a description of ACCO Brands and a list of its brands, in which Five Star appears beside AT-A-GLANCE, Day-Timer, GBC, Hilroy, Kensington, Mead, Quartet, Swingline, Tilibra and Wilson Jones.

Design and documentation.

Greeting cards, tape and notebooks are everyday objects that most people buy without much thought, and that is exactly why their packaging and covers have to work hard. A card is usually chosen in a few seconds at a rack, so the back of the card, where the publisher’s name and mark sit, becomes a quiet signature that travels with every one sold. A roll of tape is often bought from a peg or a shelf beside dozens of similar rolls, and the core, the label and the colour of the roll itself carry much of the name.

A notebook brand works differently again: its cover is handled every day for months, so a name printed on that cover is carried in bags, on desks and in classrooms long after it was bought. Across all three categories, the companies behind familiar names may have been bought, merged or renamed several times, and the products may be made far from where the name began.

Each guide in this group separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

An ACCO Brands name since 2012.

The current owner arrived in 2012. On 1 May 2012, the trade publication Consumer Goods Technology reported, ACCO Brands Corporation completed its merger with MeadWestvaco’s Consumer & Office Products business. The deal brought Mead, Five Star, Trapper Keeper, AT-A-GLANCE, Cambridge, Day Runner, Hilroy, Tilibra and Grafons into ACCO’s portfolio. ACCO’s chairman and chief executive at the time, Robert J. Keller, was quoted welcoming “new colleagues from the legacy Mead business” into the company.

English Wikipedia says ACCO traces its name to the American Clip Company, founded in 1903 by Fred J. Kline, and that the present corporation dates from 2005; it gives the company’s headquarters as Lake Zurich, Illinois, and lists Five Star among its principal brands beside AT-A-GLANCE, Kensington, Leitz, Mead, Quartet, Rapid, Rexel, Swingline, Tilibra, Wilson Jones and PowerA. After the merger, ACCO’s school and planning releases for the Mead and Five Star brands carried a Kettering, Ohio, dateline in 2016.

A September 2017 post on the union-focused UCOMM Blog, by Kate Hogan, said members of Communications Workers of America Local 14164 worked at ACCO’s manufacturing plant in Sidney, New York, where brands including Mead, Five Star, AT-A-GLANCE and Day-Timer were made. The same post placed ACCO’s other manufacturing plants at that time in California, Mississippi, Ohio and Colorado.

The brand’s web pages have sat under Mead’s web addresses: archived copies show Five Star pages at meadonline.com in the MeadWestvaco years, and ACCO’s 2016 releases sent readers to meadfivestar.com for product videos and tips.

For a design guide, Five Star shows how a name can stay fixed while the covers around it change every school year — compare its sister brands Mead and Trapper Keeper. For this guide we use cover navy, star red and wire grey with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Five Star’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.