Two partners and a shopping plaza in Mayfield Heights.

OfficeMax began in northeast Ohio in 1988, and it had two founders. The Cleveland Jewish News, in a history of the company published on 18 November 2011, said that Bob Hurwitz, then a partner in the Cleveland firm PHD, began looking into the idea of an office-supply superstore in 1987 and spent months lining up investors. Early in 1988 a colleague suggested Michael Feuer, who had just left Fabri-Centers of America, the fabric retailer now known as Jo-Ann. Feuer’s agreement to become president and chief operating officer took effect on 1 April 1988, while Hurwitz remained executive chairman and chief executive; the paper said both men “would become recognized as co-founders.” English Wikipedia gives the same date and names Cleveland as the place of founding.

The name came out of those first conversations. According to the Cleveland Jewish News, Hurwitz and Feuer brainstormed about what to call the company at one of their early meetings and “agreed on OfficeMax.” The paper also said that the architect Gerald Herschman was hired to design the original store.

That first store opened on 5 July 1988 in the Golden Gate shopping plaza in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, in a space owned by the developer Forest City. Hurwitz told the paper that he chose the site because it sat close to the area’s main east–west and north–south highways. Within a year, the paper said, the chain had stores in Ohio and Michigan. Hurwitz left the company in 1993, and Feuer then became chairman and chief executive, according to English Wikipedia.

The original Mayfield Heights store closed on 16 May 2015, English Wikipedia says.

Mergers, Kmart and a fight over “Max.”

OfficeMax grew through deals. In February 1990 the trade paper Discount Store News reported that OfficeMax, then based in Solon, Ohio, and Office World, of Great Neck, New York, had agreed to merge their office-supply superstore chains under the OfficeMax name. English Wikipedia adds that the discount retailer Kmart took a stake in OfficeMax in 1990 in exchange for its Office Square stores, raised that stake to a majority in 1991, and sold down its holding from 1995, when OfficeMax became a separately listed company on the New York Stock Exchange, based in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Wikipedia also says OfficeMax bought further regional chains in the early 1990s, among them BizMart in 1993, and the Canadian office-supply business Grand & Toy in 1996.

The company guarded its name. English Wikipedia says OfficeMax filed trademark-infringement suits over the use of “Max” against Med Max and against Circuit City for its CarMax used-car business. The same article describes store formats that used the name, such as a FurnitureMax store-within-a-store tested in the Cleveland market in 1994 and a smaller OfficeMax PDQ format tested in Woodmere, Ohio, in 1998, and names the company’s distribution centers “PowerMax.”

In July 2003 the Chicago Tribune reported that Boise Cascade had agreed to acquire OfficeMax, as part of an effort to rely less on papermaking. A year later Boise Cascade sold its paper, forest-products and timberland businesses to a new company formed by the private-equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners. A July 2004 announcement from the law firm Kirkland & Ellis, which represented Madison Dearborn, said that once that sale closed, Boise Cascade Corporation would change its own name to OfficeMax, Inc., trade under the ticker OMX and move its headquarters to Itasca, Illinois. English Wikipedia says the company later had its headquarters in Naperville, Illinois.

Fascia, aisles and the house range.

An office-supply store is read from the car park before it is read from the shelf. The fascia carries the name in one or two colours, sized for a passing driver, and the same letterforms then reappear on entrance doors, trolleys, shopping baskets and staff uniforms. Inside, the identity shifts from shout to wayfinding: aisle blades and hanging signs label broad categories such as paper, ink, furniture and technology, and they rely on a consistent typeface, a short colour code and generous contrast so that a shopper can scan a long aisle quickly.

Private-label packaging is where a retailer’s graphic system does most of its quiet work. Reams of copy paper, boxes of pens, folders and storage boxes sit beside branded goods, so the house range tends to use a fixed grid, a recognisable colour band and plain product photography to read as a family from across the aisle. The print-and-copy counter adds another layer: service menus, order forms, sample walls of business cards and banners, and proof sheets all need to look like the same company as the fascia outside.

A holiday website, then a shared owner.

OfficeMax’s advertising includes a holiday website. In December 2006 the Associated Press reported that the company had launched a holiday campaign on its website that let visitors put their own faces, or their friends’, onto dancing elves: “Elf Yourself.” English Wikipedia says the site was built by the agency Evolution Bureau (EVB) working with the New York company Toy, which OfficeMax had hired for its holiday websites, and Creativity, the Advertising Age title, reported that EVB’s Jason Zada directed it. Wikipedia says the campaign returned in later seasons, with the animation studio JibJab as a partner from 2008.

That merger was announced on 20 February 2013 and completed on 5 November 2013, when OfficeMax and Office Depot combined under the name Office Depot, Inc., according to the companies’ announcement, which listed OfficeMax and OfficeMax Grand & Toy among the combined company’s brands. In December 2013 the Sun Sentinel reported that the company had chosen Boca Raton, Florida, as its headquarters, rather than OfficeMax’s base in Naperville, and described OfficeMax as, for the time being, an Office Depot subsidiary. Since then, English Wikipedia says, many stores have kept the OfficeMax name, while others have been rebranded as Office Depot.

OfficeMax still appears on store fronts. On 11 December 2025 the trade publication The Recycler reported that Atlas Holdings had completed its acquisition of The ODP Corporation, Office Depot’s parent, and that the retail business includes the Office Depot and OfficeMax stores in the United States and Canada. Atlas Holdings has owned the OfficeMax brand, through The ODP Corporation, since December 2025.

English Wikipedia says OfficeMax New Zealand was bought by Platinum Equity in 2018 and closed its New Zealand shops in August 2020 to trade online.

For a design guide, OfficeMax shows how a store name can outlast the company that coined it and live on as one of two fascias under a single owner. Compare Office Depot, the chain it merged with, and Staples, the other office-supply chain of that era. For this guide we use navy, red and white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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