Heller × Pan Am

Announced May 11, 1971, at the Pan Am Building on Park Avenue, the Max 747 was Heller's first commission in its opening year and Pan Am's attempt to make economy dining on the 747 look designed rather than catered. The dining service department gave the Vignellis one number: the carts ran trays on side rails at a pitch of two and a half inches, and anything taller jammed at the loading door. Vignelli converted it to 64 mm and treated it as the grid.

Every piece of Max 1 was redrawn so that each lid on the tray finishes flush in a single flat plane at 64 mm. The cup lid inverts into a saucer, and the bowl lids serve as side plates. Melamine could not survive a galley oven, so the main course travels in a satin aluminium casserole from Pan Am's existing stock, re-pressed to Max's rounded square. Pan Am then asked for the Max walls to be thinned. They went from solid to 2.5 mm with ribs underneath, which the airline calculated at 11 tons a year across the fleet. The colour rule was the airline's: blue lids for hot, white for cold, so crew could read a cart without lifting anything.

Each rim carries a 1.5 mm undercut that snaps shut under thumb pressure. On a proving flight out of Gander in March, the only item to move was a butter pat. Stewardesses called the service 'the lasagne'.

Heller sold a retail version, with a melamine dish in place of the casserole, through Bloomingdale's and the Museum of Modern Art shop from that autumn. The museum added a set to its collection in 1972. It still has the coffee ring from Gander.