box vox

Art & Politics of Prescription Pill Bottles

Got an email from MoveOn.org that included this tiny photo of wheelbarrows full of prescription pill bottles. It’s a good example of how packaging can be used as a political symbol. Really, I guess it’s a symbol of health care (or consumption of health care), but in the sense that health care has become a politicized issue, I figure these prescription pill bottles are also a political symbol. There are supposed to be 20,000 of them and each one contains a written message (a message in a bottle) in support of Dawn Smith who has been denied coverage by CIGNA for treatment of her brain tumor. I was surprised not to be able to find other, larger photos of this image. Quantity is powerful and, had it been up to me, I might have wanted to make more of this image. (The video posted yesterday now seems to be doing this.)

On the other hand, maybe 20,000 pill bottles is not really “on point” for their message since Dawn is being denied medical treatment. Mass quantities of pill bottles might tend to suggest the opposite. So many pill bottles implies a prolonged, ongoing treatment of a chronic illness or condition. The pills that you must take for the rest of your life—in order to go on living. And wheelbarrows full of prescription pill bottles, perhaps, speak more to drug company profits—(rather than to insurance company profits).

Another thing that inevitably comes to mind (when you see huge amounts empty packaging) is consumer waste. I’ve written before about my own negative feelings as a consumer of diabetic supplies. Every time I use up another small canister of test strips (or other diabetic supply that I will presumably be using every day for the foreseeable future)—I feel a certain remorse about the packaging waste. Considering Dawn Smith’s situation, I know that I should count myself lucky that my health insurance continues to pay for my medicine and supplies. And yet glimpsing the cost that my insurance company actually shells out for all these supplies, never fails to give me anxiety about how much longer it might continue to do so. It doesn’t strike me as sustainable.

On left: “Corporate DNA” a helix shaped sculpture by Ron Jones; on right: Rocky Stroup’s “Borrowed Time (13 Years of Pill Poppin’)”

Jean Shin’s “Chemical Balance”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Brendan Coyle's Mortal Coil Pack

It may be a symptom of my own obsessive marginalia, but after attending the “Verfall: Decadence and Decay” show this summer (curated by Ginger Shulick) the piece that really stuck with me was artist/performance artist, Brendan Coyle’s polybagged vampire teeth (upper left) with an “Eternal Life” religious tract as the header card. According to Coyle, “It was kind of like a visual caption or accompanying piece” to his larger “Candy Corpse”—(a candy-colored crime scene with high-fructose body parts, licorice string viscera and packaging evidence of candy & cigarette consumption).

What I like so much about the ‘eternal life’ polybag, is the logic and simplicity of the combination. Summing up in one gesture all that is hopeful, yet creepy about immortality. (Brendan Coyle’s mortal/immortal-coil pack.) It also set me to thinking about the hackneyed graphics of religious tracts, in general, and I even found a nice Flickr Set of them: here —(including a Spanish version of the one Coyle used.

The “sugar power” sugar cube is a bit of “found” packaging that Coyle had incorporated into an earlier performance piece and suggestive of yet another good area of arcane packaging exploration: the sugar cube.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

IlliteRAT with Alpha-bits

IlliteRAT ©1976 David Wilder (starring my pet rat, Lucky)

Not the first time we’ve mentioned rats (or mice) here on box vox and, as previously disclosed, I myself, once had a pet rat. Given to me by another rodent-loving classmate at RISD, “Lucky” played a starring role in my friend, David Wilder’s video, illiteRAT. Hadn’t seen this tape in over 30 years, but I think its conceptual rigor still holds up.

And it was nice for me to see the little feller again, after all this time. (I don’t really remember what the cereal box looked like that Lucky’s Alpha-bits came in. Lets just say, for arguments sake, that it was the one on the left—photo from The Imaginary World—with the mouth-shaped, faux die cut window.)

In my last year at school, I lived in an office building in downtown Providence where I’d let Lucky scamper, dog-like, about the loft. It’s surprising how frisky a rat can be.

I recall eating a lot of ice-cream cones one Summer. (This was before I found out I was diabetic.) I got into a habit of methodically reducing the size of the ice-cream cone—keeping it in classic proportions—until I had formed a miniature, rat-size ice-cream cone. This, I would then present to Lucky and he’d grab it in his hands and eagerly finish it off. (Sort of fractal, now that I think of it...)

Sadly, my free-range policy of giving Lucky the run of the place, ultimately led to his demise. Turned out there were dusty old trays of rat poison under the radiators, that I didn’t know were there.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

S.A.P. CD Packaging

Finally coming in the home stretch of the “Songs About Packaging” project. Recording is now all done and packaging is almost done. I went with DIY packaging with re-purposed materials from my own personal recycling bin. Ties into the whole “Litter Rock” gestalt of the project and dovetails nicely with the limitations of my budget.

I expect to have enough of them assembled in time to distribute them for free at the landfill gig. (If you’re going to be in NY area on Saturday, Sept. 26th and would like to attend, follow this link for more info.)

CD label and side sticker are ink-jet printed on kraft paper. The white UPC is a separate label. I got my bona-fide UPC number via CD Baby. (Since I don’t expect to be putting out enough products to justify paying the $760 fee to GS1 for my own “company prefix number” any time soon.) I figure I might as well stick with these labor-intensive, DIY handmade covers for the foreseeable future. If S.A.P. ever threatens to go platinum or anything, I’ll re-evaluate at that time...

Lyric booklet is that kind of 8-page booklet that you can make from a single sheet of letter-sized paper. (Another ridiculously labor-intensive part of the project.)

(One more “product shot” after the fold...)

Msxi's Packaging Parables

Msxi is a London-based illustrator who sent us a link to her website. “Junk Food Benny” is her cautionary tale about snack food packaging and childhood obesity. (Maybe not just childhood obesity, in view of the admonishing Mum in panel #5.) Her story line seems particularly pertinent to proposals being considered here in the U.S. (Federal “Soda Tax” and NY State “Obesity Tax” for example.)

I have only the first 8 of 11 panels above. (Note: the scary anthro-packets in panel #3.) To find out how this story turns out, you will need to go to Msxi’s website. 

(Another of Msxi’s packaging-related illustrations, after the fold...)

Packaging & Moral Turpitude

While searching online for photos of Timberland packaging (to illustrate my interview with Buying In author, Rob Walker) I found this photo on the NYC EMS blog. Ostensibly a 2007 photo* of a “filthy” Brooklyn apartment in which police, looking for “an alleged gang member and convicted felon,” instead found an infant in a Timberland shoe box.

Cops removed a 4-day-old baby from a filthy Brooklyn apartment after finding the girl tucked into a Timberland shoe box, police said.

from The NY Daily News, September 7, 2007

This sort of story has a way of telegraphing what we are supposed to think about the people who would live in such a place. If your home is described as “filthy” or “squalid” by the news media, the public will tend to judge you according.

If no crime has been committed (and no child’s welfare has been endangered) then your tendency to live like the Collyer brothers is considered your own [psychological] problem. If you are a “hoarder” of this type, the media still regards you with horrid fascination, but Oprah will at least come and help you clean up. (For example: here.)

If something illegal is going on, however, then your messy surroundings will serve as confirmation of some deeper moral turpitude. Since 30% of our trash is discarded product PACKAGING, squalid scenes of moral turpitude (like the photo above) will invariably include some packaging. While some companies might happily pay for certain types of product placement on the nightly news, this story of a baby found in one of their shoe boxes is probably not the sort of product placement that Timberland would seek out. Although the Timberland shoe box in question does not appear to be in the kitchen, there are plenty of other recognizable packages to be spotted in the photo above: Pepsi, Oreo, JVC, Tower Records, Nabisco Wheat Thins, Coca Cola, and Loony Tunes. If it were a fictional context, then these companies might have some recourse to keep their brands out of the story line. (See: product displacement) Controlling their brand images in real life is more difficult. If you sell a lot of products, then some of your product packaging is bound to wind up on the floors of “filthy” apartments.

Personally, I am no neatnik. So it’s worrisome to me what might be written, if I ever gave the authorities cause to search my home/office. I have lots of empty packages all around. (...and a growing collection of empty blood glucose test-strip canisters.) How would I be portrayed by the media? Would my packaging hodge-podge be taken as a lovable, Oscar Madison sort of thing? Or would it seem like something more sinister?

Here on Staten Island, near Silver Lake Park where I jog most mornings, a woman was recently murdered and her apartment burned. (by her underage boyfriend, as it turns out) How did the Staten Island Advance describe her apartment?

“Ms. Adams, a diabetic, had medication bottles strewn throughout her modestly-furnished apartment...”

from The Staten Island Advance, November 24, 2008

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

*Possibly, the camera’s date was not set correctly when this Brooklyn apartment was photographed in 2007—(explaining the 2.17.2000 “date code” in the corner).

Paradigm Pump Packaging

I’ve recently upgraded my insulin pump[1] and related diabetic paraphernalia and, although I’m pretty jazzed about it, this being box vox, we must begin with a packaging critique. First of all, MiniMed/Medtronic’s brand name—“Paradigm”—is an embarrassment.

paradigm — pretentious and overused term for a way of thinking. Often used with the erroneous assumption that “paradigms” are mutually exclusive, and often assuming that one paradigm is inherently superior to all others.

from Bjarne Stroustrup’s C++ Glossary

My second issue: why are these medical devices being packaged in retail-style boxes? Insulin pumps are obtained through a doctor’s prescription and only then if your insurance company deems it a medical necessity.

It’s not really the sort of item that you pick up on a shelf of your local pharmacy, read the product features on the box and then decide whether or not you’d like to purchase it.

But, okay. Let’s talk about the brand promise. These 3 boxes (for insulin pump, 10 glucose sensors, and a wireless transmitter) are all parts of the same product-line/system. All three appear to be making a lifestyle promise about eating sweets. The glucose sensor box shows a young woman happily eating cake. The insulin pump box shows another woman eating something in a bowl with strawberries. And the transmitter box—(the one that I most identify with)—shows us a slim, grey-haired guy kicking back in an Eames-style chair, but also shows a smaller picture of the same guy grinning at an ice cream cone. Clearly eating sweets is big deal for us diabetics. MiniMed’s brand promise, therefore, is something along the lines of, “Diabetics: let them eat cake.”

(More about the boxes and what they contain, after the jump...)

20cL Whiskey Bottles

I like the look of these 20cL mini bottles of whisky from Glasgow-based Douglas Laing & Co. Ltd.

Maybe it’s a diabetic thing, but they caught my eye on account of their resemblance to the crimped vials that injectable medicines (like insulin) usually come in. Also, the labels are rather prescription-like. Not so far-fetched really, since whisky does, after all, have a history of being used for “medicinal purposes.”

But their web site explains that the labels are actually based on hand-marked, distillery sample bottles:

“Replicating the sample bottles sent to us from stock held at the Distilleries—these wee 20cl bottles appear to have been hand written by one of the team pulling the sample (full marks for legibility!)”

Douglas Laing & Co. Ltd.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Diabetic Jewelry

Back in March I wrote a post about diabetic packaging, and ever since then I’ve been saving up my test strip canisters, thinking I might be able to make them into something. Maybe a new “green” product of some sort.

Initially, what I had in mind was something more polyhedral, but I also wanted to use the lids as snap-on connectors—(more or less as they were designed to be used)—and that seemed to leave only two options: a linear strand or a closed loop. (No geodesic sputnik shapes there.) Then, as I was idly stringing together a four month accumulation, inspiration struck. Diabetic jewelry.

Now ordinarily, what’s meant by “diabetic jewelry” is a medic alert tag with a rod of Asclepius symbol on the front and engraved type on the back that labels the wearer as a diabetic. I already wear one of those. (see photo above, on left)

But my younger brother, Hal, is a successful jewelry designer, whose work over the years has adorned plenty of famous celebrities. Perhaps, I too have a knack for jewelry design... (see photo above, on right)

Besides being a super-chic necklace made entirely out of recycled diabetic packaging, the real beauty part of my new necklace design is that it’s also functional. Each of the containers is like a locket, in its own right. You could keep a lock of hair for every beloved member of your entire extended family—(going back several generations, I should think). Or, properly labeled, it might serve as pill caddy for a whole month. (Personally, I plan to use mine to store all those used blood glucose test strips.)

(a photo of the basic module after the jump...)

Diabetic Packaging

When I first became diabetic and learned that I would be giving myself insulin shots—(in 1976)—I envisioned a glass syringe like those used by doctors when I was a kid. I imagined a diabetic syringe to be a serious personal accessory that I would sterilize in boiling water or maybe in something like one of those units people used to sterilize contact lenses.

Little did I realize, the tide had already turned. To reduce the risk of infection, the industry had, by then, fully embraced disposable medical paraphernalia. Rather than receiving a syringe like the one pictured on the left, I was to begin using one disposable plastic syringe per day—packaged in poly-bag packs of ten, 10 poly-bags to a box.

(more photos and more to read after the jump)