box vox

Giant Toothpaste Tubes, Art & Dental Hygiene

One of Claes Oldenburg’s “Giant Toothpaste Tube” sculptures. This one from 1964 is at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Much has been made of the sexual symbolism and anthropomorphic qualities of these artworks. Oldenburg, himself, commented on how “some people” took it as a metaphor for his own spent creativity—(as in: all used up)... “The first tube, made in Venice, California, in 1963 seemed to some people an unconscious self-portrait...”

In the context of contemporary art, the more obvious connection to draw from a giant toothpaste tube is to paint tubes. There are a surprising number of artworks drawing this parallel between dental hygiene and artistic expression. Between toothpaste tube and paint tube... Between toothbrush and paint brush... Between toothpaste and paint. Yesterday we touched on the patent history of toothpaste and paint tubes. Today: some art history.

In 1959, Jasper Johns—(also known for his bronzes of paint brushes)— made a small bronze sculpture of a toothbrush with 4 molars in place of bristles, entitled “the Critic Smiles.”

 

In 1968, Richard Hamilton, did an answering work entitled “The Critic Laughs” updating the concept with dentures and an electric toothbrush.

More recently Kelly Walker has made artworks using toothpaste as paint, even mentioning the brands in titles like “schema; Aquafresh plus Crest with Whitening Expressions (Regina Hall)”. (He cites Jasper Johns as an influence in this short video interview: here)

(A couple more “giant tubes of toothpaste, after the fold...)

Expiration Date

Have hardly touched the guitar since my much-ballyhooed landfill gig last September. The WXPR radio appearance —(video above, from Rich Russo’s Anything, Anything)— was part of the big promotional juggernaut.

Of course, “juggernauts” are supposed to be unstoppable, and stopping was the very first thing I did after the landfill gig was over. Just could not multi-task to the degree necessary to maintain any momentum. (Musically speaking: a rest.)

There was, however, some very nice feedback that I meant to eventually follow up on. Maybe the time is now.

1. I was so honored to have Marijke Rijsberman of Interfacility attend. On her blog, The Landfill Diaries, she posted her review of my musical efforts—as well as some funny commentary about a few of the products that we’ve designed packaging for. (i.e.: “... spangles for underage females.”)
   
2. Artists, Tattfoo & Enze Tan also attended and wrote about it: here.
3. Covering the Staten Island landfill beat, was Staten Island Advance reporter, Jamie Lee whose story was entitled, A concert stage rises atop the landfill.
4. Photographer, Andrew Gardner came and took some great photos which he posted to his Flickr site.
5. And the the Freshkills Park folks who did so much work to make such an event even possible, also posted a “recap” about my performance—(on their capped garbage mound)—here.

Because there was limited seating on the bus, only a finite number of people could attend that day, but everyone who did went home with a free and uniquely packaged copy of “Songs About Packaging.”

There are still some of those left. My mom bought one. Why not you?

(Song lyrics, after the fold...)

Tempest in an Acorn-Shaped Teapot

Acorn brand vending machine photo and ascending price decals from Crow River Trading

Check out this oblique segue: In our previous post we discovered Cynthia Von Buhler’s reliquary prize capsules & vending machine. Her capsules were of the round type but there are also acorn-shaped capsules, as well as a brand of vending machine called “Acorn” made by Oak Manufacturing.

...and speaking of things, acorn: how about all that self-righteous, Republican indignation about that other, more newsworthy Acorn?

The recent Borat-style ‘sting’ by James O’Keefe has put Acorn —(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)— on the defensive in the media, but unlike Sacha Baron Cohen, who, as Borat or as Brüno, sought to expose the prejudices of individuals, O’Keefe and his backers have something more grandiose in mind. His YouTube prank videos of a few guileless Acorn workers, have been packaged presented as if they were an indictment of the entire organization as a whole. O’keefe has created a sufficiently prurient sound bite to scare off Acorn’s funding & support and putting its CEO and Chief Organizer, Bertha Lewis onto a mainstream media hot seat.

I met Bertha Lewis when she was a fellow homesteader in the same building in the South Bronx. Living there (and then fighting to remain there) was, for me, just an instinctive response to the 1980s escalation of rents in Manhattan. For Bertha, however, it became more than that. Yes, she too needed an affordable place to live, but it was through her dedication to the various shared struggles of tenants in that building—(rebuilding a collapsed courtyard, unclogging the building’s sewer, securing legal representation in housing court, etc.)— that, I believe, she came to really embrace “housing rights” as a core principle.

Ms. Lewis and her friends moved into the building in 1983 and fixed it up, paying rent to a man who claimed to be the landlord. After two years, they found out they had “been snookered,” Ms. Lewis said. The city tried to oust the occupants as squatters but they resisted, forming a tenants’ association and winning in court. Ms. Lewis became their spokeswoman, reaching out to reporters and persuading William M. Kunstler to take on the case. “I was just trying to save my home,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about organizing. You just learn this stuff, and I learned the hard way.”

New York Times, March 14, 2001

Eventually my wife and I gave up and we left the space that we had worked so hard to fix up, while Bertha and others stayed on to fight the good fight. We were delighted when we learned that she had become head of Acorn and I remember hearing her on NPR warning about predatory lending practices years before all those sub-prime mortgages, bundled into “toxic assets” brought down the entire world’s financial system.

I cringed in 1989 when President Bush (senior) invoked his “thousand points of light” rhetoric, citing volunteerism as a better alternative to any humane or humanitarian government-run assistance. Knowing myself well enough to know that I am not and never have been a “point of light,” it strikes me as horribly ironic, that Bertha Lewis should be now scapegoated by the right wing. Here is the one person I know who actually does exhibit the “volunteer spirit” that the metaphor was supposedly meant to inspire. What if they were to succeed in crushing Acorn? Who would they like to have step up and help poor people? Big government?

See what Rachel Maddow has to say about the Acorn controversy:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(See Bertha Lewis on The Colbert Report and some acorn-related packaging, after the fold...)

Think Outside the Bottle

On left: Mayoral candidate, Bill Talen (Reverend Billy), Bottlemania author, Elizabeth Royte, and John Stewart (National Organizer for Think Outside the Bottle); center: mock water bottle labels, “Deception” and “Phoney Spring”; on right: Reverend Billy making exorcistic gestures towards a water bottle (photos from ThinkOutsideTheBottleNY’s Flickr Photostream)

The photos above are from the “Think Outside the Bottle” media event held last month in Union Square Park. Event included a taste test challenge to show that NYC tap water is fine and that New Yorkers need not depend on the bottled kind.

Two of the three people that box vox has interviewed—(Reverend Billy & Elizabeth Royte)—were both on hand to support this cause. I was sorry to find out about this only after the fact. If I had known about it before hand, I would have wanted to come. It looks like it must have been a pretty cold day for an outdoor “tap water challenge”. (Reverend Billy appears to start out with with his trademark white suit, but is eventually forced by February weather into donning a warmer jacket.)

Those outside of NYC may not be aware of this, but Bill Talen is now the Green Party’s nominee for Mayor of NYC. His candidacy was officially announced last week. His campaign website is up.

...We see the corporations waving to us. They are trying to catch our eye. Pepsico’s logo even stole Obama’s sunrise. But we sense the over-advertising, over-packaging, the depth of the debt. We have something so much more powerful calling to us. Our neighborhoods and towns might be healthy again, and our expansion-addled America could stop and live again with life. Our Life After Shopping!

–VoteRevBilly.org

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Buying In

Above: some of Kate Bingaman-Burt's “Daily Purchase Drawings.” Kate was profiled by Rob Walker in a 2006 Consumed column, and (like most of us) she has purchased some of the brands discussed in Walker’s book.

Journalist, Rob Walker writes the weekly “Consumed” column for the NY Times Magazine. Equally adept at addressing both the business and cultural aspects of his subject, Walker’s well-reasoned column has emerged as an unusually clear window on the murky world of branding.

His book, “Buying In, The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are” came out this past Summer. 

Various Method product packages via Method Home site and the dieline

box vox: One of the companies you write about in your book is Method. You make the case that buying one of their cleaning products is not a strictly rational decision, since so much of their product appeal is based on how cool the packaging looks, rather than how well the product works. Because of their packaging, Method seems to have inspired one of those impromptu brand communities that you discuss elsewhere in your book. Their products are regularly celebrated in package design blogs like The Dieline and I know of at least one designer’s blog (Nathan Aaron’s “Method Lust” site) that is devoted to nothing else. Of course, package designers may have their own self-serving reasons for loving Method, but they don’t seem to be the only ones who are buying Method because of its decorator packaging. Is it possible that Method has built a business entirely on a demographic of aesthetes who want every detail of their lives to reflect their own overarching good taste?

Rob Walker: It was actually one of the founders of Method who told me that their customer feedback indicated that people who bought Method products were often surprised that they worked—that is, they were attracted to the packaging for whatever reason, but had some kind of suspicion that there would be some kind of tradeoff of function for form. I thought that was pretty interesting, that people would buy a household cleaner, of all things, on that basis. It’s not like dish liquid is a good candidate for the “conspicuous consumption” theory of consumer behavior.

So I think it’s pretty clear that design was a major part of what has built Method’s business. BUT ... I’m not sure that I’d go quite so far as to say they’d built their business totally on the aesthete demo. That that demo was not crucial.

Here’s what I mean. One of the things that most interests me about Method is that they have an eco-friendly or “green” story to tell—their products are (they say) made without many of the toxic ingredients common to household cleaning products. But they chose not to make that their main selling point, their main way of differentiating themselves at the shelf level. They went with the “good design” strategy instead. They don’t hide the other, eco-ish story, they just skipped the traditional strategy of, you know, putting a tree on the bottle or whatever.

And I think this strategy worked well at a time when the broad idea of “good design” was much in the air. I think there were plenty of consumers who had been in essence conditioned by a variety of cultural forces (many of them commercial) to pay attention to the idea of “good design.” And Method offered both a kind of novelty at the shelf, and an easy way into that broad idea.

I’m generalizing wildly. But still. I think it was both a clever strategy and, on some level, an admirable one. I think it’s clever because the truth is the eco/green thing is really easy to knock off—especially in symbolic/design terms. (Just add a tree to your package and you’re ... green ... ish.) Many consumers don’t want to “do their homework” about such issues, so devious design/packaging strategies can work. And Method, as far as I can tell, had the right facts to back up their eco claims for anybody who did do their homework.

So I think that’s clever because really striking visual design is actually harder to knock off, if it’s done right. Copycats look like copycats, and it can actually strengthen the position of “the original.”

And I think it’s admirable in the sense that there was something going on behind the “good design.” (I am not particularly impressed by the argument that buying “good design” is its own reward, which is in effect what many observers seem to believe.) There was something ethical (for lack of a better term) about the product—but they aimed for an audience larger than the one that is overtly tuned in to such issues. And it would appear that they have attained such an audience. For now!

(more about our “secret dialog” after the jump...)

Elizabeth Royte on Packaged Water

Last month I vowed that Elizabeth Royte’s Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It was going to be the next book I read. As it turned out, I wound up reading her earlier book Garbage Land first. That book chronicles her efforts to follow the multiple waste streams from her home in Brooklyn to a number of surprising destinations. (Must reading for the disposal culture.)

I was given Bottlemania as a father’s day gift, so after finishing Garbage Land, I dove right into her new book.

For younger people, packaged water must seem like a completely normal thing, having grown up with it. For those like me, who came of age prior to the 1980s when there was no such thing, it still seems like an unlikely product. In Bottlemania, Royte explains how things changed so much and considers what changes might yet be in store for us and our drinking water.

box vox: Bottlemania begins with your visit to the Poland Spring bottling plant in western Maine and then zeros in on the town of Fryeburg where local residents are objecting to so much of their water supply being pumped out and driven away. I’d recently seen, “There Will Be Blood” and the way you describe events unfolding in Fryeburg, with the clandestine acquisition of land for pumping operations (and the occasional straw metaphor) reminded me of that movie. Do you think there are parallels between the oil industry and the bottled water industry?

Elizabeth Royte: Because both oil and water are so valuable and it takes a fairly sophisticated distribution network to get these resources to the broadest markets, corporations will go to great lengths to control them. In Bottlemania I write about the strong-arm tactics and backroom maneuverings of cities to get their hands on more water for municipal supplies, and about private water companies doing the same for bottling. As the population grows and the climate changes, fresh water will become ever scarcer—and therefore valuable: the lengths to which investors will go will grow ever longer. We see Nestlé going from small town to small town to acquire spring water; in Texas, oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is buying up water rights, looking to pipe this resource to thirsty cities.

From aspirational marketing to conspicuous consumption: 1970’s Perrier on the left; bling H2O (purportedly, the most expensive bottled water currently available) on the right

Left: Madonna playing Truth or Dare in 1990; right: Vichy Catalan’s current packaging

box vox: In explaining how such widespread consumer acceptance of water-as-a-commodity ever came to pass, you brought up something that I had forgotten. How back in the 80s, bottled water was considered fancy and European—Perrier in specially shaped glass bottles. (And then there was that business with Madonna and the bottle in “Truth or Dare.”) But aside from the cultural factors, you also cite the introduction of the 1/2 liter PET bottle. Why was that so revolutionary for the bottled water industry?

Elizabeth Royte: It was a breakthrough because it was super-clear and shiny, lightweight and cheap. A lower price made it easier for water to compete in a crowded beverage market (and Americans, research showed, didn’t like the taste of water from aluminum cans).

(more photos and Royte answers 5 more questions after the jump...)

Reverend Billy on Packaging

"What Would Jesus Buy?", the documentary film produced by Morgan Spurlock and directed by Rob VanAlkemade, comes out on DVD May 20

Seems like an appropriate time to share my interview with Reverend Billy. (This being Sunday and all.) Following the thread of my earlier Dieline post about package designers striving to be good, Reverend Billy and his “Church of Stop Shopping” should be of interest to any package designer aspiring to an ethical “higher ground.”

For the uninitiated, Reverend Billy and his congregation stage “retail interventions” in which they enter major retail stores posing as average consumers, only to commit some humorous act of anti-consumerist agitprop: exhibiting tragic symptoms of mass buyer’s remorse, exorcizing cash registers, etc. Box vox attended last Sunday’s Fabulous Worship Service at Saint Mark’s Church where the Stop Shopping Choir performed their rousing, gospel-tinged, anti-consumer-culture anthems and the good Reverend Billy made some compelling points about the insidious way that “shopping” becomes something sacrosanct in this country:

How can we forget after 9/11 Bush/Cheney/Giuliani sang in 3 part harmony: “If you love your country you will go out and shop.” Consumerism says ALL of American life is best run by the market. Security, parks, transportation, emergency response, garbage removal, education… things that we owned and controlled together in our democracy—are in private, for-profit hands. We keep it going by consuming it.

Reverend Billy

I asked Reverend Billy 4 questions about packaging:

box vox:  What your feelings are about retail product packaging?

Reverend Billy: We like pleasing design, of course. The pleasure of life is the pleasure of beauty and that can happen anywhere. It happens that packaging now is a key indicator, tied to shipping, advertising and waste—even the word “package” has become a signifier of the Evil Monoculture!

So it is not the people who design who deserve a scolding—it is all of us—for creating this avalanche of plastic, this hypnosis of advertising that flow from the framing, packaging, carrying and shipping of products. We are the consumers and we have allowed this to get out of hand. It comes down on citizens as unclean manufacturing, as fossil fuel shipping, and after the purchase—as waste. It has become extreme, that's all.

There is another economy available to us where the packaging is human hands... Farmer’s markets, thrift and barter and swap economies like Craig's List—there is a growing more home-made economy that doesn’t have to be vacu-packed...

(more photos and Reverend Billy answers 3 more questions after the jump)