box vox

Prescience of a Pop Culture Sketch

There aren’t too many pop culture references to graphic design (or the companies that sell it). This TV commercial skit with Rick Moranis from SCTV is one of the few that I can recall. I like that it has two punch-lines. First the shoe—then the terrible logo.

Originally aired in 1981, it seems even more pertinent today with online sites offering low budget “stock” logos and “logo templates,” etc.

Granted I do have a vested interest in opposing this trend since we design brand logos as part of our package design service, but it only stands to reason that a logo purchased for $50 will not be as carefully crafted as it really ought to be.

It’s depressing the number of small startup companies that come to us for package design only after having already obtained one of these low-budget logos. Saying in effect: “You should charge us $50 less because we already have a LOGO.” —(Here, I’m imagining the word, “logo” pronounced as Rick Moranis does in the video.)  Anyway, it just seems like one of those penny-wise and pound-foolish business decisions that people sometimes make.

Interestingly, the skit was also prescient in its particulars. There are now at least two companies that I’ve found that are actually using the name “Logos Galore.” One is based in Australia and one is based in Michigan.

This might be an example of life imitating art—a case of “reverse product placement” for the service sector. Or it may just be coincidence. Although, for a current company name, “galore” sounds very vintage—(circa 1950s)—the words “logo” and “galore” do have those sound-alike syllables that make the combination sort of rhythmic and catchy. I can imagine more than one person thinking of it without ever having known about the SCTV sketch.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Packaging and Consumer Confusion

Top photo by Joan Marcus from 9 to 5 The Musical site (Megan Hilty as Doralee, Allison Janney as Violet—holding the boxes—and Stephanie J. Block as Judy); lower photo from Tiny Details dollhouse miniatures site (See also: Dollhouse Packaging)

This weekend I happened to catch some of 9 to 5—(that movie from 1980 starring Dolly Parton, Lilly Tomlin and Jane Fonda)—on TV. A significant plot point hinges on the issue of consumer confusion between two fictional packaged goods. Violet (played by Lily Tomlin in the movie) inadvertently purchases “Rid O Rat” rat poison, mistaking it for “Skinny n Sweet” artificial sweetener. She puts some in her boss’s coffee before realizing her error, and complications ensue.

Conclusion? While trademark law is generally more concerned with similarly packaged products in the same product category—(unfair competition and all)—clearly, there are also pitfalls to cross-category consumer confusion. (See also: Medicine Cabinet Candy)

Hence, the popular 9 to 5 catch phrase: “It looks just like Skinny ’n Sweet… except for the little skull and crossbones on the label.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

The Spiegelei Eierlikör fried egg bottle

Having this week become a clearing house for egg-shaped packaging, I should also mention this surprising example: the Spiegelei Eierlikör fried egg bottle.

Here, it’s a fried egg—(rather than a whole, intact egg)—that dictates the package shape. (Now I’m seriously looking for some examples of scramble-egg-shaped packaging.)

Behn’s Spiegelei Eierlikör seems to be a bottled “hard” egg-nog. (Also known as “hard nog” or “egg liquor.”)

Goofy though this novelty package may be, in one respect it’s quite understated. Where is the branding? Where is the product name and the logo? It turns out, the bottle’s lack of typography is actually a feature and selling point. Spiegelei Eierlikör’s tag-line? “The eggnog without the words.”

Far-fetched as it may sound, Behn’s appears to be taking the tasteful, no-logo, decorator package approach. As if to say: our customers don’t require crass advertising. If you are a member of Spiegelei Eierlikör’s exclusive clientele, you see the iconic fried-egg bottle and you just know.

(More fried egg bottle photos, after the fold...)

Kinder Joy’s Dual-Chambered Egg Pack

Photo from SmALl CloUd ...'s Flickr Photostream

Kinder Joy brings several favorite box vox themes together in one package.

1. First off, it’s another egg-pack, fitting nicely into our entirely egg-shaped week—(that, technically, should have begun with the Silly Putty/L’eggs post from last week)—and although Kinder Joy may be sold at Easter, the company, by no means, confines their marketing efforts to that time of year.

2. It’s another thermoformed, single-serve, peel-off pack in a metaphorical shape. Similar to the bottle & jar-shaped packets and the half-orange-shaped packs from earlier this month. In fact, Kinder Joy’s dual structure—one half for the edible treat; one half for the prize—is exactly like that of Alberto Ghirardello’s Salvo concept (where two halves of an orange break apart to form two separate containers).

3. Kinder Joy (like Kinder Surprise) is a “surprise package” and includes the classic, question-mark styling, typical of that tradition.

Photo on right (revealing prize) is from P.J.S.'s Flickr Photostream

(Case-packs & TV commercials , after the fold...)

6 egg-shaped jars (in boxes)

Following up on the earlier egg-shaped packaging thread—(Silly Putty & L’eggs)—“six,” a new line of cosmetics, comes in a half dozen varieties, each in an egg-shaped jar. (via: the dieline) Design credited to: BloomRoom and Alessio Krauss.

Why six product varieties?  Well... to address all six of the vital beauty needs, of course. (Quench, Nourish, Breathe, Laugh, Dream and Love) About the egg-shaped jar they say, “The egg symbolizes the cell, rebirth and perfection.”

The egg may be a symbol of perfection, but, like Silly Putty & L’eggs, “six” saw fit to also package each of their eggs in a box.

(Their half dozen eggs & boxes, after the fold...)

Rectangular Citrus Packs

Another package-as-skin example: 3 flavors of crystallized citrus fruit. (via: the dieline)

Brilliant detail: their use of brackets (and one half of a parenthesis) to distinguish between lemon, lime and orange shapes. (Designed by Blue Marlin.)

(All three in a row, after the fold...)

Cream-Nut Makeover

Following the thread from yesterday’s post about u-bet chocolate syrup... the second product I’d been holding hostage on my desk was a new jar of Koeze’s Cream-Nut (Crunchy) Peanut Butter on the right.

While Cream-Nut was never a full-on example of the “u-bet” effect, it was the subject of an earlier post about the modest and comforting charms of its existing label (despite less-than-optimal typography) and the potential hazards of changing it.

Well it now appears, that they have changed it and its fine. Potential hazards avoided. The same basic colors, rearranged a bit. [Update: Thanks to Jeff Koeze, who commented below, we now know that only the crunchy label has been given the black background to help differentiate between crunchy & smooth] Maybe the new dominant black background gives it—[the new crunchy label]—more of that high-end artisanal peanut-butter thing. (That, at least, is the theory of black food packaging.) A bit more metallic gold than before. Not a problem. (See: Gold Bar Packaging) I don’t know who did the redesign, Koeze’s creative director, Martin Andree and Michigan-based designer, Dan Murdock handled the redesign and I, for one, think they did an excellent job maintaining that essential Cream-Nut feeling.

Interestingly, company head, Jeff Koeze maintains a blog where he talks about business and other peanut-butter-related topics. (Such as: 60s rock band, The Peanut Butter Conspiracy)

I thought his take on marketing firms was pretty brilliant. (And funny.) Excerpt below:

The thing I hate most is being asked “What is your budget for this project?”  Or, worse yet, “What is your marketing budget overall?”

I always answer the same way:  “My budget is unlimited. If you can generate (and measure) positive ROI on this project and any future projects there is literally no limit to what I will spend. As long as your ideas keep making me money, the budget just keeps growing.”

Jeff Koeze
What Wrong with Marketing Firms

(Some earlier Cream-Nut packaging, after the fold...)

u-bet: je ne se qua

Cruel father that I am, a couple of months ago I acquired two foods that are quite popular around here, but instead of putting them into general circulation in the family cupboard, I kept them on my desk. After an interminable 2-month consumption-embargo, I finally got around to photographing them this weekend.

One of these foods was Fox’s U-bet Original Chocolate Flavor Syrup. Popular, because you can use it to make chocolate egg creams, but what is there to say about its package? There were other chocolate (flavored) syrups on the shelf, that doubtless would make fine egg creams. Why was this the brand I purchased? Clunky and typographically awkward. Some unidentified Shirley Temple-ish child featured in the logo—(the Wendy of her day?)

There would seem to be little here for a contemporary package designer to love. Why would I—why would any consumer buy a package like that?

In groping towards a working theory to explain its apparent sales success, I asked myself, “if a product has packaging that looks like it hasn’t been changed in 50 years and is still being produced and sold, what does that say about the product?”

Maybe it says: this product is very good and—despite the packaging—there are a great many loyal customers who know it.

I think that may come close to it. A graphically unsophisticated package will sometimes be given not just the benefit of the doubt, but an assumption of quality and ‘authenticity’, not generally afforded to the slicker, more mainstream corporate packaging efforts. Am I over-thinking it?

There’s a Flickr group devoted to hand painted “folk typography.” Is the u-bet bottle folk packaging? The DIY ethos of an earlier era—Mom & Pop cottage industry packaging? Or Is it merely kitsch packaging?

In a post on BoingBoing—(See: Hyperbolic Bronnerianism in Graphic Design)—Xeni Jardin focused on the typographic overkill of certain packages: “... crazy mushed up text with LOTS OF ALL CAPS! BOLD! I-T-A-L-I-C !  Nnnnnooooo negative space! on product labels.”

“Hyperbolic Bronnerianism” might be a subset of the category I’m attempting to describe, but not all of my examples would be so overblown. U-bet may be typographically unsophisticated, but it’s certainly not the cacophony of styles that Jardin is talking about.

Perhaps it’s naïve packaging? There’s a book out called Naive: Modernism and Folklore in Contemporary Graphic Design. The examples contained are charming and vintage, but, to my eye, not unsophisticated.

Regarding vintage graphic design and “naïveté” Michael Bierut writes,

It is tempting to call designs of this era naïve. But I don’t think so. Not these designs. It would be, I think, incorrect to call Paul Rand’s Bab-o cleanser container naïve. It had a kind of knowing beatnik look... The main differences between those old packages and the one we have today is style...  Technology is style.

via: The Package Unseen

Sometimes, it’s the small regional products that have this “u-bet” characteristic. I know it may sound culturally arrogant, perhaps imperialistic, but, here in the U.S.A., if I stroll with my cart down the “international aisle” of my super market, I can usually find quite few packages with that u-bet je ne se qua.

Says Durban-based photographer/graphic designer, Garth Walker (about the orange bag of Nyala Super Maize Meal, on right):

This remains the best example of South African packaging that I’ve yet seen and it should be enshrined in bronze above every designer’s Mac. It falls into that “lost” category of local graphic design in which, like so many local brands we love and adore, the designer is unknown. Probably a “lowly designer” (in the days of Magic Markers and Letraset) working in the studio of one of our über packaging or printing companies. “Creative” was probably not mentioned in the brief nor in the presentation to client. However, it’s truly local, relevant, striking, unique and long-lived—a lesson to all of us trying to be “local is lekker” and build a brand through packaging. Oh, and I do have it on permanent display in our studio.

via: Design Indaba

At first, I was thinking of u-bet’s bottle as a sort of “outsider” packaging. Like outsider art: the work of some untrained packaging genius who follows none of the established design principles, but somehow gets it right, anyway. Perhaps done many years ago by the company’s founder (or an unschooled relative) and then left unchanged. Benign neglect packaging?

The thing is, while I don’t really know how long the U-bet Chocolate Syrup label has looked like this, I do know that it didn’t come in this type of bottle when it first came out in 1942.

(See the earlier U-bet bottle, after the fold...)

Supergraphic Wacky Packs

60s kid-satire, “Wacky Packs” meets early 70s, “supergraphics” via Philadelphia-based LTL Prints’ peel & stick wall graphics.

Last year I was touting my decorating acumen for having framed a Wacky Pack press sheet to decorate our office. But these large-scale Wacky Packs (available in sizes up to 7 feet tall) raise a serious client-relations question. How far do I dare go with the Wacky Packaging decor?

Some of these mock packages actually imply that the products they contain are maybe not so good. Is that the message I really want to send? Certainly not the usual market-speak of a consumer packaged goods design firm. Maybe that’s refreshing.

What do you think? If you were a client, would it alienate you? And which one of the Wacky Packages below, do you think would look good, say, seven feet long over our conference table—I mean, without damaging our credibility with you?

 

(Another room photo, after the fold...)

Packaging Cameras

Top row, left: Velveeta box camera from Allee Willis’s Blog; on right: Coke Can cameras from eBay;  2nd row, left: film canister camera via I New Idea; 3rd row, right: Fanta can camera from CircusCat’s photostream; center: King’s Cigarette box camera from Rick Soloway’s photostream; on right: instant coffee jar camera from eBay; 4th row left: chocolate milk box camera from Four Corners Dark; center: juice box camera from Zebriana’s photostream; on right: Budweiser Beer can camera (from eBay, I think); bottom row, left: Smarties camera from RockyCameras.com; on right: “Zeon Tech” Pepsi camera from Arthur Smokes’ photostream

There seems to be no end to the personal accessory categories in which you can find objects designed to resemble consumer packaged goods. We’ve already covered cigarette lighters, telephones and transistor radios. (Not to mention: salt & pepper shakers) Now we’re looking at package-shaped cameras.

Are they merely advertising promotions or are they products in their own right? Are they toys or another example of extreme brand loyalty?

(Another packaging camera—& the box that it came in—after the jump...)

The Front Line

From Readers Digest (“in Cooperation with Super Market Institute”) this 1965 training film for grocery store “checkers” uses a cute war metaphor for the grocery business:

“Some people call this a war. War or not, one thing is for sure, a daily battle is being waged in supermarkets all over this country, a battle for the customer’s dollar.”

(Via the Internet Archive)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Marbles as Bottle Toppers

Okay, this is the last post about marbles. I promise.

Back in the days when they were still somewhat popular with children, marbles were sometimes used to help sell soda pop. (Coca-Cola bottle toppers from eBay)

Not that this was the first time that marbles were added to beverage packaging. (See: Codd Neck Bottles)

(One more photo, after the fold...)

Liquid Lustre-Creme

On left: photo from Mankatt’s Flickr Photostream; on right: a detail of a magazine ad from Melanie’s Flickr Photostream

Liquid Lustre-Creme: the amber shampoo with the star-shaped label. Their ads featured a coterie of female film stars of the 1950s & 60s.

While five-pointed stars are not used as often on packaging as the more the rounded ‘sunburst’ shape, a star-shape of this type has its own set of associations to impart. Hollywood “stars” in this case, but it can also imply a western theme (sheriff’s badge) or even Communism.

(Another Liquid Lustre-Creme commercial, after the fold...)

History of the Graphic Burst

1905 sheet music; 1940 Halo Shampoo ad; 1927 Oxydol Detergent box

A “history of the graphic burst”—that’s what this post would be if I really knew anything about the subject. I had imagined that the burst, so ubiquitous on packages during the 1950s and 1960s, might have started much earlier—perhaps at the dawn of the in-your-face packaging of patent medicines. I could find no evidence, however, to support this idea.

So lacking any real authoritative information... I will here define the “graphic burst” as any jagged, radial shape containing a typographic message—(sometimes with an exclamation point)—or a picture. Burst messages are usually short... (as in: “FREE” or “On Sale!”)

Sometimes the burst is part of a product logo and an integral part of a package’s design. More often, it is a “violator” in the sense that it’s a sort of graphic intrusion, temporarily violating the integrity of the more ‘permanent’ package design. But where did this device come from? Who used it first?

I would hazard a guess that the graphic burst may have evolved from a number of different sources, because it seems to be associated with different symbolic meanings. (Here are four that occur to me.)

1. Ballistic Bursts  As in fireworks and “bombs bursting in air.” The idea being, to convey some dynamic sense of excitement and urgency. A lot of popcorn packaging seems to feature bursts of this type.

2. Bursts of Light Sometimes used for light-related products (light bulbs and the like) but also used to lend a dynamic excitement to the proceedings. Behind a product or a person’s head, this kind of burst can imply a sort of heavenly aura. I think the Statue of Liberty relates to this idea. While one might assert that the radial spikes behind her head are a hat or a crown, I think the effect is a classic “burst of light.”

3. Seals of Approval (Think: Good Housekeeping.) This type of burst must have regular, not-too-jagged spikes, and was probably intended to resemble the sort of gold stickers one sees (or used to see?) attached to official documents.

4. Illustrative Bursts Sometimes a burst, while still a graphic device, is also an illustration. It may be an illustration of something from nature, (like a sunburst or a star burst) or anything that lends itself to a spiky, radial motif. (Sometimes even daisy petals can be given a flower-power, burst-like aspect.) The “ballistic burst” can also be more on the more literal, illustrative side—and less in the symbolic, comic-strip style. I recently saw this guitar package (see inset on right) with bursts that were trompe l’oil illustrations of torn paper. These “bursts” are like faux die cut windows bursting holes right through the package. (Similar to the splat-shaped bursts of some recent Starburst packaging.)

These days the burst is mostly looked down upon. Crass and vying for attention. Sometimes used with a hip irony, but inappropriate for tasteful, upscale merchandise. As such, some say it’s overdue for a big, recessionary comeback.

(Lots more ways to burst your inflationary bubble, after the fold...)

Shipping Pallet Exhibition Space

Top photo by Mike Shane; second row: drawings by Archicorp; third row: photo by Debby Davis; bottom: photo of The Great Unwashed performing among the pallets by Mike Shane

Shipping pallets, formerly a behind-the-scenes, invisible part of packaging are now enjoying a new limelight. (Perhaps because of their current prominence in warehouse stores? Or a general ecological desire to recycle used lumber?)

Archicorp and COAHSI used the idea of “pallet forts” as the guiding principle for creating smaller exhibition areas within the vast container terminal...

The Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI) turned Staten Island’s massive New York Container Terminal into a contemporary museum for a special arts weekend highlighting the work of ten borough artists. The exhibit, entitled “Mapping Staten Island,” explores these artists’ perceptions of their resident borough, through physical installations, video, light, and musical recordings. The exhibit space—created by the newly established firm Archicorp—will be a work of art in itself, as actual shipping pallets will be used to build walls, tables and other structures to display the artwork. After the exhibit, the pallets will be recycled and used for their original purpose of transporting consumer goods...

The selection of the New York Container Terminal as the venue for the exhibit also builds on Staten Island’s specific geography and history. Each exhibition room was constructed from shipping pallets and designed like a fort, 20 x 10 feet long. The pallets were literally “branded” by hot iron brands, bearing the logo or tag line of each sponsor. Deconstructed after the gala, these branded pallets will now rejoin the flow of global trade, sharing with the world a small part of Staten Island.

adapted from COAHSI’s Press Release (I changed from future tense to past tense since the event took place last week.)

(More shipping pallet projects and products after the fold...)

Coke Bottle Water Pipe

From the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford: a Coke Bottle Water Pipe—one of the selected “English objects,” given a detailed biography on their website. Some excerpts of this object’s biography follow below. (The entire article can be read: here)

At the back of the Pitt Rivers museum in the far right-hand corner is a case full of different smoking devices. Number 1999.41.1 is described on the label as a “water pipe for smoking marijuana”. Marina de Alarcon, a curatorial assistant at the museum, bought the pipe on the 25th of November 1999, from the Bombay Emporium on East Oxford’s Cowley Road, and donated it to the collection. The device is fashioned from an empty 330 ml Coca-Cola bottle.

Upon closer examination it is obvious that the contraption is made simply, but is functional as opposed to merely ornamental. For its water jar, the pipe is comprised of a standard, glass Coca-Cola bottle of the iconic shape and design found across the world. Into the neck of the bottle the pipe’s maker inserted simple a bung with a valve, hose and a body valve on top of which is the bowl and plate, as indicated by the diagram.

The markings on the bottle – “Mainland U.K. Distribution Only” – indicate that the pipe was probably made in Britain from a container used in the country. While Coca-Cola is ubiquitous, this particular combination of recycled glass Coke bottle and common laboratory equipment is unusual in the world of water pipes, even those of the homemade variety. By contrast, the most frequently cited instructions found online for fashioning such smoking devices call for using larger, 2-litre plastic bottles. It’s not clear if the smaller water capacity of the Pitt Rivers’ example would affect the pipe’s utility in filtering the smoke.

(More excerpts follow, after the fold...)

Douglas Coupland's Plastic Bottle Sculptures

Upper left photo: by Martin Tessler for The New York Times; upper right: photo of the 2001 “Spike” installation at Totem Gallery; lower photos: mug shot photos of “Bottle No. 5 Downey”

I saw this article in the NY Times last week about writer/artist, Douglas Coupland’s home renovation project. The photo above (with the over-sized (unlabeled) Downy Fabric Softener bottle at the base of the stairs) caught my eye. I figured: if Coupland made this one package-related sculpture, then he must have made others...

I found them in the 2001 “Spike” installation at Totem Gallery.

The inspiration for ... the sculptures was a family crisis, Mr. Coupland said. His niece, Sarah, was born in Vancouver two years ago without a left hand, at a time when statistics there marked an upward turn—a spike—in birth defects...

The sculptures include huge plastic bottles, recognizable even without labels—Tide, Downy, Alberto VO5. Mr. Coupland had a vision one night in a Vancouver Wal-Mart, he said. He was struck with the beauty of detergent bottles and bought dozens.

“'Any passion to collect has some meaning behind it,” he added. The meaning was revealed when a friend pointed out that the bottles were all shaped to attract the hand—and that they contained chemicals that might cause birth defects.

from A night out with: Douglas Coupland; Escape From Gen X
By Phil Patton, NY Times, September 9, 2001

It turns out that Coupland has done plenty of other package-related artworks. Too many examples to show them all here...

(But I’ll show 4 more, after the fold...)

Found: The S.O.S Missing Link!

On left: early S.O.S box design (from a vintage ad for sale on eBay); center: an ad from AdClassix.com featuring the elusive 1959 box design pictured in the “Kitchen Debate” photo; on right: a somewhat vintage box, which still resembles current S.O.S packaging (from NY Times The Moment blog)

Success! Well, sort of...

Last Friday, Richard Shear and I coincidentally put up two, very similar posts on our respective packaging blogs. His post, “S.O.S saves the Western World” and my post, “S.O.S at the 1959 Kitchen Debate” were both inspired by that day’s NY Times editorial page and both featured William Safire’s famous black & white photo of Nixon and Khrushchev talking in front of a simulated “typical American” kitchen. In each of our posts, we naturally focused on the very graphic looking S.O.S box, but neither of us had managed to find any other photos of the box.

Yesterday I spent even more time looking and, as a testament to the depth and breadth of my obsessive-compulsive ways, I finally turned up some vintage ads with color illustrations of this apparently rare version of the box. Still don’t know who (or what agency) might have designed it. (I’m thinking maybe: Sterling Cooper?)

from Way Back Vintage Ads

(A few more S.O.S ads, after the fold...)

Orange = Jar

...and as long as I’m following the “orange = package” thread —(see: here & here) — here is Australian designer, Brett Layton’s very nice logo and label design for Core Preserves jar.

Another good example of the fruit skin packaging metaphor.

(via Lovely Package)

See some other jar labels from this line, after the fold...)

SPAM brand games (packaged in cans)

Last month at Toy Fair I noticed these licensed SPAM brand games at Haywire Group’s booth.

Interesting how being mocked by Monty Python —(Spamalot, et al.)— and becoming the generic term for junk email advertising has only served to make SPAM all the more beloved of a brand icon. (Judging from the official SPAM website, Hormel Foods gets this and is embracing their goofy cult status.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design