box vox

Letterhead as Conceptual Art

Above is the business stationery that Robert Brownjohn designed in 1967 for photographer, Michael Cooper. Another example of conceptual art’s influence on graphic design.

Rather than designing stationery with a logo and the usual typographic arrangement of name & address, Brownjohn labels each part of Cooper’s stationery system—letterhead, business card & label—with a conceptual-art-style declarative statement, which happens to include Cooper’s name & address. Calling attention not so much to Cooper’s business activities, but rather to Brownjohn’s role in producing Cooper’s stationery.

On left: young Robert Brownjohn; on right: young Michael Cooper

What are we to make of this?

This simplicity of form is matched with clarity of expression. There can be few more straightforward statements than ”Robert Brownjohn designed this letterhead for Michael Cooper.” But, of course, the design’s appearance and tone of restraint prove misleading. They transpire to be a means of casting Brownjohn’s outrageous subversion of the function of the letterhead into even greater relief. It takes quite a nerve to convert a piece of typography intended as an advertisement for someone else into a promotion for yourself. Every communication Michael Cooper made on this paper could not help but be at least as much about Brownjohn as it was about its subject.

Bob Gill has suggested that the letterhead was designed in reaction to being cajoled into doing the job as a favour: “This is the greatest free job ever done by a designer. What does he want to say? I did this for nothing, that’s what.” Meanwhile, Gill’s then wife Bobby had a somewhat different interpretation: “Michael Cooper was somebody who used to hang around, but he didn’t have any personality. Bj thought and thought of something to do for his letterhead, but the only thing this guy had done that was in any way interesting was to ask him to design it.” The truth is probably somewhere between the two. The desire to wreak revenge on exploitative “friends” will resonate with most graphic designers, but accounts of Cooper do hint at a paper-thin personality...

...It could be the case that his letterhead for Cooper was intended as a subtle swipe at the whole King’s Road scene. Although Brownjohn obviously enjoyed his notoriety, his increasingly exaggerated manners and extravagant outfits imply that he had a perpetual sense of the absurd.

Dick Fontaine has suggested that Brownjohn had a 1950s sensibility very different from that of the “velvet-suited” brigade of Cooper and Fraser. It was a case of conceptual art and jazz versus hippy philosophy and psychedelia.

Robert Brownjohn sex and typography: 1925-1970, Life and Work
By Emily King and Eliza Brownjohn 

If, as Bob Gill and his wife suggest, Brownjohn resented the project or didn’t respect Cooper, then why even do it? Maybe the sheer audacity of the idea was, for Brownstreet, kind of irresistible.  

“In his short but intense working life, Brownjohn helped to redefine graphic design, to move it from a formal to a conceptual art.”

Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, 1995

Or maybe this was just a combative, but friendly rivalry among creatives? (You know, like between the Beatles and the Stones?) Despite the Bobby Gill’s harsh appraisal of Cooper’s “paper thin” personality, his life and accomplishments actually match Brownjohn’s in number of surprising ways... (which we’ll take a look at tomorrow.)

See also: Logo as Conceptual Art and Robert Brownjohn’s Bachelor Pack

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Packaging as Opening Title Sequence

In some films (& televisions shows) the titles and opening credits are conveyed via packaging. In 1, 2 & 6 the packaging is used to highlight certain ethical issues about various products—(tobacco, factory-farmed foods, and munitions). Sometimes the packages which appear in the credits support some specific plot point—(as in 3, 5 and 6, for example.) And sometimes, the point is more metaphorical—(as in in 4’s cardboard cut-out world, for example.)

1. In “Thank You for Smoking”—Jason Reitman’s first film—the title design and typography (by Gareth Smith of Shadowplay Studio) were made to resemble cigarette packaging.

“...Jason Reitman, the film’s director, came to us with the idea of using cigarette package designs for the opening title sequence. He had actually created a rough sample quicktime in which he superimposed basic text titles onto images of cigarette packages that he found on the web. It captured the tone of the title sequence nicely, and gave us a great starting point. We extensively researched cigarette package design and were amazed by its sheer variety. We did start to notice, however, that certain elements were often used: the colors gold and red, bold graphic lines and shapes, and images of heraldry. There were, of course, many exceptions. But if you look broadly at cigarette package design, these elements seem to be what make a cigarette package look like a cigarette package. There's something very serious and regal about most cigarette package design.”

2. In Robert Kenner’s “Food Inc.” (title design and typography by Big Star) are made to resemble food packaging and grocery store signage.

(More opening title sequence packaging, after the fold...)

7 Rubik's Cube Fonts

Last Friday, we featured a number of typographically-hacked Rubik’s Cubes. Today we have seven novelty fonts designed to look like Rubik’s cubes. As such, they also speak to issues of screen resolution and the recent history of computer font design. (See Emigre’s “Empire” etc.)

The classic, 3x3 screen size make for a very low-res font indeed if 9 pixels is all one has to work with. Most of these fonts cleverly get around that by using a 3D view so that each letter-form wraps around more than one side of the cube, thereby doubling or tripling their effective resolution.

The two photo-fonts included (#5 and #7) get around the resolution limitation in other ways. One simply used groups of four 3x3 cubes for each letter. The other just opted for the higher-resolution 5x5 cube. (Just as as screen resolutions have increased—so, too, have the resolutions of Rubik’s Cubes increased: from 3 to 4 to 5, etc.)

1. Kubics Rube (difficult to date, since the designer is anonymous or unknown, but judging by an accompanying text file, this font dates back at least to 2003—maybe earlier)—[an update: digging further, I learn that Kubrics Rube should be credited to the “Font Nook”—the name of an apparently defunct GeoCities site, belonging to one “weakestlink101.”]

“Patterned after the popular cubic shaped puzzle.”

2. Rubix by Carlos Vigil (2008)

“This 3-D modular font was inspired by the classic Rubik’s cube. In designing the type I wanted the letters not only to reflect the form of the toy, but to also extend beyond the puzzle to capture the aesthetic of 1980’s pop-culture.” 

 

(5 more Rubik’s Cube fonts, after the twist...)

5 Typographic Rubik's Cubes

 

Five different modular-typography-machines based on Rubik’s Cube—at least three of which include packaging. 

1. Jas Bhachu’s “Font Generator”

“Using a Rubik’s cube I designed a set of stamps to be placed on four of the sides of the cube so users are able to create their own font.”

2. Scott Kellum’s “TypeCube”

“The TypeCube was created after looking at modular typefaces and combining those elements into a puzzle. The Rubik’s cube ended up being the perfect base for such a puzzle so it was a matter of solving what shapes were best suited to create every letter of the alphabet from just six different patterns. The end result is the TypeCube.”

3. Tom Jensen’s Daftpunk Rubix Cube Font

“The aim of this project is to typographically express lyrics from ... Daft Punk—‘Technologic’ ... through fracturing type with a modular bespoke typeface and interactive type cubes”

(2 more Rubik’s typo-mechanisms, after the fold...)

Art, Culture & Upscale Canned Ham

I’ve had this photo of Le “Super” Jambon Extra (on left) on my hard disk for a while because I liked the shape of the can and the typography. (from: Ian W. Mitchell’s public gallery)

Then I noticed Hydo74’s “limited edition” Nike shoe box, on right. (via: CreateID). It seems to include an elaborate sliding lid like an old-fashioned roll-top desk, but mainly it reminded of the shape of the French canned ham package, so here they are both.

(And as long as we’re talking about canned ham...)

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...)

Ambigram Branding

“Truce” Cognac/Vodka & Liquor label designed by Turner Duckworth; redesigned “Danup” logo & packaging by Landor; “New Man” logo designed by Raymond Loewy in 1969.

If you look at websites specializing in “ambigrams” you will find lots of devilishly ingenious typography work. Most ambigrams rely so much on old English letter forms or eccentric scripts, however, that they become sort of puzzle-like and perhaps not so well-suited for consumer product branding. The three above are exceptions.

These three ambigram/brand logos (in my grade-book) deserve high marks for legibility and typographic integrity.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

(Note: see our earlier post about ambigrams here)

Bilingual Vimto Can (w/bottle)

On left: my Vimto can; on far right: a photo from Edner Robles’ Flickr Photostream

I found my bilingual Vimto can whilst walking the dog on Bay Street. English/French, but with some prominent Arabic writing, as well.

I like its cross-referential¹ bottle illustration. (The bottle contains the concentrated “cordial” version which one then dilutes, while the can contains the premixed, ready-to-drink version of the beverage.)

It contains the juice of grapes, raspberries and blackcurrants (in a 3% concentration), flavoured with herbs and spices...

It is currently made by Vimto Soft Drinks, a division of Nichols plc. It has acquired cult status amongst its consumers and celebrates its 100 year anniversary in 2008. Vimto is also manufactured under licence in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It's also considered to be the most popular drink during the holy month of Ramadan.

from the Vimto Wikipedia entry

Created as a health tonic in 1908 by John Noel Nichols, a Manchester-based wholesaler of spices and medicines. “Vimto” is a shortened version of its original name: Vim Tonic. Nichols launched his soft drink in an effort to cash in on the British temperance movement.

(More Vimto packaging, after the fold...)

Psychedelic Sunkist

New Sunkist logo gif via BrandNew; photo of Sunkist bottle from mrdallasjmoore's Flickr Photostream; photo of Sunkist can from dresdnhope's Flickr Photostream

Yesterday, at my local Rite Aid Pharmacy, I noticed Sunkist Orange Soda’s new/retro, psychedelic typography.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Perfection

from the Washington State Historical Society website

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Pack Fax

“Anvil Brand Soda” via Duke Libraries Digital Collection

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Packaging goes Postal

I recently came upon these turn-of-the-century envelopes with illustrations of product packaging. (And what is an envelope, after all, if not a type of package?) I’€™m no philatelist, but looking into it a little bit, I’€™ve learned that, in the world of stamp collecting, envelopes are called “€œcovers”€ and that the 25 covers pictured here are called “€œillustrated advertising covers.”€ Moreover, the return address & promotional graphics in each of these, is referred to as the “corner card.”€

It used to be that most letters were “€œfolded self-mailers”€ folded up and sealed with a blob of sealing wax. When did letters acquire this type of cover packaging?

“In 1845 an Act of Congress abolished postage rates based on the number of sheets used in forming a letter, thus began the widespread use of envelopes to send letters.  Until that time envelopes were rarely used since they constituted an extra sheet of paper, thus a higher cost. Before long merchants began to use envelopes to advertise their products...”

from ebay’€™s guide to Advertising and Illustrated Covers

All of these images come from last year’€™s H.R. Harmer online auction catalog: The “Sapphire” Collection of Illustrated Advertising Covers.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

(18 more, after the jump...)

Hy-Jen Toothpaste Tube

Another vintage anthro-pack from a J. Walter Thompson ad—(circa: sometime around 1906?)—that I found on the Duke Libraries Digital Collection site.

(See the whole ad after the jump...)   

Richmond Road Show

Gustav Mayer House ©2008 Debby Davis

Photo above is by Beach Packaging Design partner, Debby Davis, from her new show, “This is What Time Does: A Year of Walking Richmond Road,” which just opened today at the Wagner College Art Gallery.

The show chronicles changes on Richmond Road—teardowns and new construction over the past year, and over the past century. One of 32 artworks included in the show, this one features the historic home of confectioner/inventor, Gustav A. Mayer.

While his home was on Richmond Road, in the neighborhood of New Dorp, Gustav Mayer’s business was located in Stapleton—the neighborhood on Staten Island where we live. Nowadays, there is not a lot manufacturing going on here, but in the 1800s Stapleton was quite the industrial hub.

...by 1880 there were eight breweries on Staten Island. Also, German immigrant Gustav A. Mayer moved his confectionery establishment from Manhattan to Stapleton. His creations were served in the finest restaurants, including Delmonico’s and Sherry’s. Mayer introduced the sugar wafer, later popularized by Nabisco.

Jeffrey A. Kroessler
New York Year by Year: A Chronology of the Great Metropolis
Published by NYU Press, 2002

Not only the inventor of the “Sugar Wafer,” Gustav—(see top photo: the one on the left with the beard)— also obtained patents for a number of other products and machinery.

(His typographic confectionery machine & candy cigarette labels, after the jump)

Pic'n'Save Stories

Left: a Pic‘n’Save receipt from RoadSidePicture’s Flickr Photostream; right: a gold Pic‘n’save employee pin (with ruby) from eBay

Pic‘n’Save

a discount superstore known for its fabulously white trash appeal

I done gone pick me up one of them outfits at the Pic‘n’Save after I get off work from Denny’s.

–Urban Dictionary

In the mid-sixties my family used to shop at the now defunct Pic‘n’Save in Atlantic Beach, Florida.

Besides buying several seminal albums of of my youth there—(Sergeant Pepper’s, Between the Buttons, et al.)—there were two interactions with other customers that I’ve never forgotten.

1. Foodstuffs: My two younger brothers—one pushing the other down one of the food aisles in a shopping cart—were scolded by an unusually well-spoken grey-haired lady saying, “People put their foodstuffs in there!” We knew what “food” was and we knew what “stuff” was, but that was perhaps the only time in our lives we’d ever heard anyone speak the the word “foodstuffs” out loud.

2. The Dress: My mom had a yellow & orange, 1960s sun-dress—(that I believe was purchased at J.C. Penney)—with pompoms along the hem. She was wearing this dress one day when we were all grocery shopping at Pic‘n’Save, and my youngest bother got briefly lost and then, catching sight of her dress, he ran up and hugged her. Noticing that his hands, for some reason, were not reaching completely around her, he looked up. The woman looking down at him was not Mom, but a much heavier, somewhat perplexed woman, wearing the same dress.

(A possibly fake, foreign Pic‘n’Save store, after the jump..)

Surprise Packages

Anything & Whatever [1] drinks have been around for a little over a year in Singapore, but the first I ever saw of them, was here in the U.S. at the offices of New York-based distributor Nuvo.

As it was explained to me, it’s a cultural phenomenon in Singapore to hold business meetings at lunch that are so engrossing, that—when the waitress interrupts to take an order—some will just dismiss her with, “Just bring me anything” or “I’ll have whatever.” These beverages, therefore, come in cans that do not specify what the flavor is—although they come in a variety of different flavors. (The ingredients, however, are listed in the usual manner.)

A new trend of products in mysterious surprise packaging? Is there a market in this country for a surprise beverage? There were those Harry Potter “Bernie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans” where you got an assortment of flavors—including at least one bad flavor just to keep things interesting. (See: Five Formerly Fictional Products)

This summer, JJ Abrams—(creator of TV show “Lost”)—at a TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design), spoke about the $15 dollar “Magic Mystery Box” (above) that his grandfather got him at a NYC magic shop—that he has never opened. [2]

I also found a web site that specializes in selling so-called “mystery products.”

The brand-dilution of the whole surprise package concept? The packaging for this product line, by the way, looks as if it might have been designed by this man...

(Mystery man, music and footnoted digressions, after the jump...)

Bottled Tea

Back in August I found the tetra brick (on left) near the deli and was attracted to its scimitar-like typography. (It’€™s true. I pick up trash in the street and keep it on my desk until I have time to write about it.) Box Vox recently touched on canned tea, so it’€™s only fair that we give equal time to “€œbottled tea” €”which is pretty much what “€œTeh Botol”€ translates to. Sosro’s corporate narrative includes the story of how their tea came to be bottled in the first place.

The Sosro brand, a well known tea brand in Indonesia, is taken from the Sosrodjojo family name, the owners of the company. They started the business of marketing jasmine tea based in Slawi, a small town in Central Java province, in 1940. The first brand was called Cap Botol (or the bottle sign).

In 1965 the Cap Botol jasmine tea was first introduced to Jakarta by promoting the product with... [free samples]. During the free tasting promotion, the jasmine tea was brewed on the spot, but the time required for brewing was too long for some of their more impatient customers. To overcome this problem, the promotion staff brewed the tea in the office before going to the promotion location and poured the ready-to-consume jasmine tea into big pots and pans. However, this technique did not solve the problem; the tea in large pots and pans spilled over on the way before they reached the location.

Another solution was found by placing the brewed jasmine tea in clean used glass bottles, which were normally used for packing soda, soy sauce and other products. It was successful and gave birth of the teh botol (or tea in a bottle) brand name in 1969. The official name was Teh Botol Sosro.

Wikipedia Entry for Teh Botol

So even though the name of the product means “bottled tea” it has come to be sold in tetra bricks—€”with a picture of the original bottle package. An understandable reason for a cross-referential package.

But another question still remains. Why was Sosro’€™s original loose tea product—€”(sold in a box since 1940)—€”given the brand name of “€œCap Botol”€—€”The Bottle Sign ?

(See package photos, after the jump...)

Tea Forté

Tea Forté from designer Peter Hewitt. A pleasing combination of geometric and organic: tall polyhedral infuser packs, each with a disarmingly natural-looking leaf/sprout tag. Although the tall pyramidal shape is not a “close packing” polyhedron, the individual tea-bag/infusers do pack together in a variety of sculpturally intriguing ways.

(A couple more images, after the jump...)

Correspondence Art and Gatorade

In college, I remember hearing about a “correspondence art” project by Bruce Helander in which he sent a series of letters, each decorated with pasted pictures of the “Mona Lisa” to a friend on the west coast.

Mailed on a regular basis from the east coast, the first letters were fully addressed, but in gradual stages he began abbreviating and omitting crucial bits of address information, until eventually a letter with nothing more than a picture of the Mona Lisa was actually delivered to his friend by the post office.

I’m guessing this must have been before widespread use of optical character recognition at the US postal service—when it was still possible (through dogged repetition and persistence) to train a series of unknown postal workers to associate a picture of the Mona Lisa with a specific destination.

The recent recent changes in Gatorade’s labeling, reminds me of Helander’s project. First the brand’s logotype is front and center and locked up with a lightning bolt. Then it gets a bit smaller, steps aside and lets the lightning bolt take center stage.

Are consumers like postal employees? If Gatorade takes the next logical step and removes the logo altogether, will consumers still recognize the brand? Could shoppers be trained to understand that a bottle, addressed only with a lightning bolt, meant Gatorade?

(Compare with old Gatorade logo lockup, after the jump...)