packaging as content

April 24, 2009

Dissected Packaging

Erik Boker’s “Product Dissections, Part I” have appeared in a number of other blogs. (I first learned about them on Sylvain Allard’s Packaging|Uqam blog) I like these and I’m hoping that “Part I” means that Boker will be dissecting other packaged products in the near future. They certainly illustrate the package-as-body concept. (Or do they illustrate the package-as-animal concept?)

I’ve written elsewhere about striped toothpaste—how there is something cool and surprising about seeing a pattern emerge where you would ordinarily expect a homogenized substance and about how this magic trick of packaging inevitably makes one wonder just how it was done. Boker’s photos wryly address that curiosity, in his words, “offering a revealed view within the plastic skins of what we consume.”

The “dissection” metaphor is interesting applied to packaging. A lot of packages feature windows, offering the consumer a glimpse of what’s contained within. I noticed that this recent illustration by Minh Uong (below) for the New York Times used the dissection metaphor.

Are there any packages out there in the marketplace that deliberately reveal their contents in a similar manner? Doubtful. Definitely too visceral for food packaging. Can you imagine dissection-themed meat packaging? Although there have been a number of packaged products that do allude to dissection and not always metaphorically…

Top left: Jack Spade ran afoul of public sensibilities in 2006 with their short-lived “Frog Dissection Kit” which included a preserved dead frog in formaldehyde and dissection tools. (Note: the cute one-legged frog illustration on the canvas sack); top right: Kaws Companion, a dissection-themed collectable toy figure by OriginalFake; 2nd row left: an edible, dissection theme Halloween product; on right: a dissected chicken model—the egg, itself touted as natures perfect package, is here shown contained for a time in it’s own natural and protective “packaging”; bottom left: the Smithsonian’s Synthetic Frog Dissection Kit; bottom right: A knitted dissected mouse by The Crafty Hedgehog. (Etsy store: here)

(Oh, I almost forgot: you can also dissect polygons.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

2 Responses to “Dissected Packaging”

1. Daniel says:

   May 18, 2009 at 12:38 pm

   another reason not to drink the stuff…
2. Jesse Hamilton says:

   May 18, 2009 at 4:23 pm

   Baking soda blasting drinking soda.
   Kinda like a destructive droste effect.