packaging as content

March 12, 2012

Paul Lee’s Untitled (Can Sculptures)

While lighting fixtures made from beer cans in Friday’s post strongly appeal to a certain male, hetero decorative impulse, a similar mash up of beverage cans and lighting also occurs in the untitled “can sculptures” of Paul Lee, but with a differing agenda.

Using everyday objects such as soda cans, light bulbs, and socks, Lee’s Untitled (Can Sculpture) series explores the relationships between materials and their coded cultural and sexual meanings.

…Each of the pieces in Untitled (Can Sculpture) begins with a soda can with a photocopy of a young man’s face pasted over the label. The image is taken from a 70s naturist magazine and was chosen because the boy’s strong classical features exemplify archetypical ideals of beauty and youth.

… Through this sensual fetishisation of everyday consumer objects Lee’s sculptures explore the nature of personal identity, their disposable nature highlighting the ephemeral transience and guilty pleasures of desire.

 Artist’s Profile: Paul Lee, Saatchi Gallery

Note how, in the lower sculpture below, with the two cans connected through the eyes, Lee uses the same kind of “cylindrical completion” that we’ve noted as a package design trend: using a row of separate cans to form a larger whole. (See: Turner Duckworth Coke packaging) While the string joining two cans might, on the one hand, suggest “eye contact” between the two individuals, the matching cans are arranged in such a way that same young man’s face —a single individual— spans the two connected beverage cans.

Lee also did a more minimal series of polychome beverage can bottoms…

(More untitled (can sculptures) and a video, after the fold…) (more…)

March 9, 2012

Beer Can Track Lights

We did a round up of tin can lighting fixtures in September of 2010. These beer can track lights by ZAL Creations are similar.

They seem to have struck a chord with websites catering to the young, hetero, pad-proud, beer-consuming demographic. (See: “Ultimate Man-Cave Lighting System,” Menterests, Gizmodo & DormSlate, et al.)

I like the variety of oddball beer cans, chosen for this photo, but it looks as if you can also arrange to have your illumination emanate from matching containers, if that is your preference. $87 each. (ZAL also created one of the three Pipe Bottle Lamps we featured last week.)

(For more about Heineken “Keg Can” see: PackWorld; for more about the Budweiser “Cabottle” see: BeerCanGuide;  for more about the Sapporo Beer Can: see our 2008 post.)

–Randy Ludacer

March 8, 2012

Subtle Surprise Package

Surprisingly colorful inner packs contained in a somber outer package: Milagros Maria Bouroncle Rodriguez’s T project.

Kind of the opposite of the idea that we were discussing yesterday. Rather than revealing its contents with a faux transparent effect —(like the 1956 Trix cereal box)—Rodriguez’s package completely conceals the color and texture inside. And not just conceals. Such a muted exterior is surely a form of misdirection for the magic trick that she pulls off when you open the pack.

The package is simply called T and takes us to a full contrast opening experience. If the box is extremely simple at the base, it opens with an explosion of color where each little teabag is a fine piece of paper folding art. This refinement is carried to the extreme and pure pleasure of the object where lies the physical evidence that beauty makes us happy. Bravo!

–Sylvain Allard, Packaging | UQAM

I think this idea of an inner/outer contrast in package design would be a very good one to explore further in a future post. Unexpected and surprising contrasts seem so fundamental to the opening of packages.

Any package that conceals its contents is potentially a surprise package. To the degree that our expectation stands in contrast to what’s actually inside, we are surprised.

The proverb, “Good things come in small packages” is meant to be a paradox, contrasting your low expectations (of small packages) with the surprisingly good things concealed inside.

Some packages contain extreme surprises, like the SS Adams jumping snake gag, contained in a “mixed nuts” can. Other packages, like Milagros Maria Bouroncle Rodriguez’s T package, contain more subtle surprises of color and texture, not even hinted at by the graphics on the outside.

(More photos at Packaging | UQAM)

–Randy Ludacer

March 7, 2012

Trix Cereal X-Ray Pack

About a year ago, we featured some package design by Mark Oliver, Inc. (above, left) that used actual-sized product photography of cereal to cover the outside of some Vita Crunch cereal boxes. Not just a photo of cereal in a bowl with milk, but a continuous, all-over pattern of cereal covering the front, tops and sides of each box. As if the boxes were transparent and we could see the contents inside. (See also: Packaging & What Lies Beneath)

“The client wanted to sell breakfast cereals priced at 99 cents each. The budget was tight and limited to process color. We made the product the hero. We laid it on scanners to record, used 3-D type to grab attention, and created distinctive, fun, colorful boxes that jump from the shelves.”

Later I saw this Trix Cereal packaging and realized that there had been an earlier precedent for this kind of X-ray package design for cereal.

Above: the introductory Trix ad from a 1956 issue of Life Magazine.

These earlier, rabbit-less Trix packages were a revelation to me… modern, in the same way that Jackson Pollack’s “allover” drip paintings were considered modern in  those days…

“Allover painting refers to a canvas covered in paint from edge to edge and from corner to corner, in which each area of the composition is given equal attention and significance. This is a radically different approach from modes of painting that offer specific focal points, such as the sitter’s face in the case of a portrait. With an allover composition, our eyes are invited to wander the canvas from the top to the bottom, following lines, shapes, and colors.”

Allover Painting, Museum of Modern Art

As a kid, I was convinced that I could correctly identify colors on black & white television. Perhaps it was advertising like this that gave me this idea. Above, is a screen shot from one of the earliest black & white TV commercials for Trix. The way they labeled the colors on screen (raspberry red, orange, lemon yellow) reminds me of Jasper Johns’ allover paintings from around the same time.

Below: Jubillee and False Start from 1959. (via: Flourishing Mirth)

(More Trix-ray vision, after the fold…) (more…)

March 6, 2012

My Belated Coverage of Freshkills Sneak Peak

In early October we attended The Freshkills Park “Sneak Peak.” There were a lot of package related artworks and events at the landfill that day, that I would have written about sooner, had I not been foolishly waiting on more information from someone who never got back to me.

So now, 5 months later, on the better-later-than-never theory…

1. Lisa Dahl | Suburban Export

I bought a house! It was part of this subdivision of houses above, built by Lisa Dahl for her Suburban Export project and situated at Freshkills landfill… a whole neighborhood of recycled food cartons.  Not what you’d first think of as the healthiest of locations for a neighborhood, and perhaps that’s why houses there were selling for only $10 a piece. Mine was made from a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box and included a built-in neodymium magnet at the base to keep it from blowing away.

2. Linda Byrne | Ghost Net and Cup Nests

Made from recycled plastic six-pack rings, and installed on a bridge like some ethereal, alternate-universe chain link fence. Also: bird nests made from the same stuff. (Which probably does find its way into the composition of actual bird’s nests!)

3. DB Lampman | I am Within

DB Lampman’s performance with sculpture that took place on top of one the capped mounds of the landfill. This sculpture was originally installed in late August but was temporarily removed due to Hurricane Irene. (Nice to speculate about what someone might have made of this sculpture had it become airborne and landed in their yard.)  The performance above was from September.

(1 more after the fold…) (more…)

March 5, 2012

Lenticular Flick

I’ve written a couple times about packages with lenticular labels. A potentially great solution to a common package design problem: “How to demonstrate a difficult-to-explain product transformation without resorting to a sequential series of images?”

And the thing is, without a video of the lenticular package in motion, a sequential series of images is exactly what I usually wind up showing you. (See: the lenticular  Changing Lanes wine labels.)

That’s why I insisted on leaving our new (Progressive) salad spinner gift in its box until I had a chance to film it.

–Randy Ludacer

March 4, 2012

Emotion in Packaging: Part 1, The Good

Continuing on the Packaging an Emotion theme, let’s explore the consumer products side of things.

One of the most important forces in consumer purchasing, emotion in packaging can be affected by all sorts of things–ranging from price, to form, to design theory and lastly the retail environment. The two types of emotion I want to talk about are literal emotion, where smiling characters or such smack you over the head with their idea; and secondly, perceived emotion, which is how the product makes you feel. Kraft happens to have an example of both with their Macaroni and Cheese line:

Created by the experts at Landor, the new Kraft Macaroni and Cheese package doesn’t use goofy characters, but insead highlights the singular noodle as the star.  Right away the upturned noodle unambiguously smiles at you from a round plane which makes one think of the familiar Smiley face.  The text headline “smmmile, it’s the cheesiest” actually *tells* you to smile, and why (mmmm).  It’s hard to be more literal than that, other than maybe borrow a page from the warning pictures on cigarettes.

Perceived  emotion then takes over.  The package graphics are simple, easy to understand, kid-like.

 In the standard box, the “noodle” type is reinforced four times; once in the graphic on the top, once on the spoon, once in the copy, and again on the base in the color band.  There is little way to accidently grab the wrong variety so the consumer is confident in their decision.  The colors are also appealing.  While comforting and familiar, the blue gradient also contrasts with the noodles making them stand out.  Also, the package structure is simple, recognizable and appropriate for the product size and use.

March 2, 2012

Pipe Shaped Bottle | Bottle Shaped Pipe

Sorry about the homonymic bait-and-switch. “Smoking pipes,” of course, have little to do with “plumbing pipes.” A disingenuous way, perhaps, to end “Pipe Bottle Week,” but, in my own defense, the whole series really started with Jonna Pedersen’s painting of a Skipper’s Pipes packet. (And I’ve already stipulated to personally conflating the two types of pipe!)

1. Pipe Shaped Bottle
As previously mentioned, Avon has produced figural bottles of almost any object you can name. Over the years they’ve produced quite a few smoking pipe shaped bottles for men’s products. I like that this particular bottle is in the shape of a corncob pipe since that adds yet another layer of figuration to the Treachery of Images: “This is not a corncob pipe.”

2. Bottle Shaped Pipe
This vintage pipe (from Dawnmist Studio Clay Pipe Shop) dissembles in a different way…

This is a pipe that begins looking like a champagne bottle but when unscrewed the lower portion accepts a stem and mouth piece to become a pipe! There are neat metal fittings for the thread and a metal-push fit stem with the mouth piece itself being made of yellow plastic (which is loose). Some of the varnish on the wood of the stem has worn off but otherwise the item is in good condition and was never actually smoked although I think it could have been. Perhaps it was originally made as a gentleman’s celebration gift? The pipe displays well and makes a rather unusual vintage talking piece. The image shows the pipe when assembled and as a complete bottle. Height when assembled 5 inches. (Sold)

Aside from these vintage artifacts, are there any more recent examples?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…) (more…)

March 1, 2012

Pipe Bottle Lamps

Left: a bedside bottle lamp by ZAL Creations for sale, $185; center: M Jay Harrison’s “Brewery Lamp” for sale, $85; on right: a “Plumbing Fixture Lamp” with mason jar & ball chain pull (for sale, $169 from ClaraBellsCloset)

Another intersection of bottles and plumbing pipes: steam punk pipe/bottle lamps. Similar to Plastered Plumber, only these dispense light, rather than whiskey.

Interesting to conflate the flow of water and the flow of electricity. And not so strange to use a bottle as a lamp, considering that the earliest light-bulb prototype may have been a recycled eau-de-cologne bottle. (See: Göbellamp Bottle)

–Randy Ludacer

February 29, 2012

Water Pipe Bottles

Following up here on the pipe/bottle theme started on Monday… (There was one earlier “water pipe bottle” that I wrote about back in 2009, but these are quite different.)

5 water-pipe-shaped water bottles, design by DWARS ontwerp’s Mark Schulte for the non-profit group JoinThePipe.org.

“Joining” in this context has multiple meanings. Sold as reusable water bottles, with the proceeds benefiting the construction of third-world water pipelines, they can be literally “joined” to interconnect like pipes, forming a metaphorical water pipeline. And by purchasing a bottle, supporters are “joining” the cause in the social-media/cause-marketing sense of the word.

Our plastic bottles should be kept for life, each bottle has a bayonet system in the top and bottom, they can be connected to one another so you can get the idea of building the pipeline at home.

The bottles have a double lid opening for easy washing and a rubber band for attaching to clothing, bikes, bags or fingers!

(See also: Elizabeth Royte on Packaged Water)

–Randy Ludacer

February 29, 2012

Packaging an Emotion

As a matter of course, I am not a big fan of conceptual or student packaging projects. Everything and anything is possible when there is no need to follow a client’s branding, price point or other important factors like manufacturability, pallet yield,or etc.; the end result is often interesting and innovative, but fairly useless. Grumpiness aside, I was introduced to “Package an Experience”, or rather “Package an Emotion”, a student project that I really enjoyed. Emotion is widely talked about in the commercial packaging industry and more often than not, relies on graphics instead of structural form to get its point across. This project allowed the students to break away from graphics and flex their 3d skills. In short, the student’s work is more like sculptures than exercises in packaging.

Four packages stood out among the body of student work. The first being the Packaging Sadness project. In this concept, shown above, students encased flowers with in a multi-part wooden box. The box appears to be shattered and its sections can be removed bit by bit, slowly revealing the flower. The end result is a pile of heavy wooden shards at the base of a delicate flower. Although I am not sure how the sleeve they used related to the theme, I thought overall the package captured the fractured nature of sadness.

The second package was the Anger pack. Like the sadness pack, it is also made of shards but this time they are of glass. And instead of flowers, it’s a bottle of perfume which can only be accessed by smashing the package. The sections are formed into a ball with a single red shard providing contrast and a sense of unease. A gift you would probably not want to give your teenage daughter.

Lauren Von Dehsen has a nice series of “packages” which are clearly more sculptural than the previously discussed work. Although merely foam, I would love to get my hand on these to see how they opened. The Serenity Pack looks like it belongs in a spa. I imagine when held, it has a cool surface and its lid slides effortlessly off to reveal some sort of relaxing smell like eucalyptus. The Anxiety pack consists of piles of stones leaning precariously and gives the impression that they are going to fall at any moment. The Curiosity Pack is reminiscent of a chunky molecular model and has knobs and surfaces that are begging to be turned and opened.

Lastly, Nicole Meehling has not been a student for some time, but her project of Packaging the Ocean has stuck with me since I first saw it several years ago. In this package she attempted to capture a single moment on the ocean. The frosted outer box encapsulates a smaller inner blue box that when opened is suspended between the outer box sections. The inside is covered in snapshots of someone swimming, and it bounces around, recreating the feeling of floating on the ocean surface. Overall the piece is lighthearted and feels like a day at the beach, but without the sunburn and sand in your socks.

-Bliss Buter-Thompson

February 28, 2012

A New Contributor…

In other news, I’m pleased to announce that Bliss Buter-Thompson, Senior Designer at BurgoPak USA, has consented to contribute to box vox.

BurgoPak is a fascinating company, whose patented Slider Pack we were just talking about earlier this month.

I’ve no doubt that there’s much more to learn about BurgoPak’s structural packaging innovations. Bliss, having been with the firm since they first opened their branch in Chicago, brings firsthand structural engineering experience to her commentary on package design.

For her first post, she’s made a survey of student sculptural/packaging projects with emotional content: “Packaging an Emotion.”

–Randy Ludacer

February 28, 2012

Magic Packaging 2

A new package design book from DesignerBooks, entitled, Magic Packaging 2, arrived at our office last week and guess whose excellent package design appears on page 172? (in the “Intriguing Magic” section)

Ours.

It’s our concept and structural design for a shirt-shaped, wrap card for the Totally Living™ velvet hangers 10-pack… which can also be seen here on our web site.

Don’t know why we weren’t included in the earlier Magic Packaging 1, but I do like the way things are trending.

Anyway, you should totally buy this book. It’s only 280.00 元  (or 246.00 元 if you are a member.)

(See also: Choi’s Package)

-Randy Ludacer

February 27, 2012

Plastered Plumber(s)

We ended Friday’s post with a package-related drinking gag.

Thinking we might stick with that theme for one more round, I was reminded of the “Plastered Plumber” Whiskey Dispenser. (Photos above are from the basement of  Allee Willis’s Bubbles the Artist site.)

We focused on another of Poynter Products’ alcohol-related gags last September—their 1950s line of cocktail flavored toothpastes.

This product is from 1961 and can be found occasionally on eBay, which is where I found the photos below. A package-related accessory for liquor bottles, serving a certain sense of humor, but no practical purpose.

Willis made some interesting and detailed observations about the packaging’s punctuation…

Made in 1961 by Poynter Products Inc. Cincinnati, Ohio, Plastered Plumbers’ slogan is “The whiskey goes ’round and round and round and r…”

…but the first ‘round has an apostrophe in front of it while the rest of them remain bare. Not to mention that the first roun is missing a D.

Perhaps diminished capacity on the part of the art director after sampling the product accounts for the diminished punctuation.

– Allee Willis

I have to agree that it looks like very sloppy ’60s proofreading. (Not that I’m anyone to talk about scrupulous proofreading!)

Anyway, I have an almost completely unrelated, earlier example of the term “plastered plumber” being used…

(Another plastered plumber, after the fold…) (more…)

February 24, 2012

Bottled Can(s)

This photo is from a 2004 Diet Pepsi ad by BBDO Proximity, entitled “Bottled Can.”

Such a simple photo, but its full import was not always fully understood…

“A can of diet Pepsi has been kept inside the bottle to depict the low-calorie quality of the drink. Moreover, a slim body can always be best depicted in the shape of the bottle rather can.”

Ad Punch

Never mind that it’s one brand being contained, like a Trojan Horse, in the packaging of its rival!

In this ad, the cross-referential idea of one type of packaging containing another, has largely overshadowed the more confrontational “brand versus brand” thing. (See also: Blended Soda Brands and The Concept of Coke & Pepsi)

Also hip: the “packaging contrapposto” whereby the neck of the Coke bottle points one way while the business end of the Diet Pepsi can points the other way. (See also: Cocktail in a Toothpaste Tube)

Beverage advertising, however, is not the only context for a can to be situated within a bottle. I have two more examples…

1. There is a method of making contaminated water safe to drink that employs a soda can within a larger, PVC bottle as a pasteurizing apparatus.

Eric Marlow’s 2008 soda bottle pasteurizer is shown on upper right. David Delaney’s 2003 soda bottle pasteurizer is shown on lower right.

2. The other example involves beer rather than soda. In the category of supposedly humorous breweriana, in the subset of “emergency” drinking supplies you will find various versions and brands of the “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass!” gag…

(On eBay, and after the fold…)

(more…)

February 23, 2012

XYZ Boxes

On left: Radeon’s X-shaped box for their HD 4890 graphics card; center: a Y-maze box; on right: Jeffrey Love’s Z-shaped box for Sprint’s Muziq Phone

OK, I know. One of these things is not like the others. I had a little trouble finding a suitable Y-shaped consumer package to fill out my high-concept trio.

And while the Y-maze box (above center) can serve as a temporary container for rodents, it really isn’t the letter-shaped, retail package that I initially had in mind.

None-the-less, the other two boxes are for consumer electronics and I would submit to you that there is something inherently digital about a laboratory rat (or mouse) confronting the binary choice contained in this box. (left = 1; right = 0)

(And speaking of rats & typography, see also: IlliteRAT.)

–Randy Ludacer

February 22, 2012

ABC Bottles

More to spell out on the subject of letter-shaped package design…

The drawings above are from Mikelyn Roderick’s 2003 patent for “Letter and Number Shaped” bottles.

I couldn’t find the product as envisioned here, although I did find a matching “A” and “B” bottle on eBay. I suppose the manufacturer may have originally made all 26 letter-shaped bottles, but if certain letters just didn’t sell well, those letters may have been discontinued.

Below are three vintage perfume bottles that represent my best effort at finding A, B & C shaped examples….

On left: Liz Claiborne bottle (via: Gisellez); center: Beau Belle by Bourjois (via: Perfume Projects); on right: early Chanel bottle with “C” cap (also from: Perfume Projects)

Tomorrow’s subject? X-Y-Z boxes.

(Roderick’s patent, after the fold…) (more…)