Box Vox

packaging as content

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 I suppose the manufacturer may have originally made all 26 letter-shaped bottles, but if certain letters just didn’t sell well, those letters may have been discontinued.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…)

February 21, 2012

Packaging Typography

Packaging Typography: 3 kinds.

1. Letters made out of packages

The cover of Sunday’s NY Times magazine section featured some illustrated typography by Georgina Luck: letters made out of packages. Illustrating an article entitled, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” the entire illustration spells out “HEY! YOU’RE HAVING A BABY!”

Another example of a letter form made from different types of packaging is Richard Conn’s “R” made from crushed packaged from a 1998 show in London called “Cast of characters.” (via: All About Lettering)

2. Packaging shaped like letters

Since letters are are flat symbols, any packaging based on letter forms tends to be based primarily on the 3D block style typography. Viktoriya Gadomska’s Vitamin boxes (A–F) and the “MILK” carton by Julien De Repentigny & Gabriel Lefebvre are examples of this approach.

(3rd kind of Packaging Typography, after the fold…) (more…)

February 20, 2012

Stickney & Poor’s Spiral Peppersauce Bottle

One last thing before we wind up last week’s “spiral bottle” thread…

From 1884, Stickney & Poor’s patented bottle design for a hexagonal spiral glass bottle. Like many figural glass bottles of the time, the structural packaging concept trumps the graphic design…

“These bottles were neck labeled since labels could not adhere well to the lumpy body.”

via: Society for Historical Archaeology

The non-spiral neck portion was labeled like this…

(See also Dr. Fisch’s Bitters in which a figural, fish shaped bottle was labeled on the bottom.)

(Rufus Barrus Stickney’s design patent, after the fold…)

(more…)

February 17, 2012

Collapsible Spiral Bottles

Following the spiral thread a bit longer, there’s been quite a bit of inventive energy spent on making bottles collapse in a spiral pattern.

Similar to the accordion bottles we looked at last year, except that each of these bottles uses a helix-shaped bellows, rather than a bellows built from congruent circles.

These packages are also designed to take up less space after use. Similar to Jiwoon Park and Kwenyoung Choi’s twistable “Nnew Can” concept (see: Helix Redux) there is something intuitive and interactive about crushing a pack by twisting.

The patent drawings above are from 1993, 2010 & 2011.

Alessio Venturi’s “Spiral Bottle” concept, on right, won an honorable mention in the 2004 Macef Design Awards:

DREAM OF ECOLOGICAL BOTTLE

The characteristic SPIRAL shape, besides assuring as easy identification of the product, involves an easy management of the empty which will be reduced in size by pressing it and will not occupy much room in the dustbin.

(via: DesignBoom)

(Norwood, Dickie, and Jung’s patented bottles, after the fold…) (more…)

February 16, 2012

Spiral Neck Bottles

We did a round-up of helical bottles in 2010, but recently I’ve been noticing more examples.

The Welde-Biere bottle (on the right) strikes me as a radically different form from the subtle spiral of a vintage Pepsi bottle. This bottle is designed more like a ram’s horn. It’s not just the larger gauge of the shape twisting around. Earlier Squirt soda bottles were based on a similarly large spiral ridge. I think it’s partly because it’s the neck and not the body that’s twisting. A helix wrapping around a cylinder establishes more of a regular repeating pattern. A spiraling tapered neck, however, gives Welde’s bottles a wonky, less uniform look.

It was a look they fought hard to have trademarked when their initial application was refused. And even when trademarked, their bottle was so specific a shape that they were unable to prevent Kofola “Snipp” from using a shorter bottle with a less pronounced spiraling neck. (on left)

In the Judgement of the Court:

“…the mere fact that the two bottles have a helically formed neck does not lead to the conclusion that there is a likelihood of confusion…”

The earlier Squirt bottle, shown below, had a spiral body, but a plain, conical-shaped neck. The Welde bottles, with their plain, cylindrical bodies and spiral necks, reverse this.

In another recent spiral necked bottle, the helix is actually an internal feature. O-I’s “Vortex” bottle for Miller Lite uses embossed internal ridges to encourage a novel, twisting pour.

(Some Vortex bottle videos, after the fold…) (more…)

February 15, 2012

The Prell Shampoo Anthro-Pack

In our compulsive cataloging of anthropomorphic packages, we haven’t found many anthropomorphic tubes. (Only Hy-Jen toothpaste and Vademecum come to mind.)

Prell Shampoo’s “Tallulah the Tube” was controversial because it was was based on the actress, Tullulah Bankhead, who had not given permission and did not approve:

In the spring of ’49 my ears were poisoned with this jingle:

I’m Tallulah, the tube of Prell,
And I’ve got a little something to tell,
Your hair can be radiant, oh so easy,
All you’ve got to do is take me home and squeeze me.

Another verse had this line:

For radiant hair get a-hold of me
Tullulah, the tube of Prell Shampoo

This attempt to capitalize on my name stiffened my hackles. In my thirty years in the theater I had spurned offers adding up to a maharajah’s ransom to endorse this gadget, that cure-all. Quicker than a Prell-user could dry her mane, I slapped a suit for a million dollars’ damages on the two radio companies over whose networks the verses were broadcast, on Procter and Gamble, sponsors for the lather, and on the advertising agency which schemed the outrage.

Tallulah: My Autobiography

A sound file of “Tallulah, the Tube’s” radio jingle: (via: Old-Time.com)

(More about Tullulah, the Tube, after the fold…) (more…)

February 14, 2012

Hearts & Packaging



Top left: Jamie Nash’s bee’s wings heart illustration for Lovely Honey; top center & 2nd row left: because olive oil is “heart healthy,” Soporte Comunicación’s package design for “Secret to Live” Olive Oil uses olive parts to make whole hearts (see also: The Incomplete Package); on right: Ralph Lauren “Love” perfume in its limited edition “Heart of Gold” bottle; lower right: Vanguard Creation’s faceted, heart-shaped bottle for Diesel’s “Loverdose”

Some heart-related packaging for Valentine’s Day. ♡

–Randy Ludacer

February 13, 2012

Vertical-Horizontal Jar

An unusual example of vertical/horizontal ambidexterity in packaging: Glen Robert Carpenter’s 1937 “Design for a Jar.”

Like Donald Deskey’s 1954 Drene carton (or the 2008 Lego Fruit Snacks box), this jar can be displayed in two positions. I don’t know what product this jar was meant to contain… maybe a counter dispenser jar for candy?

(Carpenter’s package  design patent, after the fold…)

(more…)

February 10, 2012

Getting a Grip on Deskey’s Bottle Design

As promised, the brand identity of yesterday’s mystery bottle is now revealed. At first I thought it might be for a men’s product since there’s something tool-like about its hand-grip shape. Incorrect.

Turns out, it was designed to contain Drene Shampoo. Difficult to figure this out, however, since this brand no longer exists.

Originally, soap and shampoo were very similar products; both containing the same naturally derived surfactants, a type of detergent. Modern shampoo as it is known today was first introduced in the 1930s with Drene, the first shampoo with synthetic surfactants.

from Wikipedia’s entry on Shampoo

Presumably, since Deskey’s patented 1949 bottle design was assigned to Procter & Gamble, it was also he who designed the graphics for the bottle label and the carton that the bottle came in.

Five years later the Drene Shampoo packaging was redesigned again, although the bottle shape remained unchanged. (The photo and the quote below are via Al Q’s Flickr Photostream…)

New Drene carton is a completely new design – by Don­ald Deskey Associates — due to increasing sales of the shampoo through supermarkets and grocery chains. New design has cosmetic appeal, bold display, and a flexibility of display that permits placing the carton in a horizontal or vertical position. Designer’s second most important contribution (the new carton was the first) was the re­search and development of printing inks in colors which would meet the specifications set by the client. Ink speci­fications are very critical and only inks that will with­stand product tests, fade tests, and scuff tests, are accept­able. Until recently, chartreuse and purple colors could not be formulated to meet the requirements. Deskey’s third most important contribution was the development of a package design that has been an inspiration to the advertising agency in the preparation of outstanding and revolutionary advertising art work.

from “Industrial Design In America” 1954

Interesting to note this early example of a package being designed to work both horizontally and vertically. Not all product manufacturers care about this idea, but it does gives a store more display options. (See: Lego Fruit Snacks)

(More about Deskey’s Drene and it’s finger grip shape, after the fold…) (more…)

February 9, 2012

2 More Design Patent Bottles by Donald Deskey

In addition to Tuesday’s patents for toothpaste tubes and other patented package designs by Donald Deskey, I recently found design patents for the bottles above.

Similar to the detective work that the bottles from Dead Horse Bay presented, finding a patent for a package design and then finding a photo of the actual retail package can be a difficult job. But somebody’s got to do it.

The 1951 patent drawing on the right was easy. It’s Joy Dishwashing Detergent. The patent drawing on the left from 1948 was much harder. I’ll tell you about that one tomorrow.

(More Joy, after the fold…)

(more…)

February 8, 2012

Rachel Perry Welty’s Miniature Packaging

Rachel Perry Welty’s artwork has sometimes involved the making of miniature folding cartons. Her commissioned work for Johnson & Johnson’s New York lobby (“Product” 2007) for example, features hundreds of miniature versions of their retail boxes, past and present.

Executives from Johnson & Johnson saw a piece called, “Contents of My Pantry,” which featured miniaturized boxes of everyday items like cereal. They later commissioned Welty to create a similar installation of all their products, which now continues to grow larger and larger on a wall at the corporate headquarters.

“I started with the antique products like bunion plasters and keep adding to it as the company adds new products,” Welty said.

Brooks School Website, 2008 (Visiting Artist…)

She’s also made miniature versions of other iconic packaging designs, including a tiny stack of a more contemporary Brillo box — more contemporary than the 1960’s package design of Warhol’s Brillo boxes.

She’s also made a miniaturized survey of currently available Crest Toothpaste varieties (which further illustrates a point I was making in my previous post about how far from Deskey’s original brand packaging Crest has wandered).

“Choice (Crest toothpaste),” (2005) comprises every size and variety of Crest toothpaste available at my local drugstore, re-made in 1 : 5 scale. This installation probes the questionable benefit of choice in our culture and reflects, in an everyday way, our desire to acquire, inflamed by the miniature.

Rachel Perry Welty

The impulse to make miniature replica packaging as artwork is interesting and I was curious about her idea that consumers might be “inflamed” by miniatures. Hunting around a bit, I turned up an interview from 2006 in which she also mentions this idea:

“I take the actual containers, after we consume the contents, and I open up the boxes, photocopy and reduce them. I’m thinking a lot about this miniature inflaming the desire to acquire. They’re made into something cute and precious or something that you want to buy.”

There’s also a contrasting scale at work when she presents a huge accumulation of tiny packages, as in the Johnson & Johnson “Product” installation and the 2007 “Brillo” …methodically organized, but compulsive — like a dollhouse for hoarders.

(A few more photos, after the fold…) (more…)

February 7, 2012

Donald Deskey’s Toothpaste Tubes

Among the many brands that Donald Deskey designed packaging for, was Crest Toothpaste.

Mr. Deskey’s packaging designs are some of the most memorable and ubiquitous. A 20-year association with the Procter & Gamble Company included the design of dozens of household products, including the packaging for Crest toothpaste, which has not changed since its introduction in the 1950’s.

Donald Deskey, Innovative Designer, Dies at 94
by Suzanne Slesin, NY Times, April 30, 1989

Not that Deskey’s package design for Crest remained completely unchanged. In the 1960s Deskey’s red triangle became a left-pointing arrow for a time. (see photo below) By the 1970s the logo was changed to an italic, forward-leaning version, although the letters did retain their basic colors. More recently the dark blue and light blue letters were made the same color, although the red “C” was retained, the triangle is gone although there is still an arrow, but it points in the other direction.

Less well-known, however, were his patents —both design patents and utility patents— for collapsible toothpaste tubes…

Most of these were from the early 1940s and assigned to Bristol Myers. (Were these ever produced?) One of the patents, awarded in 1956 was assigned to Procter & Gamble, which seems related to Crest Toothpaste which was launched in 1955.

(More pictures & patents, after the fold…) (more…)

February 6, 2012

Colbert’s SuperPack Pack

If I had just waited a few more weeks, I could have made Stephen Colbert’s SuperPack pack the centerpiece of last month’s post about Super PAC packaging.

Colbert recently announced (facetiously?) that Ben & Jerry’s was coming out with a limited edition “SuperPack Pack” of his “Americone Dream” flavor. Whether or not this is true, it pleases me to see the packaging implications of “Super PAC” come to the fore.

Americone Dream’s package design has already undergone a few iterations. An earlier version had a red & white striped flag background, rather than the Ben & Jerry’s new blue skies. The new “SuperPack” pack also appears to now have red, white & blue banners, festooned under the lid.

To my way of thinking, Colbert’s Super PAC (“Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow”) is a brilliant piece of popular conceptual art. By legally forming a bona fide “Political Action Committee” with comedic rather than (strictly) political intentions, Colbert uses a similar stratagem to that of the “N.E. Thing Company”—artists who officially formed a corporation in 1966, hiring a corporate graphic designer to design their corporate logo, etc. and yet who had entirely non-corporate motivations for doing so.

Like N.E. Thing Co., Colbert used an existing legal entity (a Super PAC, in his case) as an opportunity to subvert and critique an institution while feigning participation. N.E. Thing attended trade shows and sent out corporate faxes. (The fax/facsimile was the latest thing in corporate communications in 1966, just as the Super PAC/Political Action Committee is the latest thing in political fund-raising in 2012.) Colbert ran faux political ads on television and tried (belatedly) to get on the ballot on the South Carolina Republican primary.

(A video of Colbert’s SuperPack pack announcement follows, after the fold…) (more…)

February 3, 2012

Capsule Packaging

Following the pharmaceutical thread, the earliest patent for a two-piece, telescoping capsule was granted in 1846 to Jules César Lehuby.

Hard two-piece capsules were first invented in 1846 when Parisian pharmacist J.C. Lehuby was granted French Patent 4435 for “Mes envelopes médicamenteuses”

Division of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki

I failed to turn up Lehuby’s patent, but above are patent drawing of various envisioned improvements and refinements by other inventors over the years.

I’m less interested here in ways of packaging capsules, than in the idea that the capsule, itself, is a package. A capsule’s main purpose is to shield us from the bad-tasting medicine it contains. Lehuby compared his invention to a “cylindrical box capable of containing the required medical substance in its interior.”

What is a capsule, if not a tiny, edible container? If you have any lingering doubt that it’s truly a “package” in the modern sense of the word, just consider the extent to which the capsule is branded. (e.g.: Nexium “the purple pill)

Capsule manufacturer, Capsugel even has a “Build You Own Capsule” app, enabling its customers to brand their capsules with Pantone color and logos.

What is that, I ask you, if not “package design?”

The capsule, in fact, is such an intriguing contraption that designers have sought to package other products in them, as well. Usually this is done by carefully implying “vitamins” rather than prescription drugs.

Vitamin Water capsule bottle concept by Cindy Ng & JJ Lee

There is, however, the occasional encapsulated product that will embrace the drug thing, as in the Sunshine Enema music package, in which the music is contained in a capsule-shaped USB drive. (Designed by Jeremy & Erin Fortes)

(More encapsulated products, after the fold…) (more…)

February 2, 2012

The Burgopak Slider Pack

Another patented interactive pharmaceutical pack: the Burgopak slider pack…

The invention after which the company is named was made by Yorkshireman, Burgo Wharton, whose fascination with pop-up books gave him the idea for packaging boxes with sliding drawers. You pull out one side and the other side goes out too — people think it’s magic! Burgo patented the idea and the company was formed with Mr Wharton as creative director.

Diary of a packaging innovation, The Daily Telegraph, May 26, 2009

Burgopaks have also been used to package CDs, SIM cards and electronics, but seem to have really caught on as pharmaceutical packaging. The counter-intuitive surprise of pulling in one direction and having something pop out in another direction is the key to this pack’s appeal.

Using a Burgopak to deliver their erectile dysfunction medication, Bayer’s brand manager for Levitra, comes close, but does not quite acknowledge the implied metaphor: “We chose the Burgopak design for our new Levitra formulation because it’s pocket-friendly, discreet and gives the product a playful edge over its competitors.”

Another name for the same brand is “Staxyn” which also comes in a black and orange BurgoPak, just like Levitra pack above. (I’m not sure why Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline created two matching brands for this one drug.) There’s a nice interactive demonstration of the package on the Staxyn website.

Come to think of it, both of their packs remind me of those black “5 Gum” packages.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

February 1, 2012

The GlaxoSmithKline “Diskus®”

Years ago, when I first started seeing these packages in advertisments for various GlaxoSmithKline inhalant powders, the design looked to me like something produced by some alien technology. (See below the Diskus® as compared to an alien “cutting disk” from the movie, “Predator.”)

Later I happened to see some patents for the device —(Diskus® in the US; Accuhaler® in the UK)— and I realized how ambitious a package it was.

The inhalers that I was previously familiar with had all used aerosol propellants, which the Diskus does not use. This inhaler also has a counter which countdown to “0” the remaining metered doses and unfolds open and closed on a rotational axis. The alien asymmetry of its profile is largely due to the fact that it’s mechanism was designed to be actuated by the thumb of one’s right hand.

I recently got a chance to interact with the alien technology of the Diskus, having been prescribed Advair for a temporary bronchial inflammation.

One thing that could have made more obvious for me, was that you don’t feel like you’re inhaling anything. I wound up impetuously double dosing until I noticed a slight crunchy residue of powder in my mouth. Reading more carefully, I noticed this fact was mentioned later in the instructions.

Last year, Advair was the 4th best-selling prescription drug at $4.7 Billion. (via: Consumer Reports)

Designed by Gregor Anderson, head of GlaxoSmithKline’s “Technical Packaging Centre of Excellence,” the Diskus won a “Gold Award” in the 2003 DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation.

(More about Diskus manufacture and its clockwork interior, after the fold…)

 

(more…)

January 31, 2012

Liberty Bell Jars

Nash’s Prepared Mustard was sold in a number of different figural glass jars —(that could often be reused as children’s coin banks)— and in the late 1940s or early 1950s one of these jars was “Liberty Bell” shaped. (Jar on left from eBay $39.99; jar on right from eBid $19.99)

It’s customary for sellers of antique glassware to stipulate to any chips or cracks, but, with Liberty Bell jars, it’s interesting to see whether the seller will notice the paradox of a glass reproduction of the famously cracked Liberty Bell. Some don’t seem to notice it:

“Shape of liberty bell jar is in very good condition. No chips, no cracks.”

Others do:

“imitation” crack that you would find on the real Liberty Bell

_______________________________________________________________

“The jar has no chips or cracks except the crack that is suppose to be on the liberty bell.”

“Liberty Bell Bottle Bank” from Anderson Militia, $25

Kraft also came out with a mustard in this type of jar and later, in 1976, Liberty Bell jars enjoyed a brief Bicentennial renaissance as containers for maraschino cherries, Spanish olives and probably other patriotic foods, as well.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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