Box Vox

packaging as content

March 31, 2010

Old Fruit Jar Apps

MasonJarEggBeater

MasonJarBeaterPatent Mason-jar egg-beaters.

Well-known as a DIY, food-preserving container, the mason jar was also the “universal machine” of its day. (In the same way that a computer or an “iPhone” is today’s universal machine.)

With its standardized closures, the mason jar served as the default platform for many 19th Century, third-party apps.

While we’ve already covered some of the more novel applications—(See: Mason Jar Mousetraps and Minnow Traps)—kitchen-related tools like egg-beaters are the more obvious application. (…and butter churns, mixers & coffee grinders, etc.) Inventors developed and patented lots of these
attachments—adding additional functions to the humble, “open source”
container.

If specialized, stand-alone kitchen-appliances hadn’t led us away from this concept, we might all have more kitchen counter space today.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

March 30, 2010

Can Bag

CampbellsCanBag

Even if you weren’t around to order this pop-art-accessory “can bag” from Campbell’s Soup in 1969, they can sometimes still be found. The one on the right was for sale on Etsy, but I believe it’s been sold. Photo of 1969 ad on right is from Pink Ponk’s Flickr Photostream. (See also: Campbell’s Soup Radio)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

March 29, 2010

Medtronic Makeover

NewReservoir
OldReservoir We’ve covered diabetic supplies packaging and Medtronic branding before. Having recently noticed that the 10-pack cartons for Paradigm insulin pump “reservoirs” have undergone a package redesign, I thought a “before & after” might be in order. Small “before” photo, on left; large “after” photo, at top of page)

First thing I noticed—and it’s a strike against the earlier package—was that it was very hard to match up the fronts with the backs, mainly because, with the old carton, it was difficult to say for certain which side was the front and which side was the back. Both cartons appear to use the same die-line, but things have been switched around. (Where the tear-off strip used to be at the bottom, it is now at the top.)

The new carton uses blue rather than purple as a second ink color. They went with a photo of the reservoir/syringe rather than the previous diagrammatic illustration. All the technical info, address, UPC, etc. is now confined to one side which is unambiguously the back. No more lifestyle photo, which I’m fine with. (I had earlier questioned the purpose of ‘lifestyle’ photography on their device packaging since it’s not as if insulin pumps or their supplies are point of-purchase consumer products.)

123 One mysterious element that I didn’t, at first, understand: the 1-2-3 trash can symbol.  Initially I assumed that the numbers, 1 and 2 were each contained in a symbol representing the Sof-Set blister packaging below. Sof-Set “Infusion Sets” are compatible with (and connect to) the reservoir syringes contained in the new carton, so it’s reasonable to imagine that there might be some reference to them on this package, but what could it mean? Throw away your empty infusion-set packs? In my 2008 post about diabetic supplies packaging I had lamented the amount of diabetic trash I was compelled to produce. But why two infusion-set packs? These things are used one-at-a-time, so throwing away two of them together makes no sense…

Sof-sets 

(Medtronic mystery, solved, after the fold…)

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March 26, 2010

The CardTalk Cardboard Record Player

TallMechanical Further clarification on the cardboard record player: the earliest patent I could find for this concept appears to have been J. Jauquet’s “Pocket Speaking Devices” (on right) filed in 1953. Another more complicated, manually-operated, foldable record-player was J.S. Weiner’s “Sound Emitting Device”—patent applied for in 1967. The more recognizable version of the concept (on left) was from the “Record Player” patent of Max Meier-Maletz, applied for in 1972.

SmallDemo Global Record Network (GRN)—the Christian Missionary organization that was most responsible for the relative success of this version—claims that development of this design began around 1964. They call it the “CardTalk” and used it, not for music, but for religious indoctrination. The CardTalk was prominently featured in a documentary film about the history of GRN.

(3 cardboard record-player patents, after the fold…)

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March 25, 2010

Soda Can Hair Rollers

CanRollerDivas

On left: a still from Lady Gaga’s 2010 “Telephone” video; middle: a still from Ashanti’s 2008 “Good Good” video; on right: a still from Maluca’s 2009 “El Tigeraso” video

I didn’t have any sisters growing up, but when I was a kid, I vaguely recall hearing that teenage girls were purportedly using tin cans of various sizes—(coffee cans, grapefruit juice cans, soup cans)—as hair rollers. This off-label use for used food containers was apparently never well-documented with photos. In those days, the running cultural joke was how terrible women looked whilst beautifying themselves. (See the Heloise column at the end of this post.) I’m guessing that most teenage girls in the 1960s did not want their pictures taken while their hair was up in cans.

Three recent music videos, however, hark back to these economical, improvised hair-rollers, but with a significant cultural difference. What was once just an ad hoc technique for achieving a desired hair style—has now become a style in its own right. The idea of someone embracing the “hair-up-in-rollers” look—(a look that some would regard as collateral damage, at best)—owes quite a bit to abstract expressionism. Just as the abstract expressionist painters of the 1950s rejected the artifice of representational painting in favor of “showing the process”—(brush strokes, drips, etc.)—Lady Gaga, Ashanti, and Maluca are, in a sense, just showing the process of their respective beauty regimens.

There’s a strong undercurrent of Pop Art here, as well, given that these three performers are electing to wear branded consumer packaging as hair accessories. Lady Gaga looks a little wan in her Diet Coke rollers, which reportedly were like the ones her mother used to wear. Ashanti looks a bit prouder in her set of green (beer?) can rollers. Maluca, on the other hand, is positively fierce in her golden* soda-can headdress. She alone wears hair rollers (of various sorts) throughout the entire video. Ashanti’s and Lady Gaga’s videos both feature lots of consumer packaged goods, and both coincidentally feature Wonder Bread.

The conceptual underpinnings of some new postmodern consumer glamour? Whereas tin-can hair-rollers may have been used in the 1960’s it was generally some flowers that you were supposed to be sure to wear in your hair. 50 years later, it’s the cans.

More celebrity soda-can rollers, after the fold…

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March 24, 2010

Things Inside Brock Davis’s Refrigerator

870661246898792

In designing packages, we usually think in terms of how a product will look “on the shelf” — but this is surely an unforeseen angle.

Part of Brock Davis’s 2009 “Make Something Cool Every Day” project: “One piece of creative work made every day for 365 consecutive days.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

March 23, 2010

Playstation Clothing

PSClothing1

PS Clothing: brand development and package design by GR/DD. Surprisingly subtle and retrained packaging for video game clothing. (In contrast to, say, X-box)

(Another photo, after the fold…)

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March 22, 2010

Record Cover = Record Player

RecordPlayerJacket

Now that hardly anyone owns a record player, record jackets today must also serve as their own record players. Hence: audio firm, GGRP’s
brilliant “cardboard record player” promotion.

Thank to Breno, who commented on the Dieline version of this post, we now know that this particular record-playing cardboard package was actually developed in the late 1960s by GRN, The Global Recording Network, a Christian missionary organization. (More about their CardTalk: here)

Using this package for GGRP’s promo was apparently the idea of Geoff Dawson, associate director
at Grey Vancouver
who handled GGRB’s re-branding. The self-sufficient packaging makes a
very low tech, yet audio-capable record player. According to Dawson,
“It’s actually shocking how good the sound quality is.”

The new promo pack also has its own 1950s-style promotional video.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

March 19, 2010

Toilet Paper Tubes

Glue-toiletpaperholder-275 Tube-shaped toilet paper dispensers. A cross-category, package-related consumer product?

Maybe, as with Oldenburg‘s giant toothpaste tube, there’s some subliminal identification at work here. (toothpaste extrusion = bodily excretion?)

A product line, the manufacturer hopes to extend: from toothpaste to shampoo to cartoon licensing…

Novelty bathroom accessories like these will inevitably also contain a certain gag gift gestalt. The Coca Cola Zero tube, however, struck me as particularly odd: it’s soda, packaged in a toothpaste tube. Only it’s not really soda, it’s toilet paper! Get it?

ToiletPaperTubes 

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

March 18, 2010

Floss ’N’ Cap and Prior Art

FlossCapPhotos
Top: a 2004 product photo demonstrating Aquafresh’s new “Floss’N’Cap” feature (with SmithKline Beecham’s patent drawings); bottom row: photos from Cloudberrynine’s Flickr Photostream

GlaxoSmithKline’s floss-dispensing toothpaste tube cap (Floss’N’Cap™) made a big splash in 2004, taking home a number of coveted packaging awards.

SmithKline Beecham is the assignee on a number of patents around this time, but it would be a mistake to imagine that the idea of putting floss into a toothpaste tube cap started there.

The earliest patent that I could find (below) was J.K. Frazer’s “Toilet Article” (Patent filed in 1921 and granted in 1924.) Another very credible effort was A.D. Siewert’s “Ligature Dispensing Cap.” (Patent filed in patented 1925 and granted in 1927.) There are quite a few others.

I happen to see that there have been some “allegations of patent infringement asserted against its Floss-n-Cap™” but GlaxoSmithKline appears to have prevailed in court.

Fraser-1921

(More great floss-cap patents, after the fold…)

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March 17, 2010

Submerged Toothpaste Tube

UnderwaterToothpaste

From the deep waters of the Pacific Ocean: a Japanese A Korean* toothpaste tube, retrieved by the MAR-ECO Project and cast in epoxy by artist, Gøril Walllin. (See also: Plastic Soup)

Part of the “Deeper than Light” exhibition, now on view at The Smithsonian.

*Thank you to Howard for setting us straight about the tube’s country of origin!

(Photo of the artist, after the fold..)

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March 16, 2010

Giant Toothpaste Tubes, Art & Dental Hygiene

UntitledInContext

OldenburgwToothpaste One of Claes Oldenburg’s “Giant Toothpaste Tube” sculptures. This one from 1964 is at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Much has been made of the sexual symbolism and anthropomorphic qualities of these artworks. Oldenburg, himself, commented on how “some people” took it as a metaphor for his own spent creativity—(as in: all used up)… “The first tube, made in Venice, California, in 1963 seemed to some people an unconscious self-portrait…”

0386015

In the context of contemporary art, the more obvious connection to draw from a giant toothpaste tube is to paint tubes. There are a surprising number of artworks drawing this parallel between dental hygiene and artistic expression. Between toothpaste tube and paint tube… Between toothbrush and paint brush… Between toothpaste and paint. Yesterday we touched on the patent history of toothpaste and paint tubes. Today: some art history.

In 1959, Jasper Johns—(also known for his bronzes of paint brushes)— made a small bronze sculpture of a toothbrush with 4 molars in place of bristles, entitled “the Critic Smiles.”

Thecritic 

In 1968, Richard Hamilton, did an answering work entitled “The Critic Laughs” updating the concept with dentures and an electric toothbrush.

More recently Kelly Walker has made artworks using toothpaste as paint, even mentioning the brands in titles like “schema; Aquafresh plus Crest with Whitening Expressions (Regina Hall)”. (He cites Jasper Johns as an influence in this short video interview: here)

(A couple more “giant tubes of toothpaste, after the fold…)

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March 15, 2010

Paint & Toothpaste Tube Patents

Rand1841Patent

It sounds like a “chicken-or-the-egg” type of question: “Which came first—the paint tube or the toothpaste tube?” This question, however, is one that we can actually answer: the paint tube came first.

The collapsible metal tube was, in fact, invented in 1841, by the American painter, John Goffe Rand. Some say his patented package (above) made Impressionism possible since it was suddenly feasible to paint outdoors.

So when did toothpaste get into the picture? Well… according to The Tube Council of North America, putting toothpaste into paint-style collapsible tubes was first thought of in 1892 by Dr. Washington Wentworth Sheffield, a dentist from Connecticut.

The patent below, however, seems to disprove that claim. Thomas A.D. Forster of Philadelphia—also a dentist—appears to have patented the idea in 1874—some eighteen years earlier! 

ToothPasteTube

(A sampling of other tube-related packaging patents, after the fold…)

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March 12, 2010

Packaging & Flip Books


The “deluxe edition” of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible CD (with its animated, lenticular cover) also included 2 flip books. Packaging design by by Tracy Maurice. (That flip book demonstrated above is a fairly self-referential object—you flip through its real pages to see an animated image of pages flipping.)

What is the deal with flip books? When were they invented? (I wondered.)

The first flip book appeared in September, 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett under the name kineograph (“moving picture”). They were the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular (as in the older phenakistoscope)…

Flip books are now largely considered a toy or novelty for children, and were once a common “prize” in cereal and Cracker Jack boxes. However, in addition to their role in the birth of cinema, they have also been an effective promotional tool since their creation for such decidedly adult products as automobiles and cigarettes. They continue to be used in marketing of all kinds…

Wikipedia Entry on flip books

With that in mind, and coming on the heels of the two previous packaging animation posts, I thought I’d look into the package-related flip book thing. Below is Menomena’s “I Am The Fun Blame Monster!”—also a CD package, but one in which the flip book, itself, is the package since it contains the CD. Designed by band member, Danny Seim “and individually hand-assembled while working at Kinko's.”

(After the fold, an elaborately over-packaged Louis Vuitton Flip book…)

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March 11, 2010

2 Animated Packaging Patents

LenticularPatents

Following up on the animated package thread—a couple of relevant patents. (lenticular/moiré and holographic)

First up, is Yoshi Sekiguchi’s “Process for Producing a Display with Movable Images” from 1994. The patent touches on both “lenticular” and “moiré” techniques. (See also: Kinegrams) His candy bar concept, above, is clearly a precedent for the recent Widex hearing-aid box, featured in our previous post. Sekguchi also envisioned lenticular animation used on other packaging, such as bottles and CD boxes.

(The holographic patent follows, after the fold…)

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March 10, 2010

5 Types of Animated Package

AnimationTypes

(Animating the inanimate objects, we call “packages”)

War may no longer be the popular business metaphor that it once was, but, in this area, there has been something of an arms race. Some of which, we’ve touched on before. (See: Lenticular Packaging; see also: Electroluminescent)

Here now, is a round-up of various ways and directions that packaging is moving.

1. Animated Holographic Labels
3D Photos, made with laser beams, even static holograms imply movement since your view of the 3D image changes as you move around. The “Splitting Adam” CD—(designed by Canadian firm, Rethink Communications)—however, is an animated hologram, in that changing the angle reveals a morphing transformation from lamb to human to gorilla. (via: Lovely Package)

2. Lenticular Lenses
Basically the same technology that was once used in those Cracker Jacks prizes—(that you’re probably too young to remember)—only much improved. The “Changing Lanes” wine label above—(designed by Australian firm, Mash)—uses a lenticular label—also to morph between the faces of wine-makers, Mark Lane & Justin Lane. (via: PopSop)

3. Electroluminescent Labels
Unlike holograms and lenticular labels, electroluminescent packaging requires a power source—built-in or otherwise. The “I AM Legend” DVD image (above) is a sample of a new type of printable electroluminescent technology:

Lumoza’s technology for screen printed electronics combines electroluminescent ink with a driver that controls the sequence and timing of the animation. The result is an electroluminescent computer animation that can be printed, just like ink, on all kind of surfaces, for example on a thin plastic foil. And afterwards, folded, rolled up, bended or wrapped…

With its light-emitting screen, Lumoza aims at applications in the advertising and packaging market. The screen comes with a driver chip that also stores the animation data and is typically powered by a micro-battery, depending on the size of the installation. In order to save valuable battery energy, the chip contains a capacitive switch that activates the display when a prospective customer is approaching and deactivates it when he is moving on.

Best in Packaging

(Two more types of animated package, after the fold…)

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March 9, 2010

Taku Satoh’s Spice Rack Synesthesia

S&bspices-array

Taku Satoh’s spice & herb packaging for S&B Foods: another example of “rainbow array packaging”—(packaging in which spectral colors are used for product differentiation).

While food packages are often colored to communicate contents or ingredients—(lemon yellow; orange orange)— spices are so specifically tied in to our palette of flavors that Satoh’s rainbow array suggests a sort of spice rack synesthesia.

This is not your run-of-the-mill color synesthesia where letters or numbers are associated with colors. Not even gustatory synesthesia where specific words are associated with specific flavors. This a more of a color-gustatory synesthesia in which flavors are associated with specific colors.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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