packaging as content

May 31, 2010

Christian Marclay’s Bottled Water

Christian Marclay, Bottled Water, 1990 (Glass bottle and magnetic tape)

In the fall of 1989, Christian Marclay created Tape Fall, an installation for the exhibition “Strange Attractors: Signs of Chaos” at the New Museum. For this show, he used over 150 reels of tape prerecorded with the sound of dripping water. As a continuation of the installation, the artist created Bottled Water, a special multiple for the Museum. Marclay filled 150 bottles with tape from Tape Fall, silkscreened a text on the front of each bottle, and sealed each one with cork and sealing wax stamped with its edition number.

The New Museum

May 28, 2010

Overlapping Flaps

Top photo: Butterfield Market box (via: Lovely Package); lower photo from Draplin’s Flickr Photostream (via: Reference Library)

What to do with the exposed portions of overlapping flaps? (Some possible answers above.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 27, 2010

Canned: Florida Sunshine & London Fog

May 26, 2010

Ration Type K Packaging: Morale Series

Following the thread of military packaging, we come to the packaging makeover of “K-Rations” from the latter part of World War II. (Photo on right: from US Army Models)

“Rations Type K” were developed by inventor and public health scientist, Ancel Keys, which may (or may not) explain the “K” in K-Ration. (There is debate about that.) The boxes were manufactured by the Cracker Jack company and were similar in size and material to Cracker Jack boxes.

Originally the packages were generically labeled: “Breakfast,” “Dinner” and “Supper.” Towards the end of the war they were redesigned (as part of a “morale” initiative) to make the three meals more easily distinguishable with 3 new color-coded / pattern-coded designs.

Who handled the graphic design? Some anonymous, government-employed graphic designer? An advertising agency of the time? K-Ration boxes were featured in the Brooklyn Museum’s 2001 exhibit, Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940-1960, as one of many examples illustrating the impact of organic form on graphic design.

(Photos of the “new” boxes and their contents, after the fold…)

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May 25, 2010

Miniature MRE boxes

Similar to dollhouse packaging, but with more of a GI Joe aspect: miniature MRE and WWII rations boxes.

What’s the story behind these these tiny (1/35 scale) boxes?

Whether a full-scale mock-up of an objective or a small
sand table, the terrain model is an invaluable tool for the combat
leader to visualize fully the battlefield. All combat S2s should be
proficient in the process of creating functional models in a variety of
circumstances and conditions…

The “nuts”
and “bolts” of the terrain project is the terrain model kit. The kit is
a simple box containing the basic tools that you will need to construct
any terrain model… It might contain laminated cardboard cut-outs of
meal, ready-to-eat (MRE) box pieces.

The Terrain Model: A Miniature Battlefield
by Captain John T. Chenery
Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin

Some DIY, some from kits—photos via: USArmyModels.com

(An MRE kit sheet, after the fold…)

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May 24, 2010

Sand Bags & MRE Boxes

“This is where we pour the words into a jar, as if they were water. As if a jar of water was the same as a river. This is where we try to make a coherent narrative out of chaos.”

Nick Flynn
The Ticking Is the Bomb

Just finished reading Nick Flynn’s “The Ticking Is the Bomb”—a memoir in which he traces the connective tissue between his life as an expectant American father and the political and cultural implications of the Abu Ghraib torture photographs.

I’ve been a fan of Flynn’s writing since I picked up his first book of poetry, Some Ether at the library a few years back. The Ticking Is the Bomb may be his best work yet. While it might seem a risky gambit to interleave ones own stories in between stories of Iraqi torture victims, the effect is bracing. Rather than just compartmentalizing these disturbing news stories, as we often do, Flynn succeeds in showing how post-9/11 torture policy might just implicate us on a more personal level.

What does it have to do with packaging? Two ubiquitous examples of military packaging played major roles as props in many of the Abu Ghraib photos: the sandbag (re-purposed as a blindfold/hood), and the “meal, ready-to-eat” (MRE) box that detainees were forced to stand on while being subjected to torture. There was also a Huffington Post article about the use of these boxes and their appearance in the background of many of the other photos. (See also: Product Placement at Gitmo)

(More after the fold…)

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May 21, 2010

Sweet Peas & Fleur-de-lis (silver can)
Asparagus Spears & Heraldic Shield (gold can)

Nothing says “premium-quality canned-vegetables” quite like a full-color illustration against a metallic background of silver or gold. (See also: Golden Packages and Gold Bar Packaging)

Not forgetting the requisite heraldic device.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 20, 2010

Blended Soda Brands Bottle

While researching Coke/Pepsi mash-ups in connection with the previous post, I happened to see this photo (above, left) from Andy Beach’s Reference Library.

Yesterday we were contemplating the Coke/Pepsi duality and the implications of mixing them both together—and here now is a suitable container for exactly that sort of cross-branded, hybrid soda. (The composite picture on the right is my clumsy attempt to build an airtight case.)

But what is it really? An artwork? A gag gift? A glass-blower’s project? The posting on Reference Library is cryptic. Ebay is mentioned…

I emailed Andy Beach for further clarification and this is what he said:

“I did get it on eBay. The seller described as a ‘mistake’ or factory defect bottle. He had a bunch of other early Coca-Cola bottles and seemed to be knowledgeable. I bought it because it was just plain cool and weird. My gut tells me it was possibly a salesman’s sample, or a sample to show the bottle manufacturer’s capabilities. There are no marks on it. I’m calling it Coke/Pepsi but there is nothing really that confirms that. The curves are definitely Coke bottle curves or very similar. The other half is similar to Pepsi, but who knows really where this oddball came from.”

Other interpretations of this arcane object? Anyone?

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 19, 2010

The Concept of Coke & Pepsi

Conceptual art: two takes on the idea of Coke and Pepsi. Jonathan Horowitz, above with “And/Or” and Ciprian Muresan, below with “Choose”—(photo via Risknfun’s Flickr Photostream)

1. Jonathan Horowitz

In 2008 Horowitz had an exhibition entitled Obama ‘08’ that documented the red state/blue state cultural divide. The gallery was carpeted half in red, half in blue—(a piece entitled,“Your Land/My Land.”) On election day the gallery functioned as a place to watch the election results and—this being the blue city-state of New York—those in attendance were certainly pleased with those results.

… But beneath the jubilation at this ground-breaking victory was a critique that ran throughout the exhibition, of the bipartisanship that divides the USA, concisely summed up in one piece: a vending machine selling Coke and Pepsi (Coke and/or Pepsi Machine, 2007–8). Whether it comes in a red or a blue can, the contents are basically the same. Freedom of choice is just an illusion.¹

Kirsty Bell
Frieze Magazine, Issue 127, Nov–Dec 2009

ArtForum had a similar interpretation of the dual-party soda-machine:

Nearby, a soda
vending machine (Coke and/or Pepsi Machine, 2007) offered us the
archetypal consumer-culture menu of non-choice as choice, difference as
sameness: Pepsi as the blue candidate, Coke as the red candidate, a
reference to the corporatization of politics and the politicization of
consumption.

Jonathan Horowitz: Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
ArtForum, Jan, 2009 by Joshua Decter

In a smaller scale version of “And/Or”—the competing soda brands are simply handcuffed together like unfortunate rivals on a chain gang —(also calling to mind: Martin Kippenberger’s beer-can handcuffs). About the political content in his work and the soda can 2-pack, Horowitz says:

JONATHAN HOROWITZ: Everything is political, and everything’s a lot of other things, too, but human interaction is more interesting to me than shapes and colors. I don’t really try to make work that’s political, though, and I don’t really try to make work that’s funny—I try to make work that’s intelligible and about things.

CHRISTOPHER BOLLEN: Do you get a rise out of your own work?

JONATHAN HOROWITZ: Sometimes. But more the idea of the work than the work itself. I don’t like to have any of it around me. The materiality of it gives me anxiety. Maybe I'm afraid that it will all fall apart, or maybe I’m reminded of how I can never really get anything exactly right. Oh, but on my desk I have a can of Coke and a can of Pepsi that I attached together with a section of plastic six-pack rings. That, I think, I got just right.

Jonathan Horowitz Interviewed by Christopher Bollen
Interview Magazine

On left: Horowitz’s 2007 “Coke and/or Pepsi Machine”; on right cover of “And/Or” Klaus Biesenbach’s book about Horowitz’s work. (Note: really it’s a paperback book—my photo is faked)

2. Ciprian Muresan

Coke and Pepsi are also brought together in Ciprian Muresan’s “Choose” video—but in a different way.

“…a Romanian boy mixes Coke and Pepsi into the same glass. In defiance of the old taste test marketing campaign, he gleefully drinks the brown concoction. In a country like Romania, where consumer goods are relatively new (since the fall of communism) drinking cola is a political act. …Putting both colas into the same glass is in contradiction to the title of the piece, there is no choice to be made.”²

Luke Siemens in his blog post,
Younger Than Jesus:
Ciprian Muresan

It turns out, the Romanian boy is the artist’s son, Vlad.

Ciprian Muresan’s video Choose… part of a significant body of work dealing with the father-son relationship, sees Vlad Muresan mixing Pepsi and Coca-Cola in a glass. The child’s prank rings, in the context of Muresan’s practice, pre-apocalyptic: a glimpse of the moment when carefully marketed differences merge in the same viscous paste, a rehearsal for the collapse of identities. –Art Tattler

The artist stipulates that the work with his young son is, in fact, collaborative…

We “collaborate” before on different projects like the video called “Choose” …when he have this idea of mixing the same quantity of Coke and Pepsi in the same glass, because for him the taste was not such different, but the image of the brand, yes.

from an interview with Ciprian Muresan
in Art Review, October 7, 2009

(See a portion of this video, after the fold…)

(more…)

May 18, 2010

Florida Water Soap

I wrote about Florida Water at length back in September of 2008, but having recently picked up a bar of their soap at Pathmark, I figured I might as well post another photo.

The illustrations are are notable for having been designed in the 1800s by George Du Maurier, the author of Trilby. (See also: Svengali)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 17, 2010

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…)

(more…)

May 14, 2010

Packaging & Plastic Fruit

Nestle’s I Frutti di Fruttolo: strawberry yoghurt in a strawberry-shaped pack*.

The earliest example of realistic plastic-fruit-shaped packaging that I know of was the ReáLemon (and Jif Lemon) lemon-shaped packages, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t other examples.

“…single portion, strawberry-shaped containers, filled with strawberry yoghurt held together by a small net. Young consumers find this format very attractive and it makes it easy for them to enjoy the product on the go, giving them the chance to take their little Fruttolo strawberry with them everywhere.”

CB’a Design Solutions

Plus, each strawberry is sealed with some leaf-like green foil:

“Child-sized servings of strawberry yogurt feature an induction seal shaped like a leaf to complete the fruit effect. For single-occasion beverages and foods, a seal can eliminate several grams of shipping weight per container.“

Food Packaging News

Some people save the ReáLemon’s lemon-shaped packaging for outdoor plastic gardening projects. I wonder if anyone’s using the Fruttolo strawberries in a similar way?

(A footnoted digression about the top photo, after the fold…)

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May 13, 2010

Roly Poly Books

Photo from Wendy Book

Roly Poly "box books" are pop-up books by Kees Moerbeek.

A package that is also a book, although the way this book works is more like a polyhedral scroll. (It’s structure ties into the geometry of the Nescafe display packaging from the previous post—splitting cubes into right-triangle prisms.)

Photo from Wendy Book

Does it strike you as sort of counter-intuitive that a cube-shaped box-book should be called roly poly? It did to me until I remembered about those segmented “roly poly” bugs.

(See a video of a Roly Poly book, after the fold…)

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May 12, 2010

Polyhedral Roundup: Folding Cartons

I’ve been intending for a while to do a little survey of recent polyhedral packaging. Sylvain Allard, in his Packaging UQAM blog, shows a great affinity for geometric solutions to packaging problems. So it seems fitting to start with something from there.

1. Laurence Gregoire’s proposed chocolate packaging, above, features a triangular package that unwinds into a string of 10 connected prism-shaped boxes. It’s a sort of fractal pack since the shape of each part is similar to the whole. (And the logo looks like the second iteration of a Sierpinski triangle.)

2. New Zealand-based Steph Baxter’s proposed “recycled tissue” packaging is reminiscent of some recent triangular Kleenex boxes. Except that, in her design, the prism-shaped boxes are tied together in a hexagonal set of six. Also: her graphics tell a 6-panel story about recycled paper.

3. Diego Hodgson’s dual Bon O Bon package is based—not on prisms—but on antiprisms. Two square antiprisms are combined to form a hinged dual-package—with each side containing a different flavor of candy. (See also: Nerds)

4. Nescafe display packaging by Alberto Vasquez of igen Design and Éva Sümegi & Richard Nagy of Co&co Communication: cube-shaped carton unfolds into a triangular (prism-shaped) POP display.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 11, 2010

Rob Pruitt: Art of Mislabeled Beverage Packaging

Sculpture by Rob Pruitt: On left, “Un Carton d’Evian Nomad” 2002—glitter and enamel on carboard box, 2002; on right, “Evian Fountain” 2000—Evian cardboard boxes, plastic sheets, mineral water, hydraulic pump

Last weekend I was looking at Rob Pruitt’s new coffee-table art-book, “Pop Touched Me: The Art of Rob Pruitt” and struck me that beverage packaging has been a recurring theme in his work for some time now.

A series of glittery bottled-water cartons—(featuring various premium brands). Groups of cartons, arranged to form artificial springs.

1. POLAND SPRING WATER (20 OZ. BOTTLE, $1) The consumer culture that polluted the planet has created an antidote by branding nature. As Coke/Pepsi was to the Pop ’60s generation, bottled water is the lifestyle beverage of the present. A fashion accessory, the simplest elixir, and a symbol of purity, each bottle of water purchased elicits reflection on nature and its fragility.

from Rob Pruitt’s “Top Ten List”
published in ArtForum February, 2000.
(Number 1 was about bottled water)

The Pop Art precedent is pretty explicit here. These boxes are real reminiscent of the famous Brillo boxes. And Pruitt happily stipulates to this important influence.

Almost everything I do I think relates back to ANDY WARHOL, because he’s an artist I discovered when I was really young. My mother had a soup can poster hanging in our kitchen when I was 7, and I would stare at it every morning when I ate my cornflakes. Even back then, I thought, “Boy, this is really funny.”

Rob Pruitt from an interview in Papermag by James Fuentes

Some of Pruitt’s earliest works were collaborative sculptures with Walter Early. Many of these sculptures involved beer cans...

Rob Pruitt & Walter Early: on left: “Sculpture for Teenage Boys, (Pabst Case, You're Playing with Fire)”, beer cans with decals in cardboard box, early 1990’s; on right, “Sculpture for Teenage Boys: Miller Pyramid, 13 High” 1990

…Artwork for Teenage Boys did involve pretty offensive, sexist, misogynistic expressions of white, male teenage culture that we’d basically gotten from T-shirt iron-ons and rock music lyrics. That was our first project right out of art school—not that I’m making excuses for it. I thought it was pretty good. We were trying to make a portrait of this segment of the population who was the enemy, who harassed us in high school, who beat us up behind the gym. It was an interesting exercise in politics and aesthetics just to gather all of this really vile information and see what it looked like together. I really viewed that project as a portrait of the enemy.

Rob Pruitt interviewed by James Franco for Interview Magazine

Another of the early Pruitt-Early pieces touched on the idea of using soda cans to disguise alcoholic beverages.

(More about that, after the fold…)

(more…)

May 10, 2010

Car Bottles: 3 Types

1. Car-shaped whisky bottles (photo by Beth Rose)

2. Beer-bottle-shaped cars (photo by Terry Whalebone of a vehicle from the Coors Museum in Burton-onTrent)

3. Bottles made from crashed cars…

… as a cautionary highway sign. On left: a Moscow-based crashed-car bottle for a Russian anti-drinking campaign; on right: a crashed-car bottle in Israel by Tel Aviv-based Y&R. (via: Copyranter)

May 7, 2010

2 Recent Syringe Packs: Syreen & Cimzia

Following this week’s injectable theme… here are two recent syringe/packaging designs worth noting.

1. Syreen
The photo above shows is Cambridge Consultants’ “Syreen” concept: a new, supposedly more sustainable syringe design. From their press release:

Cambridge Consultants unveils innovative concept for high-quality prefilled syringe, cutting volume of a typical pack in half…

…its novel pre-filled syringe concept ‘Syreen.’ A revolutionary ‘green’ syringe design…

Instead of glass, Syreen syringes are made with COP (cyclic olefin polymer) plastic, which has enabled Cambridge Consultants to shed the need for secondary packaging altogether, a first in this medical device arena. The makeup of the Syreen allows syringes to clip together, nesting in a pack while the COP design doubles as the outer shell of the packaging itself. The Syreen therefore eliminates the need for wasteful fillers such as cardboard and styrofoam…

“We found that typical glass syringes use many materials from all over the world and that shipping costs are egregious due to inefficiencies in packaging…”

This surprised me to read because I was under the impression that glass syringes (which the Syreen is claiming to improve upon) were already a thing of the past. A time-line published on Core77 flatly states that in 1960 “The use of disposable plastic syringe becomes widespread, permanently replacing all-glass syringes.” But it turns out that’s not quite right. While it’s true that glass syringes have been largely displaced by plastic, for certain applications glass, even now, is deemed preferable.

Manufacturers need to eliminate any interaction between drugs and packaging materials…

Glass syringes have typically been used in the pre-filled syringes sector because of their high chemical resistance and low moisture permeability. The barrier properties of glass make it the ideal package for parenteral products and it has always been considered less reactive than plastic with parenteral products, having lower levels of leachables and extractables.

Are Pre-Filled Syringes the Future?
Asian Hospital & Healthcare Management Magazine

The idea that a prefilled syringe becomes a package in itself, however, makes a lot of sense in that it eliminates the need for vials. As a package, however, the Syreen, like any prefilled syringe is still a single-use, disposable item*. (Yes, recyclable, but only if all of the right recycling systems are in place to accept these materials where you live.)

2. Cimzia^®The second syringe pack is OXO’s Cimzia^®, below.

(More about Cimzia^® Packaging, after the fold…)

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