packaging as content

January 31, 2011

The Wonder Bread Anthro-Pack

In earlier versions of Wonder Bread’s anthropomorphic mascot—“Freddy, the Fresh Guy”—he is clearly a full-fledged anthropomorphic package—a loaf of bread in a branded bread bag. (In later versions he seems like a single slice of bread.)

The upper left photo, from Felixtcat’s Flickr Photostream is actually a rotating inflatable. (See inset on right)

Regarding the different outfits, my sense is that the Freddy with the bow tie is the earliest—(as in the upper center photo from Thomas Hawk’s Flickr Photostream)—but I could be wrong about that.

The upper right photo from Ken B. Miller's Flickr Photostream shows a costumed mascot in 2004 at the Philadelphia Zoo.

There were a number of anthro-pack premiums created, including the 1998 limited edition Freddy the Fresh Guy plush toy and the ring premium. (ring photos from Ruby Lane and from Tracy’s Toys)…

And along with the Fresh Guy antho-pack, there are also consumer costumes allowing one to inhabit a Wonder Bread persona…

January 28, 2011

Wonder Bread Raincoat, etc.

1. Wendy Hill’s Wonder Bread raincoat, made for her sewing class in high school. (circa: 1960s)

2. Catherine McEver’s similarly waterproof bread bag outfits, envisioned for Barbie dolls. (See: Wonder Bread Barbies) This one is “Prom Barbie.” (circa 2010)

3. The Wonder® bread company, itself, appears to have also noticed this connection between rain gear and their plastic bread bag packaging, as evidenced by these complimentary rain bonnets (some of which are for sale on eBay)…

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 27, 2011

Package-Shaped Compressed T-Shirts

The compressed, cube-shaped Muji T-shirt led me to wonder about other possible shapes… and it turns out (of course) that there are plenty of package-shaped compressed T-shirts.

These particular images are from Compress T.

Mostly flat, silhouetted shapes of bottles—(and jars and cans, etc.)—but they also have compressed T-shirts that are contained in simulated packaging—(e.g. the T-shirt in the “Kit Kat” candy wrapper (bottom, left) and the steak-shaped “Beefy-T” in a meat tray (bottom, right).

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 26, 2011

Muji Mad Money

On the subject of compressed packaging:

1. For my birthday, I was given this Muji “Shrink Wrap T-Shirt Compresse”—a tee shirt compressed into a more compact cube-shape.

2. Which reminded me of a particular charm on my mom’s charm bracelet: a dollar bill folded into a tiny gold cube with one side glass—(“in case of emergency break glass”). I remember her charm being something like the one above (from eBay) only I seem to recollect that the charms on her bracelet were 24K and the denomination of the folded bill was $50.

3. Which, in turn, reminds me of the “paper folding problem.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 25, 2011

4 Reasons We are Happy to Serve You

On left: my photo of box: on right: photo of ceramic cup from Alison*H’s Flickr Photostream

1. Orthographic graphic design of carton for the “We Are Happy to Serve You” 10 oz. Ceramic Cup: a ceramic cup designed to look like a disposable paper cup. A product of Graham Hill’s ExceptionLab Inc. (Graham Hill also founded Treehugger.com).

2. Based on iconic “Anthora” cup designed by the late Leslie Buck for the Sherri Cup Company. From Mr. Buck’s NY Times obituary:

Since many of the city’s diners were owned by Greeks, Mr. Buck hit on the idea of a Classical cup in the colors of the Greek flag. Though he had no formal training in art, he executed the design himself. It was an instant success.

Mr. Buck made no royalties from the cup, but he did so well in sales commissions that it hardly mattered, his son said. On his retirement from Sherri in 1992, the company presented Mr. Buck with 10,000 specially made Anthoras, printed with a testimonial inscription.

Mr. Buck’s cup was blue, with a white meander ringing the top and bottom; down each side was a drawing of the Greek vase known as an amphora…

Leslie Buck, Designer of Iconic Coffee Cup, Dies at 87
Margalit Fox, NY Times, April 29, 2010

3. Only that’s not quite correct: the ancient ceramic pictured on the “Anthora” is really not an amphora, but a cylindrical lekythos.

A lekythos (plural lekythoi) is a type of Greek pottery used for storing oil (Greek λήκυθος), especially olive oil. It has a narrow body and one handle attached to the neck of the vessel. The lekythos was used for anointing dead bodies of unmarried men and many lekythoi are found in tombs.

Wikipedia entry on lekythoi

4. One of the earliest mentions of orthographic projection was by Ptolemy, a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Ancient Greek.

Ptolemy’s work is known only in fragments, but involved the orthogonal projection of the celestial sphere on three mutually perpendicular planes

J. B. Calvert, “M. Vitruvius Pollio and the Analemma”

Which brings us back around to the lekythos (photo below, left via: eBay) and the diagram (below, right) showing a method of 3D digitization of an Ancient Greek lekythos, employing orthographic projection. (From: “3D Pottery content-based retrieval based on pose normalisation and segmentation” by Anestis Koutsoudisa, George Pavlidis, Vassiliki Liamib, Despoina Tsiafakis and Christodoulos Chamzasa.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 24, 2011

Ouzo Bottles

Time to put some of our reference material into the recycling, but I wanted to at least take a picture first: an ad hoc collection of ouzo bottles from Annabouboula guitarist, George Sempepos. Given to us to provide some style cues for the cover image of their Immortal Water packaging. (inset)

See: their review at Lucid Culture. (See also: Bouzouki-bots)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 21, 2011

Rat Fink Packaging

On left: packaging for Ed Roth licensed products from House Industries; on right: Rat Fink in a can of 1 Shot paint from Jalopy Journal

I was terrible at building models as a kid and was always a little disappointed that the plastic parts weren’t already colored since I couldn’t hope to paint them as nicely as the picture on the box. Still, when I was a kid in the sixties I remember asking for and receiving a Revelle Rat Fink model. I think it was one of the hot rod series, although I was really mainly into the rat…

Anyway, it seems I was in good company seeing as how House Industries co-founder, Andy Cruz was also into R.F.

“…Around this time, Cruz’s obsession with the Southern California hot-rod culture epitomized by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the car builder and illustrator famed for his grotesque Rat Fink caricatures, and was spending all his extra money on Rat Fink models, iron-ons, decals and other ephemera. “It hit me one day,” he says. “Why not have my hobby work for me?” In 1996, Cruz’s revelation led to a licensed collaboration with Roth that yielded his Rat Fink font, a translation of Roth’s hand-lettered type into the digital realm.”

–Jesse Ashlock, AIGA

I’ve gotten plenty of use out of those Rat Fink fonts, but it’s interesting to learn the back story behind their getting into this area in such big way.

The most important part of inspiration is being true to one’s sources, so we jumped at the opportunity to work with hot rodding legend Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Ed was a pop artist, accomplished letterer and a consummate self-promoter, which are all cues we took when conceptualizing our first foray into licensing. By combining our maniacal penchant for authenticity and our appreciation for Ed’s impact on the masses, we reintroduced his genius with eight fonts, 32 pieces of artwork and an authentic Revell-style model box.

“Rat Fink” House Industries

(Note: the can of 1 Shot paint in Rat Fink’s hand above)

(More of their pinstriping T-Shirt cans, after the fold…)

(more…)

January 20, 2011

Freehand Pinstriping

Among the T shirt designs sold by House Industries are shirts that read “Freehand Pinstriping”—based on a retired, hand-lettered clipboard by Angelo Cruz. (father of House Industries co-founder, Andy Cruz)

These shirts (with their self-referential, freehand-pinstriped lettering) also come packaged in a cross-category paint can.

Between comments like “hey dude that’s bad, can you teach me?” and “why don’t you just use tape like everybody else does,” Angelo Cruz has a tough time actually getting to the shiny stretches of new automotive sheet metal to which he applies a thin stripe of 1 Shot with a ferrule full of squirrel hair.

House Industries

As we’ve been grappling with the whole “Kustom Kulture” pinstriping gestalt this week it’s become evident that the freehand component is key.

(Some videos of pinstripers at work, after the fold…)

(more…)

January 19, 2011

1 Shot Beer & Cigarettes

Following our “1 Shot” paint thread, brings us to Lance Freitag’s “1 Shot Paint / Limited Edition Package”

“This project was for my typography 4 class… I decided to do a special package for the pinstriping culture. I used 1 Shot paint as my company, they play a very large roll in the culture. I rebranded 1 shot, I didn’t want to use their existing logo.”

Lance Freitag on Behance

Debated with myself whether it would be just too obnoxious to put a “[sic]” after “culture” since it’s gernerally kulture with a “K” in this context…

Interesting, that Freitag’s package contains beer & cigarettes, rather than paint. Another attempt to combine smoking & drinking under the banner a single popular brand? Seems like a long shot to envision a paint company getting into alcohol & tobacco, but no crazier than Marlboro Beer, I suppose.

(See also: our earlier posts during Smoking & Drinking Week)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 18, 2011

1 Shot Mascot

1 Shot is another company with an official anthropomorphic packaging mascot. Their anthro-pack is a cross-eyed paint can, named Louie, who holds a paintbrush in one hand and… I think that’s an airbrush in the other hand.

It was Chris Caccamise’s “Action Paint Can” that first prompted me to look into “1 Shot” paints. Turns out they’re the go-to brand for serious practitioners in the art of Kustom Kulture pin-striping.

(And another thing, after the fold…)

(more…)

January 17, 2011

Action Paint Can

Chris Caccamise: “Action Paint Can (After R. Gober)” 2008 (via: Cereal Art)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 14, 2011

Toblerone Fractal Pack

Another inherently fractal display pack: the “Toblerone Bulk Candies” box by Ducart Packaging Industries. Prism-shaped box containing prism-shaped candies.

The individual candies, however, are in wrapper-packets rather than their trademark triangular boxes. Which is probably less expensive, but (sadly) serves to make the whole package a little less self-similar.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 13, 2011

Packaging & What Lies Beneath

While looking into the orthographically-projecting “Dish Doctor” box, I happened to see the Marc Newson designed “Black Box” for Dom Pérignon (via: PopSop) which reminded me that, in addition to the narrowly defined orthographic projection, there are other, less geometrically exacting ways that the surface of a package can reveal its contents.

Newson’s “Black Box” is essentially a black polycarbonate “clamshell” package with a green strap, but since the package itself has a label, it’s hard to distinguish it from an actual bottle at first glance.

The H&M shirt box design by Linn Gustafsson uses whimsical illustration of a striped shirt—but without the extra front & side views of the “Dish Doctor” box. Here, the box in its entirety is meant to represent the shirt contained. (i.e.: no background.)

The photo below (from today’s NY Times) show some of Rick Genest’s skeletal tattoos, which achieve a similar reveal-what-lies-beneath effect. Seeing that he’s a smoker set me to thinking about his cigarette brand…

Upper photo by Nicola Formichetti; lower photos of Robert Brownjohn’s Bachelor Cigarettes packaging

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 12, 2011

Dish Doctor Box

Another nice box featuring orthographic graphic design: The Marc Newson “Dish Doctor” dish rack carton, designed by Melina Kok. Cool, blue-print style illustrations provide an X-ray-like view of the package contents… (but is one of the panels flopped?)

Manufactured by Magis Design.

Photos from The Powerhouse Museum

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 11, 2011

Karma, Coincidence & Container Corporation of America

Recently discovered two things:

1. Bob Caruthers’ Flickr set called “Similarities”…

The pairs of images in this “Similarities” set are similar visually in one way or another. They are presented without judgment as to the motives of their creators. The viewers of the pieces can form their own opinion(s) about what they see.

Caruthers goes on to define 5 different motives:

Some are “accidents”: The creator of the similar piece had no knowledge of the original.

Some are “re-contextualized”: Obscure imagery from long forgotten sources was used.

Some are “inspired”: They are either obviously or vaguely similar to one another.

Some are “homages”: In order to pay homage to an existing piece, the original design should be widely known.

Some are “appropriated”: They contain—as the primary image on their piece—the original (and usually, but not always, uncredited) visual source.

I like this separated-at-birth sort of thing and I do something similar here—although, usually when I show a pair of images together on boxvox, it’s because of a shared underlying concept rather than a similar layout.

Caruthers very charitably presents his Similarities “without judgment.” But really, even when we aspire to take the higher (non-judgmental) ground, the question of precedence and originality is still very much on our minds.

Reading over his list of motives, the least problematic (in my view) are the “accidental” similarities. For this explanation to be plausible, however, the similar examples must represent either (A) a pretty obvious idea or (B) a “great minds think alike” situation. Which brings us to my second recent discovery:

2. Container Corporation of America’s 1938 logo —(if the box below the fist in the black & white ad from Fortune Magazine can be considered their logo)— looks an awful lot like our Beach Packaging Design logo, (also used sideways for this blog).

Are the comparisons made here on boxvox odius? Is it karma that I should now have to ask myself whether our logo is just a really obvious idea or one of those a “great minds think alike” situations?

A little from column A and a little from column B…

I like the simple geometry of this kind of isometric perspective, but clearly I’m not the only one to ever notice that a regular hexagon can represent a box (and that two equilateral triangle can represent the inside of an open box). And, like many other package-related companies, our logo is one of those package-containing, pictorial logos. All of this goes (obviously) in column A.

As for column B, since the similarities here are accidental, and we had no prior knowledge of this particular CCA ad from Fortune magazine—and given that CCA was well known for hiring the most genius graphic designers (Paul Rand, Saul Bass, etc.)—I don’t think the coincidence reflects too poorly on us.

The black & white “Unity” ad, above, was by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre. Would I sound too much like Wile E. Coyote, (delusional) super-genius, if I were to suggest that this was a great-minds-think-alike situation?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…)

(more…)

January 10, 2011

Soda Can Handles: 2 Kinds

1. Soda cans as handles: real soda cans, embedded in plastic bus handles as advertising. (Bus handle photos from Swatter China and Admire Sign)

2. Handles for soda cans: The Can Grip, for example. For when “a cold one” is too cold to hold. (See also: Package-Related Consumer Products)

(More soda can bus handles and The Can Grip’s packaging, after the fold…)

(more…)

January 7, 2011

Packaging in Pictorial Logos

It was the Sherwin Williams “Cover the Earth” logo on a sign in NJ that first set me thinking in this direction: a product’s packaging, included in its logo.

While distinctive package designs are, themselves, trademarked, their inclusion as part of a logo is much rarer than you might think. Not usually done to a recursive, Droste-effect degree. The cover-the-earth logo features a paint can, but it only has an SWP monogram (Sherwin Williams Paint) and does not match their actual packaging, past or present.

Many of these logos are used for promotional purposes, other than packaging. The Crayola Crayons box logo, for example, simulates their packaging, but is not the version of the logo used on the box.

Jack in the Box has a newly pictorialized version of their previous 2D logo. While the box shape alludes to the toy of the same name, it also implies take-out packaging that a meal might come in.

“Hielo Ice,” I first thought might be a specific brand, but it turns out to be a more generic, bilingual logo (since “hielo” is spanish for “ice”). The idea of the letters representing the product and being therefore contained in a rendering of an ice bag, however, is classic.

The logo for Ricky’s beauty shop is a paint tube.

Pepsi had various versions of their early bottle cap logo. Sometimes, these have cross-referentially appeared on their soda cans.

There are various Tabasco logos which incorporate their iconic bottle & diamond shaped label. Compari Soda, Coke and Xango have also used their bottles as logos. Again these logos are not usually used on the packaging but in separate promotions—My Coke rewards, for example.

Often when packaging is used in a pictorial logo, it has little to do with the actual company. Pickle Jar Productions, for example, offers promotional T-shirts, rather than jarred pickles.

Other times, the presence of packaging in a pictorial logo reflects a company’s activities in a more direct, less oblique way. Many packaging (and packaging design) companies have logos of this type: Container Corporation of America’s early logo, for example. (More about Container Corporation, next week…)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

packaging as content

Contact Box Vox

Packaging Songs

join our pack

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives

January 31, 2011

January 28, 2011

January 27, 2011

January 26, 2011

January 25, 2011

January 24, 2011

January 21, 2011

January 20, 2011

January 19, 2011

January 18, 2011

January 17, 2011

January 14, 2011

January 13, 2011

January 12, 2011

January 11, 2011

January 10, 2011

January 7, 2011

Kudos

Consumer/Culture

other pack-blogs

links

More Links

Categories