Box Vox

packaging as content

January 31, 2011

The Wonder Bread Anthro-Pack

AnthroFreshGuy

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.)

Spinning_inflatable_freddy 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…

WBConsumerCostumes

See also: Packaging Costumes

(A “Fresh Guys” ad, after the fold…)

(more…)

January 28, 2011

Wonder Bread Raincoat, etc.

Wonderbread-Clothing

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)…

RainBonnets

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 27, 2011

Package-Shaped Compressed T-Shirts

CompressedT-packs

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).

(See also: Shrink-wrapped Meat Tray Packaging for Clothes)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 26, 2011

Muji Mad Money

MujiCube

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.”

(See also: Birthday Mathematics, Packaging Charms, and Cigarette Pack Charms)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 25, 2011

4 Reasons We are Happy to Serve You

HappttoserveyoucupboxOn 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.)

Lekythos-diagram

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 24, 2011

Ouzo Bottles

OyzoBottles

ImmortalWater 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

RatFink1ShotOn left: packaging for Ed Roth licensed products from House Industries; on right: Rat Fink in a can of 1 Shot paint from Jalopy Journal

RatFinkRevelle2 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

Ratfinkfonts 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

FreehandPinstriping

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.jpgnstriped 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

1ShotBeer2

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.

1ShotBeer1

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

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

January 18, 2011

1 Shot Mascot

1-ShotMascot

Inset-1shot 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…)

« Older Entries