Box Vox

packaging as content

May 31, 2011

Bottle-Shaped Corkscrew

PatentDrawing

Bottle-shaped corkscrew by R.W. Jorres, patented in 1900.
(See more bottle-shaped bottle openers: here)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 27, 2011

Mine Enemy’s Candy

001_bigMussolini, Hitler & Hirohito candy boxes, each with an open die-cut mouth (via: Hakes)

I don’t know what it is about candy and war. We’ve had a couple of other posts touching on it… the German Chocolate Hand Grenade… the Candy Bomber…

These candy boxes above, from WWII, feature Axis leaders with die cut mouths, ostensibly a game for children to throw balls into—(the French text on the boxes offers encouragements like “Hitler’s Speech Is Finished” and “A Sharp Movement, It Should Shut Him Up.”)—but I wonder if children didn’t also dispense candy from those mouths.

Which brings us to the War on Terror and Osama bin Laden. While bin Laden has certainly been featured in a number of insulting products here in the United States, children’s candy does not seem to be among them.

Which is not to say that our recently deceased enemy combatant has never appeared on a box of kid’s candy. Consider: Super Osama bin Laden Kulfa Balls.

3570579131_9b4acff268_b Photo from: Fullsteam’s Flickr Photostream

Not anti bin Laden candy since it was most popular in Afghanistan and Pakistan and uses that brush script adjective “Super” on the packaging.

In the war on terrorism, this was clearly the enemy’s candy—not meant for consumption in the United States, although, for some reason, available in China.

Manufactured in Pakistan, this product apparently dates back to 2002:

Many vestiges of the Taliban era remain untouched in the beat-up, dusty center of Kandahar, where the ruins of buildings that collapsed during the recent American bombing campaign lie among the ruins of older battles. Venders with carts sell “Super Osama bin Laden Kulfa Balls”—coconut candy manufactured in Pakistan and packaged in pink-and-purple boxes covered with images of bin Laden surrounded by tanks, cruise missiles, and jet fighters.

After the Revolution, by Jon Lee Anderson
The New Yorker, January 28, 2002

Aside from Super Osama bin Laden Kulfa Balls, I know of one other bin Laden candy: Peta’s “Bin Laden Bites” vegan chocolate bars, released in April of last year.

(Photos of Bin Laden Bites packaging, after the fold…)

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May 26, 2011

More Orthographic Head Boxes

Lovely-package-grain-tea-english1

The Grain’s T2 Tea boxes: more orthographic head boxes, similar to the McSweeney’s Head Box we featured in February. (Via: Lovely Package)

Lovely-package-grain-tea-english2
These are promotional gifts rather than actual retail boxes:

“Using a selection of tea from T2 we created four individual tea boxes and personified them to reflect the names of the following popular flavours of tea: Gorgeous Geisha, English Breakfast, Chai and French Earl Grey. Each box holds a few tea bags and a small scroll showing images of recently completed work with an invitation to ‘sit down for 5 minutes with a cup of tea and learn more about us.”

The Grain

(See also: last Tuesday’s Cat Head Packaging)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 25, 2011

Bottle in a Pitcher

BottlePitcher

Further historic evidence that packaging at the table was once considered bad manners:

“…a fluid container or pitcher within which may be placed and securely held a milk or cream bottle of standard shape and size, so as to permit… the fluid poured therefrom, without such bottle being exposed to view.

It will be understood that such milk bottles are crude and would not present an attractive appearance upon the table, whereas such a bottle… might readily be placed within the container I provide with ease and convenience and with an approach to a more agreeable appearance.”

Aurthur J. Herschmann
Fluid-Container
Patented in 1920

(See also: Branding in your home)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 24, 2011

Cat Head Packaging

CatHeadPacks1-490

Yesterday, Paul Heidenreich from Australian firm, The Grain Creative Consultants, emailed me their design refresh for Whiskas cat food, on right. Whiskas is a brand that I wasn’t familiar with, but the iconic cat-head shape of their logo reminded me of another cat food carton that I’ve been saving a picture of: Elmwood’s “Purely” cat food box for Pets at Home, with the cat-head shaped die cut window.

Which led me to notice other cat head shaped cat food packs…

WhiskasHeadLids

These Whiskas pet treat containers were (I think) designed by Nick Brown.

MeowMix-vs-Friskies

Meow Mix and Purina Friskies, each employ cat head shapes in their cat treat containers. (Note the cat-head “M” in the pictorial Meow Mix logo. Anyone know who designed this feline logotype?)

CatHeadPhotosCanned

Eric Hart’s canned cat food project, “Snookums” also features cat heads, although in his case they are sans-ears.

(A couple more things, after the fold…)

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May 23, 2011

Orthographic Beverage Cartons

Orthographic4Packs

Two recent 4-pack cartons, each featuring the same orthographic view of the bottles contained inside:

Vidago mineral water, designed by CB’a Design in Spain (via: Lovely Package) and Copenhagen beer designed by e-Types in Denmark (via: Packaging of the World)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 20, 2011

Impossible Bottles

ImpossibleBottles

The puzzle-like interlocking bottles of the previous post leads me to the topic of “impossible bottles”—those bottles containing things that should not have been able to fit though their necks.

A ship in a bottle is the most familiar example, but enthusiasts have come up with plenty of other stuff—(even packaged stuff like cigarette packs and decks of playing cards)—to put into their “impossible” bottles.


(One more thing, after the fold…)

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May 19, 2011

Mated Container Units

InterlockingBottlePatents

Yesterday’s post about the similar interlocking bottles, raised a number of questions. The patent drawings above date from 1963 to 2008, each showing a different patented method of connecting separate bottles. There are plenty of products that can be sold in pairs — shampoo & conditioner; 2-part epoxy; oil & vinegar — but what are consumers to make of it when these products are sold in interlocking bottles?

Are they anthropomorphic couples? Are they happily married? Are they promiscuous? Or are they more like puzzle pieces fitting together?

LaterallyInterlocking

Or body parts fitting together?

Nestedbottlespatent
The 69-ish innuendo of yesterday’s bottle structure (and the single quote marks ‘’ in Joy Lin’s Hustler Lubricant concept) is even more explicit in Franck Legoupil’ 2001 patent for a “Container Assemble of Two Nested Containers,” pictured above.

This same symmetrical gender-geometry is also at work in the “Mated Container Units” patented by Juris M. Mednis in 1986:

“A multi-purpose container unit whose hollow body, neck and shoulder sections are proportioned and constructed in a manner that allows interfacing and mating with an identical or mirror image unit of like size… The container has a neck and a recessed portion along its vertical axis which accepts and provides safe harbor and protection to the neck and closure portion of the mated unit whose corresponding body recess, in turn, accepts the neck and closure portion of a second container of the mated unit…”

(See what the “Mated Container Units” look like, after the fold…)

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May 18, 2011

Interlocking Bottles

InterlockingBottles2

Two similar designs for interlocking bottles:

On left: Karim Rashid’s 2003 “Pour Hommes 2 in 1” for Issey Miyake (Men).

On right: Joy Lin’s 2011 envisioned redesign for a Hustler lubricant set.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 17, 2011

Magic Folding Cans

Cherry
Aside from yesterday’s example, most “magic folding cubes” are not packages, although some of them are designed to resemble packaging.

And among the various “magic folding cube” structures are topologically-similar cylindrical versions, sometimes called “magic cans” …

(More photos and video, after the fold…)

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May 16, 2011

Gumball Cube Pack



©2011 Randy Ludacer, Beach Packaging Design

Seeing projects like Sophie Valentine’s “Capitalism vs. Socialism” and Regina Rebele’s 2008 “Type-Cube” made me wonder if there was a practicable way that this type of “magic folding cube” could be designed as a box to actually contain something.

Ideally, I would have liked it best if the whole thing—all 8 boxes with tucks & glue flaps—could have been folded from a single die-cut shape. That doesn’t appear to be possible, although it was easy enough to get it down to just 4 pieces which must then be hinged together.

But what sort of product should such a package contain? Gumballs, I decided. Stupid, I guess, to envision such an elaborate package for such an inexpensive product, but demographically appropriate as a candy pack for kids. Like something that Topps might have considered doing in the 1970s. And as our video clearly shows, these gumballs really needed to be contained.

Anyway, this is just Gumball Cube-Pack Mach 1. There are some further structural improvements I have in mind to try next. (If you’re listening, Topps, please give us call. We’d love to hook you up.)

(Some still photos, after the fold…)

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May 13, 2011

Capitalist Box vs. Socialist Box

IMG_6369

I saw this a while back on Packaging UQAM:

Sophie Valentine’s project for Louis Gagnon’s “Design Graphique Introduction” course at Canada’s UQAM. The project is “3D Typographic Expression” and her solution is shown above.

Socialism and capitalism are two realities that clearly oppose. However, Winston Churchill did not consider one better than the other. He said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” To demonstrate this paradox, socialism is represented by eight small cubes attached to each other. While capitalism is represented by a cube equal to the size of eight.

Design Intro Blog

This interests me for a number of reasons.

A. The white “socialist” cube appears to be one of those hinged folding cube puzzles — sometimes called “magic cubes” — often used as an advertising promotion. I might be wrong. It may be hinged a little differently, but it would be ironic for “socialism” to be represented by an promotional object.

B. The Winston Churchill quote above seems to parallel the contrast that Chevron CEO, John Watson attempted (in his testimony to congress yesterday about oil company tax breaks) when he tried to suggest that the American people would rather share in Chevron’s prosperity than to have Chevron share in their sacrifice. (See also: Joe, The Plumber)

(More reasons, after the fold…)

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May 12, 2011

Stealing Box Tops

Box-tops(Photo via: Trash Society)

Back in the heyday of “box tops” promotions, kids were encouraged by cereal companies to pressure their moms into regularly purchasing a particular brand — not because a cereal was necessarily their favorite, but in order to collect enough redeemable box-top-coupons to exchange for some wonderful prize.

I have no doubt that there were desperate and unscrupulous children in those days who occasionally resorted to theft of box tops in order to get those prizes.

Today, “box tops” promotions offer a very different incentive for collecting, but a recent TV News item reveals that theft of box tops is still very much a possibility.

As one of the many institutions currently threatened with drastic budget cuts, public schools are being forced to rely more and more on “the private sector” to try and make up the shortfall.

General Mills characterizes their program as a way to help “fill gaps in school budgets.” Although, it’s also clearly part of the whole “cause marketing” trend, in which your consumer purchase is meant to serve as proxy for a good deed. (The good deed in this case: a contribution to your local school budget.)

But is this type of alternative school funding an example of pragmatic American ingenuity? Or is it evidence of how we unwittingly capitulate in the broader effort to privatize public education?

Are we robbing Peter (school budgets) to pay Paul (General Mills)?

PRO:

Box Toppers are a community of passionate people, joined together to help create change in our schools. Join us, and you’ll get exclusive benefits that include ways to stay connected with other parents on topics that matter to you as well as tools and promotions to recruit others to the cause.

BoxTop4Education.com

CON:

Incentive programs like General Mills’ Box Tops for Education, Pizza Hut’s Book It!, and Campbell’s Soups’ Labels for Education encourage school fund raisers to influence family purchases of specific brands or to frequent certain businesses. In-school fundraisers using items like magazines or candy turn kids into salespeople. Company sponsors gain an unpaid sales force and can inflate prices since the enterprise appears charitable. Increasingly, schools are engaging in the absurd practice of encouraging purchases from certain websites like schoolpop.com, robbing their community businesses and their own sales tax base—a key part of school funding in many districts!

ReclaimDemocracy.org

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 10, 2011

Coke Bottle Prototype

CokeBottlePrototype

The bottle design patent we showed a while back from 1937 was not the earliest version of the famous contoured Coke bottle. This one is.

If the prototype bottle on the right from 1915 had just been stable enough for conveyor belts, there might have been very different implications in saying that someone had “a Coke bottle figure.”

In 1915, Harold Hirsch, a lawyer for the Coca-Cola Company, came up with a plan to launch a national competition in which bottle manufactures across the country would be asked to design a distinctive bottle — a bottle which a person could recognize even if they felt it in the dark, and so shaped that, even if broken, a person could tell at a glance what it was.

The bottle manufacturer that won this competition was the Root Glass Company of Terre Haute, Indiana. Inspired by a picture of a cocoa pod which was found in an encyclopedia at the Emeline Fairbanks Memorial Library, Earl R. Dean made a pencil sketch of the pod. From this sketch, Dean designed the contour bottle prototype. The prototype never made it to production since its middle diameter was larger than its base. According to Dean, this would make it unstable on the conveyor belts. Dean then equalized the middle and bottom diameters and the Contour Coca-Cola Bottle was born.

Wikipedia entry on Earl R. Dean

The bottle’s design was patented, but with plant superintendent, Alexander Samuelson listed as the inventor/designer, rather than Earl R. Dean, the bottle molding room supervisor who actually designed it. (Such is the fate of those who do work-for-hire.)

As a reward for his efforts, Dean was offered a choice between a $500 bonus or a lifetime job at Root Glass. He chose the lifetime job and kept it until the Owens-Illinois Glass Company bought out the Root Glass Company in the mid 1930s. Dean went on to work in other Midwestern glass factories.

Earl Dean died in January, 1972.

Vigo County Public Library Archives

(The patent appears, after the fold…)

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May 9, 2011

Gif Peanut Butter

GifPeanutPutter

Designer, Tymn Armstrong’s “Gif Peanut Butter” above makes a nice homophonic joke about Jif Peanut Butter and GIF, the Graphics Interchange Format. (via Murketing)

The weird thing is, the file itself seems to have been saved as a jpg, which is funny since the illustration’s limited palette of solid colors makes it a perfect candidate for saving as a GIF. Which is what I’ve done to it here.

(See also: Packaging Icons)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 6, 2011

Rauschenberg’s Record Cover

RauschenbergRecordLimited edition Talking Heads' album Speaking in Tongues (Photos from: Your Money Is No Good Here)

In addition to sometimes using packaging to make art, Robert Rauschenberg was also occasionally asked to design a package.

From David Byrne’s 2008 NY Times Op-Ed remembrance of Rauschenberg:

I approached Bob Rauschenberg in the mid-’80s to design a cover for the Talking Heads record “Speaking in Tongues.”

…It was not unusual for a pop musician to approach a fine artist in those days; other contemporary artists had collaborated with pop bands in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I was pleasantly surprised, though, when Bob, who died this week, eschewed simply reproducing a work on the album jacket in favor of re-envisioning what the whole LP package could be.

His package consisted of a conceptual collage piece in which the color separation layers — the cyan, magenta and yellow images that combined to make one full-color image — were, well, deconstructed. Only by rotating the LP and the separate plastic disc could one see — and then only intermittently — the three-color images included in the collage. It was a transparent explication of how the three-color process works, yet in this case, one could never see all the full-color images at the same time, as Bob had perversely scrambled the separations.

Needless to say, the design posed some production problems for Warner Bros. Records, so it ended up a limited, but very large, 50,000-copy edition, released in addition to the regular, mass-produced version. Luckily, everyone shared in the crazy idea of making radical art that could also be popular. Nowadays there might be concerns about the return on investment, but at that time the label let these matters slide.

I later became friends with Bob and his collaborators, and it was an incredible world to enter. I sensed immediately that Bob had never become cynical about his work. Even after he found success, he continued to see the world as a work of art that simply hadn’t been framed yet.

… Bob drank heavily. In the ’80s, I discovered him once at his studio on Lafayette Street, in mid-afternoon, with a glass of Jack in his hand. I, rock ’n’ roll guy, was amazed to see an established artist living one aspect of the rock ’n’ roll life much more intensely than I ever dared. I did wonder if some of the beautiful jumps and leaps in his conversation were partly alcohol-related, but his output remained transcendent, so I figured he was managing it.

Being around Bob was often like being on some kind of ecstatic drug — he inspired those around him to not only think outside of the box, but to question the box’s very existence.

Bob the Builder, By David Byrne
NY Times, May 16, 2008

Rauschenberg also won a Grammy Award for the Speaking in Tongues album cover art. Regarding the “production problems” Byrne alluded to, Frieze Magazine notes:

It took the Talking Heads half a year to find a company that could make Robert Rauschenberg’s Speaking in Tongues cover for them. Keyboard player Jerry Harrison finally turned to a firm that made Oscar Meyer hot dog packaging. Apparently it’s not that easy to find a company to vacu-form a clear vinyl record.

New Feeling, by Jennifer Kabat
Frieze Magazine, March 3, 2008

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 5, 2011

Gumball Cube Pack

©2011 Randy Ludacer, Beach Packaging Design

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