Box Vox

packaging as content

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June 28, 2012

One Fish Two Fish…

 

Three fish actually. These three caviar tubes designed by Identity Works for ICA remind me of some vintage advertising we once looked at in 2009. (see: Bottle Fish, Can Fish)

Such well designed packaging and so direct a way of communicating the essential fishiness of the product, makes me wonder why I never noticed before that there was something vaguely fish-like about the shape of a standard, toothpaste-style collapsible tube. (via: Sara Strand)

Another three seafood tubes from Ikea are less zoomorphic, more diagrammatic in their labeling. Similar to the cocktail-flavored toothpaste tubes that we looked at last year, there are implications to which way the fish is pointing.

To me, it would make sense to always have the fish facing in the direction of the cap. If there’s a fish on the other side, I would want to flop it so that it also faced towards the cap. With the black fish laying the eggs, however, I could see some justification for pointing that fish away from the cap so that its egg-laying end was more closely aligned to where the caviar would be emerging from the tube.

Ikea, for some reason, has chosen to do exactly the opposite of these things. But maybe I’m just being crabby. All in all it’s a very effective package design.

(One more thing about fish packaging, designed to remind us of real fish…)

 

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