packaging as content

May 14, 2012

Labeling a Klein Bottle

ACME brand Klein bottles (via)

Felix Klein’s non-orientable, one-sided surface was not originally imagined as a container, but was labeled as such because of a German pun:

The Klein bottle was first described in 1882 by the German mathematician Felix Klein. It may have been originally named the Kleinsche Fläche (“Klein surface”) and that this was incorrectly interpreted as Kleinsche Flasche (“Klein bottle”), which ultimately led to the adoption of this term in the German language as well.

–Wikipedia

At lease one source asserts that Klein’s surface was, for a time, called the Klein jar, but I could not confirm this.

When did they change its name from “Klein Jar” to “Klein Bottle”? Look in any projective geometry book published before, say, 1960 and you will see the above “bottle” referred to as a “Klein Jar.”

Whatever you call it, a Klein surface can serve as a container, albeit a fairly impractical one. If we accept that it’s a container, then what sort of label does it get?

If you draw the letter “R” on a clear label, then slide that label around the outside of a sphere, when you return it to the same place, the letter looks exactly the same. So a sphere is orientable. On a Klein Bottle, you can slide that label around so that the letter reads backwards. To do this, you’ll have to slide the label all the way inside the Klein Bottle (you’ll need a long pipecleaner). When it’s on the other side of the glass from where it started, the label will read as the mirror image. That’s nonorientable.

ACME Kline Bottle FAQ

This idea of the label sliding on its one-sided surface all the way into the inside of the Klein bottle and then being backwards, is a recurring theme.

Labeled Klein bottle (via Matematita); Poster by IDeAS

The image on the left demonstrates the backwards inner label. The Klein bottle on the right is decorated with an abstract symmetrical design which would look the same whether it was on the inside or the outside. (A good idea for Klein bottle branding: ambigrams.)

While ACME does not, for the most part, label their bottles, they do sell a flask with their logo…

… and that logo employs backwards & forwards type on a Mobius strip to highlight the product’s non-orientability.

(The “Klein stein” and filling a Method/Klein bottle, after the fold…) (more…)

May 3, 2012

We’re All Disposable Here

Vintage 1960′s Paul Winchell disposable razor display ($295 on eBay)

I know I did the dummy thing to death last March, but this is about another of Paul Winchell’s inventions: a disposable razor. Wikipedia lists it among his patented inventions, but other sources say different:

Paul Winchell actually invented the disposable razor, but he neglected to get a patent on it when friends told him, “Who would buy a razor just to throw it away?”

John Michaud

I’ve looked and could find no sign of a Winchell razor patent so I’m inclined to believe Michaud’s version. Still, Winchell apparently thought enough of the idea to team up with Ozzie Curtis who manufactured these disposable razors in the 1960s. (Note: the groovy typography with the safety-razor shaped “T”)

Vintage Ozzie Curtis disposable razor 2 Pack ($9.99 on eBay)

Of course, disposable razors didn’t really catch on until the disposable BIC Shaver came out in 1975. “Devoted to disposability,” BIC’s founder Marcel Bich applied the same cost-cutting, reductivist product design principles that brought his company success with ballpoint pens and disposable cigarette lighters. (BIC Shaver bag on right from Gregg Koenig’s Flickr Photostream)

By then the competition was between BIC and Gillette. The Los Angeles based “Curtis Safety Razor Company” was no longer in the running. There’s not a lot of information online about this company, but Ozzie Curtis appears to have, for a while, been a regular on the Joe Pyne show, frequently appearing in the “beef box” as Ozzie Whiffletree:

One delightful impromptu moment came when a guest hit Ozzie Whiffletree, then Pyne’s side-kick, on the nose. On camera. The fist in the face was in response to a typical Whiffletree blast: “You’re a liar, that’s what you are, and a coward, too.” The ungrammatical ranting of Whiffletree— “Put your false teeth in backwards and bite your throat” — “Thank you very large” — “I’m aggravated all a time — I wear cheap shoes and tight shorts” made Joe Pyne look almost angelic.

Whiffletree, actually Ozzie Curtis, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman, no longer is on the show.

TV Guide, 1965

Whereas Winchell and his anthropomorphic dummies, half heartedly tried to profit from the disposable trend, BIC was “all in” right from the start. Even in their public service announcement, in which anthropomorphic disposable razors discouraged littering, they did so by touting “We’re all disposable here.”

Meaning: both package and product were now disposable. But if we’re all supposed to identify with these anthropomorphic disposable razors, how are we supposed to feel about that?

(A BIC Shaver commercial and another Ozzie Curtis display, after the fold…) (more…)

April 24, 2012

Candy-Colored Stripes

Fruit Stripe gum photo from MeBeMelissa’s Flickr Photostream; the other three wrappers are from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

With multicolored products lines, colors are often used to differentiate between fruit flavors. When candies come in assorted packages, those assortments are often represented by candy-striped, rainbow colors. Skittles, of course, also uses this idea in their tagline, but lots of candy makers do the basically same thing.

1989 Skittles wrapper with “Rainbow Machine” offer from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

1950s Life Savers 5-Flavors wrapper from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

The color stripes on a roll of assorted Life Savers make a sort of orthographic diagram of the contents. Technically not a “rainbow” since non-consecutive colors are adjacent, and yet multi-colored stripes will invariably convey the rainbow idea. Note: 5 flavors, but only 4 different colors.

Back of a 1986 box of Circus Fun cereal from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

The illustration for this Circus Fun cereal, “free Life Savers” offer, clearly represents a rainbow and also adds an additional lighter yellow to represent the fifth flavor.

In the 2010 “retro” package, above, Life Savers rearranged the color order, creating a bona fide rainbow striped wrapper. (Photo via: A Treasury of…)

Beech-Nut Fruit Stripe pack from a vintage ad on Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

Similar to the the Life Saver 5-Flavor assortment, Fruit Stripe gum’s also had five flavors, but only 4 colors in their technically incorrect rainbow. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They were always more about the stripes than the rainbows. Love their ad in black and white. (See also: Trix Cereal Colors in black & white)

Beech-Nut Assorted Candy Drop wrapper from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

An earlier Beech-Nut wrapper for Assorted Candy Drops, however, does use uses a rainbow sunburst with colors in correct spectral order.

(More candy stripes, after the fold…) (more…)

March 5, 2012

Lenticular Flick

I’ve written a couple times about packages with lenticular labels. A potentially great solution to a common package design problem: “How to demonstrate a difficult-to-explain product transformation without resorting to a sequential series of images?”

And the thing is, without a video of the lenticular package in motion, a sequential series of images is exactly what I usually wind up showing you. (See: the lenticular Changing Lanes wine labels.)

That’s why I insisted on leaving our new (Progressive) salad spinner gift in its box until I had a chance to film it.

–Randy Ludacer

October 19, 2011

Ballantine Miscellany

1. A print proof of a Ballantine 40 oz. Ale label, circa 1987 (via)

2. Not a Jasper Johns sculpture. (Just two views of a collectable vintage can.)

3. Above: Three large sizes of the ale with the three-ring logo and three Xs.

4. An animated gif of a rotating carton of Ballantine XXX Ale. (on left, via)

5. An embossed tin sign with Ballantine
Ale bottle “faux” bursting through background on right. (See also: History of the Graphic Burst)

6. We recently made rueful mention of “American exceptionalism.” Below: the beer version of that idea—a vintage ad that takes a patriotic pride in the endless hunt for “something better.”

…this hunt by energetic America for something better doesn’t stop with the big things… Among the many “better things,” and one not to be overlooked, is a moderate beverage, an ale in fact, that has been discovered and approved by many. So many that, in the land where the question “Is it better?” is on so many tongues, it has become America’s largest selling ale.

(via)

(One more thing after the fold…)

(more…)

October 18, 2011

Bottles and Body Types

Last year, Medical Marketing and Media’s “Best Over-The-Counter Product Advertisement/Campaign Gold Award went to AbelsonTaylor and Abbott Nutrition for their Ensure “Nutrition in Charge” commercials. (CG animation by Bent Image Lab)

In these commercials, an anthropomorphic bottle of Ensure hectors the other anthropomorphic occupants of the fridge (some of whom are fruits & vegetables —others are other packaged foods) about healthy nutrition. It’s unclear whether the Ensure bottle is playing the role of coach or drill-sergeant. Either way, this anthro-pack is clearly a mesomorphic dominant male.

“Ensure has a unique blend of prebiotic fiber to help promote digestive tract health, and antioxidants (vitamins C and E and selenium) to support the immune system.”

In contrast to Ensure’s muscular bottle, consider the pencil-armed, ectomorphic Aktifit bottle. (3D art direction by Champignon Images ; production by Frame Eleven; modeling, UV’s & texturing by Fabio Quaggiotto; compositing by Mike Frei. Agency: TBWA Switzerland)

Aktifit also makes immunological health claims and employs an anthropomorphic bottle, but its contents are probiotic rather than prebiotic.

“Emmi Aktifit is a probiotic drink made from pasteurized skimmed milk, providing the body with lasting strength from the inside. Clinically tested LGG culture stabilizes intestinal flora, promotes digestion and strengthens the body’s immune defences.”

As a character, the European Aktifit bottle shows less aggression — more passive resistance. Apparently immune to cold season, it happily reclines in a beach chair as it snows. (Is this the cold weather of the fridge?)

(More Ensure commericals and some Aktifit “out takes” after the fold…)

(more…)

September 7, 2011

Winnowing Down the Winston Logo

Not sure what year these cigarette packs are from. The truncated typography struck me as a similar package design idea to the recent Turner Duckworth soda can with cropped Diet Coke logo that we were discussing a couple of weeks ago.

Probably not accidental that the portion of the Winston logo that shows here, also happens to spell the word “win.” All of these cigarette packs seem to also come in an italicized version. I have no idea what, if anything, the italic version of this logo might indicate about the product. Other than suggesting Winston’s “winning” forward momentum.

Photos above are from Cigarettepedia. Photo on right is from Roswell62’s Flickr Photostream.

(Some earlier Winston typography, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 9, 2010

Penguin Packaging

Three penguin packages:

1. The Tennessee Tuxedo “Soaky” bubble bath bottle. When it’s empty, it’s a toy.

2. Taku Satoh’s Cool Mint Gum design for Lotte Confectionery:

Sato-san’s “eureka” moment was when he noticed how chewing gum is sold in stores. Usually when you see chewing gum in a shop, you will not only see one side — you will see two, the “top” and the side facing you, as they are stacked on the shelf.

Improving on the original design which had a picture and the logo squeezed together on the top side, Sato-san created a new design with a “logo” side and a “picture” side. Now when you see the gum in a store you can clearly see the two different sides of the design, the logo side where the product name and manufacturer are shown, and the picture side, showing the signature penguin illustration.

Ping Magazine

Photo of Cool Mint packaging, above) is from fendia★’s Flickr Photostream (Note: I’ll never see the word “Cool” with intersecting Os and not think of Kool Cigarettes.)

Satoh also created a number of sculptural artworks based on his penguin branding for Cool Mint. More gum you can ride on: stick of gum as skateboard…

Below the white gum package serves as a screen for projecting packaging graphics with animated penguins. (Still photos below from: dcdomain’s Flickr Photostream)

3. Mats Ottdal’s Arctic juice box concept. Other bird species were also conceived of. (Via: Lovely Package)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 28, 2010

Mr. Bubble | A Short History of Seduction

Mr. Bubble Bank with embossed information & hangtag (photos from Roadsidepictures’ Flickr Photostream)

Mr. Bubble Bank with printed information (photos from Collectors Online Mall)

I’ve been given permission to occasionally publish some posts from Packaging | UQAM—the excellent bilingual packaging blog by Sylvain Allard, director of the Graphic Design Program at L’Université du Québec à Montréal.

The words and reminiscences below are not mine, but his:

It was the late 60s. I was sitting, legs dangling on the shelf of a metallic cart, pushed almost aggressively by my busy mother. We strolled along the aisles zigzagging and following the same weekly routine in this “new type” of grocery called the Supermarket.

We were at that time still lulled into the illusion of postwar that thinking everything was still possible and especially convinced of the infinite resources the planet had. The extraordinary production effort that had nourished World War II had quickly been replaced by a new concept called consumption.

This place had something magical and reassuring as it gathered in one place all the goods now essential to modern life. Each package there was all more useful and functional than the last. It was a new era opened to infinite idealism opportunities.

It is among all these wonders that I saw it for the first time in the distance. It was there: a tiny pink spot in a pile of mundane forms. Despite the distance, I could recognize the shape of its head and the smoothness of its pink body. I pointed it out to my accelerating mom, but she seemed insensitive to the charm of such splendor. Incidentally I seized it on the go with such conviction, that my mother couldn’t refuse it to me and bought it.

I was my first purchase and therefore, this Mr. Bubble bottle became an icon of my childhood. I do not remember what sensation or odor this bubble soap had, but the bottle accompanied my baths for years.

I found out later that my mother was in fact refilling the same bottle with another brand of soap, probably cheaper elsewhere. It didn’t matter much to me. It was the packaging that attracted me first anyway and I was thrilled to find it has a second life as a piggy bank.

The packaging was the product.

–Sylvain Allard, Packaging | UQAM

(Another vintage Mr. Bubbles commercial and Mr. Bubbles boxes follow, after the fold…)

(more…)

August 31, 2010

Squirrel Bottles

Above, three kinds of squirrel bottle.

1. Above, left: An 1800s Squirrel Bottle from the Moravian potters of Old Salem, North Carolina. (another style with mold on right)

“Of all the bottles produced at Salem, the squirrel form was the most popular, resonant of the general popularity of gray squirrels and flying squirrels as pets. The squirrel bottle, based on the Eastern gray squirrel, was in production as early as 1803. An 1806 pottery inventory lists 96 squirrel bottles. Two types of squirrel-form bottles survive: one that stands erect clasping a nut in its paws, sometimes with a spout in the tail, and the other leans forward and looks upward as if startled or begging.”

Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo
Art In Clay: Masterworks Of North Carolina Earthenware

2. Above, right: a 1960s Rocky—(the flying squirrel)—Colgate Soaky Shampoo bottle—shown with partner, Bullwinkle, the moose, in photo on right. (Soaky bottle photos from: Vintage Toy & Diecast Collectibles)

In a bottle related lead-in to commercials on the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon show, Rocky finds a bottle washed up on the beach:

Rocky: Look, Bullwinkle, a message in a bottle.

Bullwinkle: Fan mail from some flounder?

Rocky: No, this is what I really call a message.

At the end of this conversation, Rocky holds up the message for the viewers at home to see. I couldn’t find an image of that, but what I recollect seeing there was a spiral-shaped scrawl.

3. Above, center photo: this Summer, Scottish microbrewery, Brewdog used taxidermied squirrel bottles (and other taxidermied rodents as well) for their limited edition “The End of History” beer.

(More taxidermied packaging, after the fold…)

(more…)

June 14, 2010

Nathan Gibb’s Crayola Monologues

On left: Nathan Gibb’s crayon collection, illustrating Crayola’s 1962 name change from “Flesh” to “Peach”; on right: an 8-pack box of Crayola’s “Multicultural Crayons” (both photos are from Nathan Gibb’s Flickr Photostream)

When I was a kid growing up in Florida—(where orange juice & Caucasian-suntans were the dominant norm)—I somehow settled on the orange crayon as the one that most embodied the ideal skin color.

Last Friday’s post about patented crayon packaging included one box,
in which the crayons represented people—(clowns in a circus text). The video below, however, takes the crayons-as-people analogy to its logical conclusion: as a
metaphor for skin color.

Nathan Gibb’s 2003 Crayola Monologues “uses the crayon as a human metaphor for exploring color and identity in the United States” as well as pointing out Crayola’s (and our culture’s) recent history of race-based color names for crayons.

Regarding my own childhood choice of orange as a skin color, I’m thinking that it must have been partly due to a limited pallet of the 8 original colors. If I’d had the color choices contained in the “Multicultural Crayons” box, above, perhaps I would have identified with a different color.

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…)

April 28, 2010

Predis™ Anthro-Pack

From Sidel/Predis: an anthropomorphic bottle promotion. We’ve featured a lot of anthro-packs, animated and otherwise. Usually they are targeted to consumers in an effort, I suppose, to “humanize” a product—but here, we have a B2B example of the genre.

Written by Bill Fahber for the French agency, Sidièse. Animation by London-based I Can Fly™ Group and the French agency, Design 2HS.

(See what these anthropomorphic bottles are selling, after the fold…)

(more…)

April 9, 2010

Ironman vs. Iron Man

Two Eau de Toilettes for two kinds of (iron) man.

On left: a new red version of Diesel’s fist-shaped bottle for it’s “limited edition” (Iron Man) Only The Brave Eau de Toilette, timed to coincide with the release of Iron Man 2. (See also: Miraculous Reliquary Packaging)

On right: the green Eau de Toilette from Avon & Ironman—(as in: Ironman Triathlon®)

…a sleek yet rugged bottle with an organic feel. The top is designed to look like a bike grip, one of the disciplines seen in Ironman, evoking the athleticism that inspires the fragrance. The powerful black-on-black carton features icons of each of the triathlon sports, with a footprint representing running, waves representing swimming, and tire tread representing cycling.

Ironman/Avon Press Release, October 25, 2009 (via: PopSop)

(Both bottles with their cartons—and one cartoon—after the fold …)

(more…)

April 5, 2010

Level Bottles

On left: “Levelus Spirit Level Perfume”—a recent packaging concept by Art.Lebedev Studio¹. On right: Avon’s 1970s “Everest” after-shave bottle² also featured this idea.

Both bottles are for mens fragrances, but while the Lebedev project is tongue-in-cheek —“…something an elegant carpenter could never do without”— the Avon bottle was meant to be truly masculine and was part of a whole line of manly, tool-shaped bottles.

Avon bottles for sale on J & W Antiques page

I hadn’t realized that the “level” tool is also called a “spirit level”—but, knowing this now, I am not surprised to learn that there is some spirits packaging, based on the same idea. Below is a still from a Level Vodka web-banner ad by John Antoniello of Razorfish.

“Debuting in tandem with a print and broadcast campaign of the same nature, these banners illustrated balance by placing the Level bottle startlingly on its side and using the air bubble within as a balance tool.”

–John Antoniello

See animated versions of the Level Vodka ad: here and here)

And, as is so often the case with ideas like this, it cuts both ways. Whatever the rationale for making a bottle that alludes to a leveling tool—(masculinity, spirit, balance, etc.)—people on occasion, have noticed that a bottle truly can serve the same function. (Hence: the letter to Heloise³, on the right.)

(Another photo of the Avon bottle, a Level Vodka TV spot and some footnoted digressions, after the fold…)

(more…)

March 12, 2010

Packaging & Flip Books

The “deluxe edition” of Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible CD (with its animated, lenticular cover) also included 2 flip books. Packaging design by by Tracy Maurice. (That flip book demonstrated above is a fairly self-referential object—you flip through its real pages to see an animated image of pages flipping.)

What is the deal with flip books? When were they invented? (I wondered.)

The first flip book appeared in September, 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett under the name kineograph (“moving picture”). They were the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular (as in the older phenakistoscope)…

Flip books are now largely considered a toy or novelty for children, and were once a common “prize” in cereal and Cracker Jack boxes. However, in addition to their role in the birth of cinema, they have also been an effective promotional tool since their creation for such decidedly adult products as automobiles and cigarettes. They continue to be used in marketing of all kinds…

Wikipedia Entry on flip books

With that in mind, and coming on the heels of the two previous packaging animation posts, I thought I’d look into the package-related flip book thing. Below is Menomena’s “I Am The Fun Blame Monster!”—also a CD package, but one in which the flip book, itself, is the package since it contains the CD. Designed by band member, Danny Seim “and individually hand-assembled while working at Kinko's.”

(After the fold, an elaborately over-packaged Louis Vuitton Flip book…)

(more…)

March 11, 2010

2 Animated Packaging Patents

Following up on the animated package thread—a couple of relevant patents. (lenticular/moiré and holographic)

First up, is Yoshi Sekiguchi’s “Process for Producing a Display with Movable Images” from 1994. The patent touches on both “lenticular” and “moiré” techniques. (See also: Kinegrams) His candy bar concept, above, is clearly a precedent for the recent Widex hearing-aid box, featured in our previous post. Sekguchi also envisioned lenticular animation used on other packaging, such as bottles and CD boxes.

(The holographic patent follows, after the fold…)

(more…)

packaging as content

Contact Box Vox

Packaging Songs

join our pack

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives

May 14, 2012

May 3, 2012

April 24, 2012

March 5, 2012

October 19, 2011

October 18, 2011

September 7, 2011

November 9, 2010

October 28, 2010

August 31, 2010

June 14, 2010

May 17, 2010

April 28, 2010

April 9, 2010

April 5, 2010

March 12, 2010

March 11, 2010

Kudos

Consumer/Culture

other pack-blogs

links

More Links

Categories