packaging as content

April 9, 2012

Shari Mendelson

“Pom Vessel and Vinegar Urn” plastic from discarded bottles, hot glue, acrylic polymer, paint, 11″x3″x3″ each, 2009-10

While hunting for other examples of postmodern structural packaging, I happened upon Shari Mendelson’s “vessels.”

Sort of the other side of the postmodern/ancient coin: taking plastic bottles that may not seem obviously ornamental to us, Medelson deftly reconstitutes them into decorative antiquities.

Dasani water bottles are particularly prized for their color and shape, but she’ll take an Evian or Volvic bottle in a pinch. Recently, she was hankering after Poland Spring bottles…

“I’ll be walking behind someone in Midtown and they’ll be drinking a bottle of water, and I’ll just want it.”

Talking With Shari Mendelson
Penelope Green, NY Times, June 23, 2010

“My Metropolitan” (installation proposal)

“5 Vessels” plastic from discarded bottles, hot glue, acrylic polymer, paint, 7″x5″x5″ -12″x5″x5″, 2009-10

(More vessels, after the fold…) (more…)

April 4, 2012

Package Design for Losers

Top left: Poynter Products’ “The Loser” liquor dispenser package (from the-empress’s Flickr Photostream; on right: “Tol’able David” video cover; lower left: “Drunkard’s Cloak” wine label; on right: “Barrel Apparel” costume packaging (from eBay)

Package design for losers? A barrel.

I went ahead and titled this one as a companion piece to last month’s Package Design for Dummies. Although it has even less to do with “package design” than that earlier post about ventriloquist dummies.

“Loser” is not a term I much like. It’s one thing when it’s used to describe a non-winner in a fair competition, but as an epithet for your less successful acquaintances, it’s like social Darwinism, up close and personal.

Since the Poynter Products liquor dispenser (above left) is named “The Loser,” however, and since “loss” does seem to describe most of the different reasons that a person might be reduced to wearing a barrel, I thought it was apt in this case.

Barrel as garment: 4 kinds of loser…

1. Punishment

The “drunkard’s cloak” was a humiliating pillory for alcoholics in the 1600s. Forcing the drunkard to wear a barrel was deemed a fitting punishment. (Loss of dignity)

The photos below, however, show a more recent barrel/pillory used in 1932 to punish prisoners at Florida’s Sunbeam Prison Camp. (Loss of life)

A demonstration of barrel restraint worn by Arthur Maillefert in prison days before his death. The 19 year old inmate, a resident of New Jersey, died in the Sunbeam Prison Camp in Florida. He was strangled by the chain that held him in place while he was unable to help himself to stand again because his feet were in stocks. The Maillefert case of abuse received much attention and was steadily reported on by the New York Times.

FloridaMemory.com

Photo on left from University of Washington digital archives; comic book cover via: The Creepshow

2. Modesty

A far less troubling reason for wearing a barrel is personal modesty. (Loss of clothes) Usually seen in outdoors scenarios where clothes have gone missing and the barrel serves as improvised clothing. Usually played for laughs, as in this clip from the 1921 silent film, “Tol’able David”…

3. Poverty

It’s not entirely clear when wearing a “bankruptcy barrel” became a metaphor for poverty. Similar to using a barrel as improvised replacement clothing for modesty’s sake, but here the implication is that you just cannot afford clothing to begin with. (Loss of money)

Although wooden barrels are now a fairly archaic form of packaging, the meaning of wearing one in this context is still well understood.

The second photo (in color) is of Jim “Poorman” Trenton wearing a barrel inscribed with the words “POORMANS NATION” last October in Zuccotti Park during the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.

The photo, 2nd from the right is of Alan Moore wearing a barrel while “singing about poverty” during a 1984 exhibition at ABC No Rio, entitled, “Island of Negative Utopia.”

(The 4th and final “loser,” after the fold…) (more…)

April 2, 2012

Brands Make Ü Happy

Bliss Buter-Thompson’s observations about package design that seeks to evoke positive feelings with smiley faces (see: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese) reminded me of another persistent graphic design trend. The umlauted, sans-serif “U” as a happy face.

Gü, Frü—(now merged with Gü), pür, güd (designed by Baldwin&), yogen früz, Fünf, jüni, men-ü… (the second dot of men-ü’s logo is an encircled ™, giving its happy face an unfortunate dead eye.)

This kind of anthropomorphic typography in package design also reads as an emoticon: (“The letters Ö and Ü can be seen as an emoticon, as the upright version of :O (meaning that one is surprised) and :D (meaning that one is very happy).”) If consumers can respond to this method of expressing emotion on their cell phones, then why wouldn’t they respond to it on packaging?

There are plenty of other brands, not pictured above, whose logo designers have also sought to get happy in this way. (Füd, Güd Füd, Nü Car Rentals, Trüf Creative…)

Writer, Douglas Coupland has commented on this attraction to the umlauted Ü:

The idea that this particular character in this particular typeface is the most attractive seems to intentionally conflate typeface with happy face. In his 2003 novel, Hey, Nostradamus!, Coupland also wrote this sentence:

“But the Quails spoke only their own language, which had only one word, glü, with a jaunty, Ikea-like umlaut on the ü.”

For a completely different type of happy umlaut pack, also inspired by Coupland, see the Knotoryus Eastpak Artist Studio Bag, below. The logo is also featured on their Ü website.

–Randy Ludacer

March 28, 2012

Preston Grubbs’s Spherical Wedge Juice Packs

When I first saw these pictures of Preston Grubbs’s orange-colored, orange-shaped juice box concept, it reminded of other packages, designed to resemble their contents. (Or their origins.)

We’ve seen packages shaped like whole oranges and packages shaped like half an orange and, at first, what I thought I was seeing here were juice boxes shaped like an 1/8 of an orange. But that’s not right. The net bag contains 10 pieces. As if an orange were cut into 5 longitudinal, spherical wedge shaped pieces and the cut in half along the equator.

–Randy Ludacer

March 26, 2012

Majestic Milk and Package Receiver

I found this photo on my computer. It was from a batch of photos that my son took last year at a friend’s new (old) house.

When I was a kid growing up in Florida my parents used to have an insulated milk box in the driveway where the milkman delivered our milk, but I’d never heard of these built-in “milk and package receivers.” So I thought I should maybe look into it…

Here and there, you can find other photos of them online.

Upper left: from Kodamakitty’s Flicker Photostream; on right: from tjunedavis’s Flickr Photostream; lower left and lower right: from Albany (NY) Daily Photo

I also found the company’s 1927 product catalog…

“The Majestic Milk and Package Receiver makes it possible to receive milk, groceries and other parcels without going outside or opening a door of the house. Two cast iron frames and doors connected by an adjustable steel body are installed in the wall of the kitchen…

Both of the doors can be unlocked from the inside only. The delivery man deposits the articles in the Receiver from the outside. When he closes the outside door it locks automatically and can not be opened again until the latch is released by an extended chain on the inside, making the Receiver ready for further deliveries. The Majestic Receiver is inconspicuous, occupies no needed space and gives protection against weather, annoyance, theft and intrusion.”

Like “dumb waiters,” the Majestic Milk and Package Receiver was promoted as a replacement for people —(a “silent, automatic servant”)— in much the same way that rise of packaging also served to replace people. (See: Fallout Shelter Packaging)

The catalog’s photo-illustrations of the milkman delivering the milk outside and the woman in the kitchen receiving it through the wall, also calls to mind the Automat, another early 20th Century concept for avoiding unwanted human interactions.

(We look further into the Majestic Milk and Package Receiver, after the fold…)

(more…)

March 23, 2012

Water Designs its own Package

Xiaoli Wen’s 2009 “Water Shaped Bottles”

Rubber molds, made from discarded Gin, beer, water, Coke & whisky bottles, were filled with plaster and allowed to cure while hanging under flowing water. Porcelain bottles were then made from the “water formed” plaster casts. (See pictures of the process on Dezeen.)

“Water does not have its own shape. It is shaped by its container. Now water wants to change the container’s shape therefore to decide its shape by itself.”

–Xiaoli Wen

A nice personification of water wanting to design its own packaging. But what about the other beverages that were originally contained in these bottles? Maybe gin, beer, Coke and whisky also want to change their containers’ shapes. I know: these other beverages all mostly contain water. (…and where on earth does one find a whisky waterfall?)

Prototypes of the porcelain bottles appear to be for sale (or have once been for sale) on Wen’s website, although the prices seem to be missing.

(One more picture, after the fold…)

(more…)

March 20, 2012

The Vicious Circle

This 1964 self-parody by Kansas City industrial filmmaker, The Calvin Company, illustrates the pitfalls of making a trade film for a nested corporate hierarchy.

Package design can be a similarly disheartening business, if a new client’s true decision maker is revealed only gradually through layers of middle management.

March 19, 2012

Annabelle Soucy’s Fusion Tea Pack

Annabelle Soucy’s a polyhedral 6-pack for tea. A simple exterior and complex interior, make this a structural “surprise package” much in the same way that Milagros Maria Bouroncle Rodriguez’s T package offered interior surprises. Soucy’s cube-shaped “Fusion” tea package dissects into 6 space-filling pyramids—each section containing a pyramid-shaped tea bag. (via: Packaging | UQAM)

The structure is actually very close to Jessica Comin’s transforming “laranja mecánica” chocolate package. And although the pictures do not show it, I believe Soucy’s package design would be similarly capable of being turned inside out into a rhombic-dodecahedron with a cube-shaped interior.

Animated gif from Apollonius Math

Not that Soucy’s Tea package needs to transform into rhombic-dodecahedron with a cube-shaped interior. I’m just saying. It’s interesting.

(One more photo, after the fold…) (more…)

March 12, 2012

Paul Lee’s Untitled (Can Sculptures)

While lighting fixtures made from beer cans in Friday’s post strongly appeal to a certain male, hetero decorative impulse, a similar mash up of beverage cans and lighting also occurs in the untitled “can sculptures” of Paul Lee, but with a differing agenda.

Using everyday objects such as soda cans, light bulbs, and socks, Lee’s Untitled (Can Sculpture) series explores the relationships between materials and their coded cultural and sexual meanings.

…Each of the pieces in Untitled (Can Sculpture) begins with a soda can with a photocopy of a young man’s face pasted over the label. The image is taken from a 70s naturist magazine and was chosen because the boy’s strong classical features exemplify archetypical ideals of beauty and youth.

… Through this sensual fetishisation of everyday consumer objects Lee’s sculptures explore the nature of personal identity, their disposable nature highlighting the ephemeral transience and guilty pleasures of desire.

Artist’s Profile: Paul Lee, Saatchi Gallery

Note how, in the lower sculpture below, with the two cans connected through the eyes, Lee uses the same kind of “cylindrical completion” that we’ve noted as a package design trend: using a row of separate cans to form a larger whole. (See: Turner Duckworth Coke packaging) While the string joining two cans might, on the one hand, suggest “eye contact” between the two individuals, the matching cans are arranged in such a way that same young man’s face —a single individual— spans the two connected beverage cans.

Lee also did a more minimal series of polychome beverage can bottoms…

(More untitled (can sculptures) and a video, after the fold…) (more…)

March 9, 2012

Beer Can Track Lights

We did a round up of tin can lighting fixtures in September of 2010. These beer can track lights by ZAL Creations are similar.

They seem to have struck a chord with websites catering to the young, hetero, pad-proud, beer-consuming demographic. (See: “Ultimate Man-Cave Lighting System,” Menterests, Gizmodo & DormSlate, et al.)

I like the variety of oddball beer cans, chosen for this photo, but it looks as if you can also arrange to have your illumination emanate from matching containers, if that is your preference. $87 each. (ZAL also created one of the three Pipe Bottle Lamps we featured last week.)

(For more about Heineken “Keg Can” see: PackWorld; for more about the Budweiser “Cabottle” see: BeerCanGuide; for more about the Sapporo Beer Can: see our 2008 post.)

–Randy Ludacer

March 8, 2012

Subtle Surprise Package

Surprisingly colorful inner packs contained in a somber outer package: Milagros Maria Bouroncle Rodriguez’s T project.

Kind of the opposite of the idea that we were discussing yesterday. Rather than revealing its contents with a faux transparent effect —(like the 1956 Trix cereal box)—Rodriguez’s package completely conceals the color and texture inside. And not just conceals. Such a muted exterior is surely a form of misdirection for the magic trick that she pulls off when you open the pack.

The package is simply called T and takes us to a full contrast opening experience. If the box is extremely simple at the base, it opens with an explosion of color where each little teabag is a fine piece of paper folding art. This refinement is carried to the extreme and pure pleasure of the object where lies the physical evidence that beauty makes us happy. Bravo!

–Sylvain Allard, Packaging | UQAM

I think this idea of an inner/outer contrast in package design would be a very good one to explore further in a future post. Unexpected and surprising contrasts seem so fundamental to the opening of packages.

Any package that conceals its contents is potentially a surprise package. To the degree that our expectation stands in contrast to what’s actually inside, we are surprised.

The proverb, “Good things come in small packages” is meant to be a paradox, contrasting your low expectations (of small packages) with the surprisingly good things concealed inside.

Some packages contain extreme surprises, like the SS Adams jumping snake gag, contained in a “mixed nuts” can. Other packages, like Milagros Maria Bouroncle Rodriguez’s T package, contain more subtle surprises of color and texture, not even hinted at by the graphics on the outside.

(More photos at Packaging | UQAM)

–Randy Ludacer

March 1, 2012

Pipe Bottle Lamps

Left: a bedside bottle lamp by ZAL Creations for sale, $185; center: M Jay Harrison’s “Brewery Lamp” for sale, $85; on right: a “Plumbing Fixture Lamp” with mason jar & ball chain pull (for sale, $169 from ClaraBellsCloset)

Another intersection of bottles and plumbing pipes: steam punk pipe/bottle lamps. Similar to Plastered Plumber, only these dispense light, rather than whiskey.

Interesting to conflate the flow of water and the flow of electricity. And not so strange to use a bottle as a lamp, considering that the earliest light-bulb prototype may have been a recycled eau-de-cologne bottle. (See: Göbellamp Bottle)

–Randy Ludacer

February 29, 2012

Water Pipe Bottles

Following up here on the pipe/bottle theme started on Monday… (There was one earlier “water pipe bottle” that I wrote about back in 2009, but these are quite different.)

5 water-pipe-shaped water bottles, design by DWARS ontwerp’s Mark Schulte for the non-profit group JoinThePipe.org.

“Joining” in this context has multiple meanings. Sold as reusable water bottles, with the proceeds benefiting the construction of third-world water pipelines, they can be literally “joined” to interconnect like pipes, forming a metaphorical water pipeline. And by purchasing a bottle, supporters are “joining” the cause in the social-media/cause-marketing sense of the word.

Our plastic bottles should be kept for life, each bottle has a bayonet system in the top and bottom, they can be connected to one another so you can get the idea of building the pipeline at home.

The bottles have a double lid opening for easy washing and a rubber band for attaching to clothing, bikes, bags or fingers!

–Randy Ludacer

February 27, 2012

Plastered Plumber(s)

We ended Friday’s post with a package-related drinking gag.

Thinking we might stick with that theme for one more round, I was reminded of the “Plastered Plumber” Whiskey Dispenser. (Photos above are from the basement of Allee Willis’s Bubbles the Artist site.)

We focused on another of Poynter Products’ alcohol-related gags last September—their 1950s line of cocktail flavored toothpastes.

This product is from 1961 and can be found occasionally on eBay, which is where I found the photos below. A package-related accessory for liquor bottles, serving a certain sense of humor, but no practical purpose.

Willis made some interesting and detailed observations about the packaging’s punctuation…

Made in 1961 by Poynter Products Inc. Cincinnati, Ohio, Plastered Plumbers’ slogan is “The whiskey goes ’round and round and round and r…”

…but the first ‘round has an apostrophe in front of it while the rest of them remain bare. Not to mention that the first roun is missing a D.

Perhaps diminished capacity on the part of the art director after sampling the product accounts for the diminished punctuation.

– Allee Willis

I have to agree that it looks like very sloppy ’60s proofreading. (Not that I’m anyone to talk about scrupulous proofreading!)

Anyway, I have an almost completely unrelated, earlier example of the term “plastered plumber” being used…

(Another plastered plumber, after the fold…) (more…)

February 24, 2012

Bottled Can(s)

This photo is from a 2004 Diet Pepsi ad by BBDO Proximity, entitled “Bottled Can.”

Such a simple photo, but its full import was not always fully understood…

“A can of diet Pepsi has been kept inside the bottle to depict the low-calorie quality of the drink. Moreover, a slim body can always be best depicted in the shape of the bottle rather can.”

Ad Punch

Never mind that it’s one brand being contained, like a Trojan Horse, in the packaging of its rival!

In this ad, the cross-referential idea of one type of packaging containing another, has largely overshadowed the more confrontational “brand versus brand” thing. (See also: Blended Soda Brands and The Concept of Coke & Pepsi)

Also hip: the “packaging contrapposto” whereby the neck of the Coke bottle points one way while the business end of the Diet Pepsi can points the other way. (See also: Cocktail in a Toothpaste Tube)

Beverage advertising, however, is not the only context for a can to be situated within a bottle. I have two more examples…

1. There is a method of making contaminated water safe to drink that employs a soda can within a larger, PVC bottle as a pasteurizing apparatus.

Eric Marlow’s 2008 soda bottle pasteurizer is shown on upper right. David Delaney’s 2003 soda bottle pasteurizer is shown on lower right.

2. The other example involves beer rather than soda. In the category of supposedly humorous breweriana, in the subset of “emergency” drinking supplies you will find various versions and brands of the “In Case of Emergency, Break Glass!” gag…

(On eBay, and after the fold…)

(more…)

February 22, 2012

ABC Bottles

More to spell out on the subject of letter-shaped package design…

The drawings above are from Mikelyn Roderick’s 2003 patent for “Letter and Number Shaped” bottles.

I couldn’t find the product as envisioned here, although I did find a matching “A” and “B” bottle on eBay. I suppose the manufacturer may have originally made all 26 letter-shaped bottles, but if certain letters just didn’t sell well, those letters may have been discontinued.

Below are three vintage perfume bottles that represent my best effort at finding A, B & C shaped examples….

On left: Liz Claiborne bottle (via: Gisellez); center: Beau Belle by Bourjois (via: Perfume Projects); on right: early Chanel bottle with “C” cap (also from: Perfume Projects)

Tomorrow’s subject? X-Y-Z boxes.

(Roderick’s patent, after the fold…) (more…)

February 21, 2012

Packaging Typography

Packaging Typography: 3 kinds.

1. Letters made out of packages

The cover of Sunday’s NY Times magazine section featured some illustrated typography by Georgina Luck: letters made out of packages. Illustrating an article entitled, “How Companies Learn Your Secrets,” the entire illustration spells out “HEY! YOU’RE HAVING A BABY!”

Another example of a letter form made from different types of packaging is Richard Conn’s “R” made from crushed packaged from a 1998 show in London called “Cast of characters.” (via: All About Lettering)

2. Packaging shaped like letters

Since letters are are flat symbols, any packaging based on letter forms tends to be based primarily on the 3D block style typography. Viktoriya Gadomska’s Vitamin boxes (A–F) and the “MILK” carton by Julien De Repentigny & Gabriel Lefebvre are examples of this approach.

(3rd kind of Packaging Typography, after the fold…) (more…)

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