May 10, 2012
1969 Polaroid Annual Report

This was an image I left out of an earlier post about rainbow-striped package design. (See: The Optics of Rainbow Striped Package Design)
It’s a nice annual report cover that I found on designer, Paul Giambarba’s site. It’s unclear where he designed the annual report, but he was surely the man behind Polaroid’s rainbow branding.
I had in mind I might save it for June (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month) but what with the President’s recent support of gay marriage, I thought I’d put my oblique observance out there a little sooner. (i.e.: graphic meanings of rainbow & 1969.)
Another company whose rainbow iconography would later acquire unintended gay connotations: Apple Computer.

This page from a 1983 Apple Computer gift catalog.
2 brands, coincidentally positioned on the right side of history.
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?”
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 19, 2012
The Optics of Rainbow Striped Package Design
We’ve already focused on multicolored product lines and their effectiveness in product differentiation when displayed all together, but just recently it occurred to me that there was another kind of rainbow packaging in which all the refracted colors come together in a singular package design.
Rainbow stripes as a packaging motif, probably reached their peak in the 1970s, although they really got started in 1968 with Paul Giambarba’s spectral branding for Polaroid:
“The original color stripes were to differentiate between the new Type 108 Colorpack Film and the gray color stripes that identified Type 107 black and white film.”
Apple used a similar sequence of colored stripes in spectral order for the second incarnation of their logo in 1977. Asked whether the rainbow colors were a reference to “hippy” culture, logo designer, Rob Janoff said,
“Partially it was a really big influence. Both Steve and I came from that place, but the real solid reason for the stripes was that the Apple II was the first home or personal computer that could reproduce images on the monitor in color.”
So in each case (Polaroid’s color film and Apple’s color monitor) the rainbow stripes are meant to convey the color capabilities of the product. Their founders —Polaroid’s Edwin Land and Apple’s Steve Jobs— have also been compared and found to be similar in some ways. (See Forbes article: What Steve Jobs Learned From Edwin Land of Polaroid)
Giambarba’s package design for Polaroid explored the geometric possibilities of the company’s rainbow stripe motif in some depth for nearly two decades.
Most of Giambarba’s designs displayed well, and some used the trick of wrapping shapes around corners to achieve completion when displayed. (See: The Incomplete Package: Part of a Larger Whole)
While Giambarba’s rainbow striped branding may have preceded Apple’s, there were also other rainbow-striped cultural influences which may have played a role.
Frank Stella’s 1966 painting, Concentric Squares apparently preceded Polaroid’s rainbow striped packaging by two years. Like Polaroid and Apple, Stella’s fluorescent paintings introduced a new color capability whereas his previous paintings had been black (and white).
(More rainbow striped ruminations, after the fold…) (more…)
April 18, 2012
Schaedler Pinwheel
Speaking of “pinwheel” logos, I remember applying for job in the late 1970s at an interesting company called Pinwheel. My partner worked at Photo-Lettering in those days and I would have liked nothing better than to have worked at the similarly high-profile firm with the cool spiral logo.
Founded by old school New York type designer, John N. Schaedler, Pinwheel was the pre-digital precursor to color-proofing companies like Kaleidoscope.
“Pinwheel color proofing produces advertising comps, package dummies, decals, TV color corrections, rub-down transfers, art for slides, sales presentations and just about everything. It can reproduce fine type and clean solids in pinpoint register. Unbelievably versatile, the process can provide one copy or hundreds, quickly, and at reasonable prices.”
The word “Pinwheel” in the ad on the right was set in Schaedler’s font, “Paprika.” (now available as Tabasco Twin) He also designed the spiral trademark, which I remember seeing printed in red, although I can find no examples of that online.
Perhaps Schaedler’s most lasting contribution to the graphic arts has been his ultra-precise “Schaedler Rule” now manufactured by his company Shaedler Quinzel, Inc. based in Parsippany, NJ.
“Taro Yamashita, a tireless staff lettering artist and photo technician at the Schaedler studio, helped design and develop the products now known as Schaedler Precision Rules. His original drawings were done by hand although computers and design software have subsequently been utilized to achieve greater accuracy and consistency.”
While desktop computers effectively put typesetting and various other graphic arts industries out of business, there is still occasionally a need for designers to measure actual stuff.
(For more spiral graphic design, see: Pillsbury)
–Randy Ludacer
April 16, 2012
The Trickle-Up Effect

On left: one of Linden Gledhill’s photographs of paint reacting to sound vibrations; center: Patrick Hill’s “Gravity Wine” package design concept; on right: a painted jar from an Etsy listing (now down, but the same object appears on majama29’s Flickr Photostream)
I’m no economist, but I always suspected that being wealthy didn’t automatically make someone a “job creator” and I wondered whether the whole “trickle-down” theory of economics might not make a lot more sense the other way round.
As it turns out, there is a “trickle-up” theory:
The trickle up effect argues itself as more effective than the trickle down effect because people who have less tend to buy more. In other words, the poor are more inclined than the wealthy to spend their money. This being so, proponents of the trickle up effect believe that if the lower and lower-middle classes are given benefits, such as tax breaks or subsidies, the increased funds would be spent at a much higher rate than would the upper class, given similar fund increases. Furthermore, the trickle up effect argues, many upper-class individuals do not spend their entire yearly salary to begin with, which is an indication that they will not spend any additional funds. Instead, they will save additional funds, thereby withholding those funds from the economy and increasing the gap between the rich and the poor.
Wikipedia’s Entry on The Trickle Up Effect

Gravity-defying, paint-dripped ceramic planters project from The Lovely Cupboard
(More trickle-up imagery, after the fold…) (more…)
March 30, 2012
Nickolas Muray’s Plastic Containers

Nickolas Muray: Plastics, Plastic Containers, 1960
1960 Carbro color still lifes of plastic packaging by Nickolas Muray.
Lately we’ve been endlessly photographing, silhouetting and retouching plastic bottles, both as props for other products and as subjects in their own right.
I ought to be sick of the sight of them, but the plastic bottles in these photographs by Nickolas Muray are lit like objects in a Vermeer painting and I like the way they’re arranged.
In the photo above, the bottles are cropped, left and right, so that the viewer imagines an extended (endless?) parade of brands.
In contrast, the same bottles (more or less) in the photograph below, are all contained within the image.

Nickolas Muray: Plastics, Plastic Containers, 1960
After the market crash, Murray turned away from celebrity and theatrical portraiture, and become a pioneering commercial photographer, famous for his creation of many of the conventions of color advertising. He was considered the master of the three-color carbro process.
from Wikipedia’s entry on Nickolas Muray
These later works were done five years before his death in 1965. (Photographs via: George Eastman House)
(Another, of his more fantastical, plastic bottle still lifes, after the fold…)
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…)
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.
See also: Nested Packaging
–Randy Ludacer
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 10, 2012
Getting a Grip on Deskey’s Bottle Design

As promised, the brand identity of yesterday’s mystery bottle is now revealed. At first I thought it might be for a men’s product since there’s something tool-like about its hand-grip shape. Incorrect.
Turns out, it was designed to contain Drene Shampoo. Difficult to figure this out, however, since this brand no longer exists.
Originally, soap and shampoo were very similar products; both containing the same naturally derived surfactants, a type of detergent. Modern shampoo as it is known today was first introduced in the 1930s with Drene, the first shampoo with synthetic surfactants.
from Wikipedia’s entry on Shampoo
Presumably, since Deskey’s patented 1949 bottle design was assigned to Procter & Gamble, it was also he who designed the graphics for the bottle label and the carton that the bottle came in.
Five years later the Drene Shampoo packaging was redesigned again, although the bottle shape remained unchanged. (The photo and the quote below are via Al Q’s Flickr Photostream…)

New Drene carton is a completely new design – by Donald Deskey Associates — due to increasing sales of the shampoo through supermarkets and grocery chains. New design has cosmetic appeal, bold display, and a flexibility of display that permits placing the carton in a horizontal or vertical position. Designer’s second most important contribution (the new carton was the first) was the research and development of printing inks in colors which would meet the specifications set by the client. Ink specifications are very critical and only inks that will withstand product tests, fade tests, and scuff tests, are acceptable. Until recently, chartreuse and purple colors could not be formulated to meet the requirements. Deskey’s third most important contribution was the development of a package design that has been an inspiration to the advertising agency in the preparation of outstanding and revolutionary advertising art work.
from “Industrial Design In America” 1954
Interesting to note this early example of a package being designed to work both horizontally and vertically. Not all product manufacturers care about this idea, but it does gives a store more display options. (See: Lego Fruit Snacks)
(More about Deskey’s Drene and it’s finger grip shape, after the fold…) (more…)
February 8, 2012
Rachel Perry Welty’s Miniature Packaging

Rachel Perry Welty’s artwork has sometimes involved the making of miniature folding cartons. Her commissioned work for Johnson & Johnson’s New York lobby (“Product” 2007) for example, features hundreds of miniature versions of their retail boxes, past and present.
Executives from Johnson & Johnson saw a piece called, “Contents of My Pantry,” which featured miniaturized boxes of everyday items like cereal. They later commissioned Welty to create a similar installation of all their products, which now continues to grow larger and larger on a wall at the corporate headquarters.
“I started with the antique products like bunion plasters and keep adding to it as the company adds new products,” Welty said.
Brooks School Website, 2008 (Visiting Artist…)

She’s also made miniature versions of other iconic packaging designs, including a tiny stack of a more contemporary Brillo box — more contemporary than the 1960’s package design of Warhol’s Brillo boxes.

She’s also made a miniaturized survey of currently available Crest Toothpaste varieties (which further illustrates a point I was making in my previous post about how far from Deskey’s original brand packaging Crest has wandered).
“Choice (Crest toothpaste),” (2005) comprises every size and variety of Crest toothpaste available at my local drugstore, re-made in 1 : 5 scale. This installation probes the questionable benefit of choice in our culture and reflects, in an everyday way, our desire to acquire, inflamed by the miniature.
Rachel Perry Welty
The impulse to make miniature replica packaging as artwork is interesting and I was curious about her idea that consumers might be “inflamed” by miniatures. Hunting around a bit, I turned up an interview from 2006 in which she also mentions this idea:
“I take the actual containers, after we consume the contents, and I open up the boxes, photocopy and reduce them. I’m thinking a lot about this miniature inflaming the desire to acquire. They’re made into something cute and precious or something that you want to buy.”
There’s also a contrasting scale at work when she presents a huge accumulation of tiny packages, as in the Johnson & Johnson “Product” installation and the 2007 “Brillo” …methodically organized, but compulsive — like a dollhouse for hoarders.
(A few more photos, after the fold…) (more…)
February 1, 2012
The GlaxoSmithKline “Diskus®”
Years ago, when I first started seeing these packages in advertisments for various GlaxoSmithKline inhalant powders, the design looked to me like something produced by some alien technology. (See below the Diskus® as compared to an alien “cutting disk” from the movie, “Predator.”)
Later I happened to see some patents for the device —(Diskus® in the US; Accuhaler® in the UK)— and I realized how ambitious a package it was.
The inhalers that I was previously familiar with had all used aerosol propellants, which the Diskus does not use. This inhaler also has a counter which counts down to “0” the remaining metered doses and unfolds open and closed on a rotational axis. The alien asymmetry of its profile is largely due to the fact that it’s mechanism was designed to be actuated by the thumb of one’s right hand.
I recently got a chance to interact with the alien technology of the Diskus, having been prescribed Advair for a temporary bronchial inflammation.
One thing that could have made more obvious for me, was that you don’t feel like you’re inhaling anything. I wound up impetuously double dosing until I noticed a slight crunchy residue of powder in my mouth. Reading more carefully, I noticed this fact was mentioned later in the instructions.
Last year, Advair was the 4th best-selling prescription drug at $4.7 Billion. (via: Consumer Reports)
Designed by Gregor Anderson, head of GlaxoSmithKline’s “Technical Packaging Centre of Excellence,” the Diskus won a “Gold Award” in the 2003 DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation.
(More about Diskus manufacture and its clockwork interior, after the fold…)
January 12, 2012
Purple Cow Packaging
Vintage Holloway’s Purple Cow candy wrapper from Jason LieBig’s Flickr Photostream; William’s Purple Cow Lager can from The Beer Can Guide; Milka Chocolate’s purple cow shaped folding carton (via: Packaging of the World); a vintage “purple cow” fruit label for Washington apples for sale on eBay ($250)
Based on an 1895 poem by Gelett Burgess, a “purple cow” generally meant something “out of the ordinary” or something you don’t see every day. As depicted in these vintage packages, each with its whimsical cow illustration, the concept was fine.
I’m not so accepting of the new over-arching definition of “purple cow” as something remarkably innovative, as set forth in Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Because of this book, some people are now calling any ground-breaking, category disrupting product a “purple cow.”
For some reason, I find this new meaning a loathsome thing. To me, the name “purple cow” diminishes the hard work of innovation, making it sound like something merely capricous.
I doubt Steve Jobs would ever have given one of Apple’s products as insipid a name as “purple cow” and yet all over the place there are people now saying that the iPad and the iPhone are “purple cows.”
You need look no further than the scapbooking craft company The Purple Cows to understand the uncool connotations that this name carries.
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
December 22, 2011
A “Penny Machine” for Christmas
Photo via: The National Museum of Play
Above: something I once wanted and didn’t get. Anyone who grew up celebrating a consumer Christmas has one of these. Not necessarily this toy in particular, but something they wanted for Christmas—something they asked Santa Claus for—and did not receive. The “Penny Machine” is the one that I remember.
I had forgotten that it was called a Coney Island Penny Machine, I’m pretty sure it was just a “Penny Machine” that I told my mother was my number 1 Christmas wish. Clearly, the Remco television commercial below was what sold me on this product.
I must have been a pretty avaristic child to want a toy that endlessly dispensed other toys. Sort of like the trick of using your wish to ask for more wishes.
I hadn’t remembered the commercial being so olde-timey. I don’t think I would have identified much with the boy in the commercial, although I totally identify with the boy on the box—(who looks just me at that age). Perhaps it was the fantasy of impressing a girl with my skill in winning prizes that explains this commercial’s effect on me. Never mind that the carnival attraction, in this case, would have been located in my toy box.
Whatever desires it unleashed in me, my mother didn’t seem as impressed with this product or its commerical. Had it been a birthday request, I might have worked harder to persuade her. With Christmas, however, I figured it didn’t much matter what she thought about it. As long as I was right with Santa, it needn’t concern her. My record of good behavior stood for itself and made me confident that the Remco prize-dispensing machine would soon be my prized possession.
I know this sounds a lot like Ralphie and the Red Ryder BB gun in “A Christmas Story” which is embarrassing, but remember: in that movie [spoiler alert] he ultimately got what he asked for. The significance of not getting what you ask for is different.
Not that I’m whining about it now or that I had gotten everything I ever wanted up until that Christmas. But it’s the first thing that I can remember specifically asking Santa for, that I later noticed I didn’t get. Which raised certain existential questions…
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design
November 30, 2011
The Entenmann’s Box and Its Discontents
Some websites credit Martha Entenmann with having invented the “see-through” cake box. Other sites (including Entenmann’s) say it was a collaborative effort with her three sons.
Believing that people were more inclined to buy what they can see, the Entenmann’s brothers, William, Robert and Charles, and mother, Martha, invented the familiar “see-through” cake box for baked goods in 1959.
This insight transformed Entenmann’s business:
Quality baked goods used to be sold in white paperboard boxes tied with string, and only someone with X-ray vision knew what the treats within actually looked like. Then in 1959 Martha Entenmann, wife of the son of the Entenmann’s bakery founder, had a brainstorm — people were more apt to buy something if they could actually see it. Working with her sons (who’d joined their mom in the family business after serving in the Korean War), she developed the first cake box with a plastic “window.” The new box allowed the company to display its product on standard supermarket shelves, rather than relying on the limited “under glass” space available in independent bakeries. Instead of taking a number and waiting for a busy salesperson, consumers could browse among all the various “see-through” boxes of Entenmann’s chocolate chip cookies, powdered doughnuts, and crumb cakes…
Recent changes to their packaging, however, have now irritated some loyal customers…
(The backlash of the discontents, after the fold…)
November 11, 2011
Margarine Penalties
During margarine’s long prohibition, the product was variously outlawed, taxed, prohibited from being colored and required to be colored pink (until “pink” was ruled unconstitutional).
As with alcohol’s prohibition there were “bootleggers.” Some served time.
Above left: the mug shots of Charles Wille, John L. McMonigle and Joseph Wirth who all served time at Leavenworth Prison in the early 1900s.
Center: a photo from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel of three Wisconsin women loading a car trunk “with cases of oleomargarine outside an Illinois supermarket near the state border in December 1964.”
On right: an anonymous margarine smuggler from New Brunswick…
Dad and mom smuggled margarine from Maine as it was illegal to have coloured margerine in New Brunswick. I can remember that they took the panels on the car doors off and stuffed the doors full and then put the panels back on.
In 1918 Frank W. Tillinghast, president of the Rhode Island based “Vermont Manufacturing Company” was sentenced to a year and a day in prison for coloring margarine to resemble butter (and therefore: “tax evasion”).
In 1901 Tillinghast had testified on behalf of margarine in hearings for “The Bill to make Olemargarine and Other Imitation Dairy Products Subject to the Laws of The State or Territory Into Which they are Transported, and to Change the Tax on Oleomargarine” (H. R. 3717).
During margarine’s “pink” period:
In 1890, the Vermont legislature prohibited the manufacture of oleomargarine in that state, and specified that it could be sold in Vermont only if colored pink. In 1891 Minnesota, West Virginia, and New Hampshire passed similar laws. Not long afterwards, an alert Minnesota oleomargarine S.W.A.T. team carried out a pantry raid and confiscated a quantity of not-pink oleomargarine that had been imported from Missouri by Armour Packing Co., a New Jersey corporation.
The Pink Oleo Saga
Program on Corporations, Law & Democracy
Wisconsin’s anti-margarine laws have enjoyed a long run:
Yeah, that was in the late ’70s. Up until 1981, it was illegal to sell dyed margarine in Wisconsin. We had these white bricks that looked like lard. It was awful and no one wanted it. So, once a month, I’d drive to Illinois to get dyed margarine, load up the station wagon, and distribute it to the neighbors.
Canada is another country with stingent margarine regulations of surprising longevity:
Agriculture Department inspectors swooped down on four Wal-Mart stores in the Quebec City area yesterday and seized 72 plastic tubs of yellow Becel margarine with an estimated street value of $179.28.
Quebec seizes yellow margarine
Montreal Gazette, November 5, 2005
(More about margarine as contraband, after the fold…)
November 10, 2011
Oleomargarine Coloring Packs
Above are the patent drawings showing William E. Denison’s “coloring berry” which seem to match the Delrich Margarine EZ Color Pak.
Denison’s was one of many efforts to solve the margarine manufacturer’s problem of being legally required to sell their “artificial butter” in an uncolored form. Aside from the dye-containing “berry” there were many other designs for margarine coloring packs, designed to let the consumer take the final step of mixing in the coloring. To make the margarine look less like lard.
A couple of packages shown below even use dye-filled syringes, although I think those appear as more of a manufacturing note and were not meant to be included in the package.
Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design










































