Box Vox

packaging as content

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.

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…)

February 28, 2012

Magic Packaging 2

A new package design book from DesignerBooks, entitled, Magic Packaging 2, arrived at our office last week and guess whose excellent package design appears on page 172? (in the “Intriguing Magic” section)

Ours.

It’s our concept and structural design for a shirt-shaped, wrap card for the Totally Living™ velvet hangers 10-pack… which can also be seen here on our web site.

Don’t know why we weren’t included in the earlier Magic Packaging 1, but I do like the way things are trending.

Anyway, you should totally buy this book. It’s only 280.00 元  (or 246.00 元 if you are a member.)

(See also: Choi’s Package)

-Randy Ludacer

December 13, 2011

Bottles with Embroidered Shirt Labels

LaCoste

Another example of cross-category, clothing-related package design: Eau de Lacoste “Poloshirt in a Fragrance” bottles with their alligator shirt embem. Note the fabric texture on the sides of the bottle. (See also: Package as Clothing)

Lacoste-bottles

My earliest memory of an embroidered alligator emblem was when my mother in the late 1950s or early 1960s created some counterfeit Lacoste shirts for my grandfather, my father, me & my little brother. This was motivated more by the alligator than the brand status, I think, since we lived in south Florida, not so far from the Everglades. (See also: Crocodile Boxes—Alligator Bags)

Still, my mother must have been aware that the Lacaoste alligator emblem was a self-proclaimed “status symbol.”

René Lacoste founded La Chemise Lacoste in 1933 with André Gillier, the owner and president of the largest French knitwear manufacturing firm at the time. They began to produce the revolutionary tennis shirt Lacoste had designed and worn on the tennis courts with the crocodile logo embroidered on the chest. Although the company claims this as the first example of a brand name appearing on the outside of an article of clothing, the “Jantzen girl” logo appeared on the outside of Jantzen Knitting Mills’ swimsuits as early as 1921. In addition to tennis shirts, Lacoste produced shirts for golf and sailing. In 1951, the company began to expand as it branched from “tennis white” and introduced color shirts. In 1952, the shirts were exported to the United States and advertised as “the status symbol of the competent sportsman,” influencing the clothing choices of the upper-class. Lacoste was sold at Brooks Brothers until the late 1960’s. It is still one of the most popular brands in the United States, sporting the “preppy wardrobe”.

from Wikipedia’s entry on history of Lacoste

Invariably, when packaging serves as a metaphor for clothing, a consumer naturally tends to anthopomorphize and even identify with the product contained.

(The advertising, after the fold…)

(more…)

December 12, 2011

Laundry Label Bottles

LaundryLabelBottles2

A bit of trompe l’oeil, cross-category package design…

Stocks Taylor Benson’s shrink sleeve bottle labels for Morrisons laundry liquids (on left) emulate the standard “care instructions” woven label for garments (on right). Winner of a 2011 Pentaward.

(See also: Trompe l’Oeil Price Tags)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

November 25, 2011

Nike & Newport (Swoosh and Spinnaker)

Arimenthol10

The similarity of Nike’s and Newport’s logo has been well noted. Not a problem between the two companies when shoes and cigarettes are clearly separate industries. But when they get mashed up together, as with Ari Foreman’s 2008 “Ari Menthol” shoes, and are packaged in an oversized flip-top cigarette shoe box…

The Newport symbol, first used in 1969, is called their “spinnaker” logo. Think: sailboats, wind, respiration. (See also: square-rigged sail logo of Banks Beer)

NewportTradeMark

The Nike symbol (their “swoosh” logo) was designed in 1971 by Carolyn Davidson. Think: curvy checkmark, fluid motion, sports.

Another example of a Nike/Newport mash up are a 2009 series of “Nike Newports” by Danny J. Gibson:

DannyJGibson

I was wondering: has anyone ever mashed it up the other way round—as Nike Cigarettes?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 23, 2011

Wonder Bread Shoes: 4 Pairs

WonderBread-Shoes

As it seems to be “shoe week” here on box vox, I thought I’d go ahead and take a look at some of the footwear that’s been wearing Wonder Bread’s “trade dress” in the last couple of years…

1. An And1 “wear test sample” that was never manufactured for mass consumption.

2. Wonder Bread style Pro Keds. Their tagline: “the best thing since sliced bread.” Photo via: PBNation (See also: Bread and Sneakers)

3. Wonder Bread bags as shoes worn by Moe from The Simpsons in an episode entitled, “the Grift of the Magi.”

4. The Wonder Bread “color way” for polka dot BAPE Stas.

(Moe’s shoe video, more of And1 and another example, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 22, 2011

Bottle Cap Shoes

RGB

I didn’t understand these at first: pictures online of miniature sneakers mounted on top of bottle caps, but no pictures of the caps on a bottle. Turns out to be some sort of Adidas/Pepsi promotion from 2008:

Adidas & Pepsi [Japan] team up with [these] limited edition … Adidas … on a Pepsi bottle cap. The cap doesn’t actually fit onto a bottle as it is meant for display purposes although it looks very similar.

Found-NYC

All photos from Butsuyoku. Collect all 60.

(57 more, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 21, 2011

Shoe Bottles

Male-Female

Two shoe-shaped bottles from Ideal Industrial Limited: the “Sports Shoe Shape Glass Bottle With Cork (SHB001)” and the “Glass Bottle in Female Shoe Shape (ISB018).”

These two bottles remind me of Glenn O’Brien’s observations about men dressing too casually on dates with dressed-up women. (See: How to be a Man.)  Most shoe-shaped bottles are either men’s sneakers or women’s high heel shoes. What sort of products would come in figural bottles like these?

Mary+Queen+of+ShopsHigh-heel shoe-shaped bottles have sometimes been used to contain liqueurs and perfumes and liquid soap might give us cause to look at “women’s pumps” from a whole new angle…

Marks and Spencer used the exact same ISB018 “female shoe shaped” bottle for their 2008 chocolate dairy milk liqueur, below.  Although, in their case, they used a stopper rather than a twist off cap and there’s the added hangtag and ribbon. (via: Cool Buzz)

Choco-liqueur-shoeI was thinking that liquid shoe polish would be a good product to package in a shoe-shaped bottle. For some reason, most vintage, shoe-shaped bottles contained ink, although I did find one shoe-shaped bottle that supposedly contained shoe polish. (the “Rockingham” bottle shown below)

Illustrationii2

 

(For more about shoe-shaped glass bottles see: Collectors Weekly.)

ShoeShapedBottles

Above left: the vintage “Rockingham” shoe polish bottle (via: LiveAuctioneers); middle: an Anna Dello Russo shoe-shaped purfume bottle (via: PoisePolish); on right: a shoe bottle hookah via: SuperPiece (see also: Coke Bottle Water Pipe)

As for the sneaker-shaped bottle, Avon seems to be the only company that got into those in big way. Not surprising, since graceless, figural bottles seem to be their specialty.

(Avon sneaker-shaped bottles, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 17, 2011

4 Cardboard Shoemakers

CardboardPackshoes

We’ve touched on the shoebox-as-shoe concept in he past, but shoes made out of cardboard may be a broader trend in its own right.

What should we call the practitioners of this craft? Cardboard shoemakers? Cardboard cobblers? Cardboard cordwainers? Whatever name we give it, I have 4 examples…

(More cardboard shoes, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 4, 2011

Packaging as Prom Theme

DressesLeft: conceptual Tide dress photo by Ryan Yoon, styling by Hissa Igarashi (via MKTG); middle: Katell Gelebart’s Little Friskies coat; right: Frank Sorbier’s 2010 recycled wrappers dress

It’s high-concept/high-fashion to dress models in recycled packaging, but the same idea has been a popular prom theme for some time now…

PromTop left: DuctTapeRockStar’s Doritos bag prom dress; top right: StrawberryOrange’s “recycled prom dress”; middle: Gondabo’s Coke can tuxedo (“Yeah, I made my prom tux out of coke cans… because I'm just that cool…”); bottom left: Molly Burt-Westvig’s Skittles wrapper prom dress; bottom right: AnnieMarie88’s Starburst wrapper prom dress

(See also: Packaging as Wardrobe)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 30, 2011

Real & Imaginary PANTONE Package Design

PantonePacks

Hangers_1

PantoneBlock2Seeing Room Copenhagen’s new “Pantone Universe” products at Gift Fair (like the multicolored, Mobius-strip shaped hangers above, left) set me to thinking about all the various and sundry packaged Pantone products—real and imagined. (Poster illustration on right is by Base Design)

Although many graphic designers seem to identify with this brand, it always seemed to me that the market for multicolored PANTONE accessories ought to be a pretty small niche. There would undoubtedly be brand loyalists who would happily eat, sleep & breath the PANTONE logo, but those consumers should be far fewer in numbers, than, say, consumers willing to wear a Coca Cola logo.

Pantone is ubiquitous in graphics departments around the world, the metric by which designers define just the right shade of blue for the Gap's logo (Pantone 655) and the perfect pink for Barbie's (Pantone 820). Pantone chips likewise help Kellogg's enhance a cereal box to stand out on the shelf by using "spot" colors more vibrant than the mixes that emerge from the standard four-color printing press.

Allison Fass, “The Color of Money”
Forbes, 2003

Still, despite a certain backlash tendency, there seems to be no shortage of licensing deals and creative energy expended in this direction.

Personally, I find the PANTONE color system a bit kludgy and cumbersome.

Their solid color matching system requires that printers have a set of 14 different PANTONE approved base color inks, in order to correctly mix all of the admixture hues and tones. To me, this is like some inelegant logarithmic table, compared to the simple and logical algebra of CMYK— with 4 process colors.

For certain colors, however, specially mixed solid color inks will be much brighter than CMYK combinations. Correctly specifying those “spot” colors has become increasingly important for retail consumer packaging and for that PANTONE has no competition.

Real and imaginary PANTONE products are generally much more effective when displayed in a multicolored group. (See: Rainbow Array Packaging)  Although PANTONE cannot trademark the idea of a color assortment, in the minds of many designers, color = PANTONE.

Graphically, these package designs are usually minimal, based as they are on the layout of a tiny color chip swatch with PANTONE’s Helvetica logo and identifying code number.

(1,114 examples, after the fold…)

(more…)

June 29, 2011

T-shirt Boxes: 2 Kinds

T-shirtBoxes

1. Box to contain “tea shirts” (on left)

“Hanger Tea” concept by designer, Soon Mo Kang (or 강순모 or “Kang Soonmo”…?)

2. T-shirt shaped box (on right)

The Mountain’s current packaging for their T-shirts. (The same company whose “Three Wolf Moon” shirt became the beneficiary of so much “reviewer-flash-mob” attention in 2009.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

June 22, 2011

Shoe Box : Tissue Box

ShoeBoxTissueBox

TissueBOX_02c More orthographically-projected “shoe boxes” reminiscent of the ones we showed last December, but these boxes (designed by groovisions in 2006 for Oji Nepia) are meant to be both shoe box and tissue box. The idea being that once the shoes are removed the box may be saved to dispense tissues.

Nice business on the “soles” of these boxes where there appears to be evidence of something having been stepped in. Which is odd to see on the proxy box for your brand new shoes, but does create a clear spot on the treads for some legible product information.

(Via: Packaging of the World)

OrangeShoeBox
(Another box and second thoughts, after the fold…)

(more…)

June 10, 2011

Uncapped Landfill Jar #3

DoubleEndedJar

There were lots of uncapped milk-glass containers on the beach—mostly Ponds cold cream jars, but I thought this double-ended jar was interesting. One cavity deep and the other very shallow. No branding, but embossed in the shallow end is, “PATENTS PENDING.” (Note: “Patents” is plural)

We’ve featured a some more recent double-ended package designs, so I was intrigued to discover an older example. A patent search turned up the design patent (below) by Albert Abrams. No longer “pending” as it was granted in 1939. (Although it presumably expired 14 years later, in 1953.)

DoubleEndedJarPatent

But what did this jar contain? Since it was milk glass (like a Ponds jar) I’d been assuming that it was some kind of combination cosmetics jar. Wrong.

(Abram’s utility patent provides the clue, after the fold…)

(more…)

March 22, 2011

Package Design Conveyor Belt

Now open for business: our new web site features this interactive, conveyor belt style shelf showing Beach Packaging Design’s portfoilio. (Mouse over at either end to see more)

On the actual web site the small packages serve as the menu for selecting larger images. (Here they just convey themselves back & forth for your amusement.)

If you‘re in the market for some package design, please stop by.

Feel free to browse, but be careful. (You break it—you buy it!)

February 3, 2011

Wonder Bread Shirt(s)

Anthro-PackShirt

If you look for T-shirts featuring pictures of packages, you don’t find much. Plenty of T-shirts sport brand logos, but a T-shirt with a straightforward picture of a consumer package is rare.

You can find examples that almost qualify… Sometimes a T-shirt may have enlarged label graphics. In such cases, it’s like the wearer is the package with a T-shirt for a label. (e.g.: this Jack Daniel’s T-shirt) Other times the package is merely an element in a more elaborate illustration. 

I thought I’d go ahead and show this example: the Wonder bread “Squeeze Me I’m Fresh” T-shirt. (above) Plenty of T-shirt messages employ innuendo or double-entendre, but it’s unusual to see it done with anthro-packs. (Although I have seen other anthropomorphic Wonder bread T-shirts: here and here.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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