Box Vox

packaging as content

May 15, 2012

Calvin Klein, Yves Klein & Klein Bottled Beer

If Felix Klein’s paradoxical one-sided surface is represented as a bottle only because of a German homophonic pun, it’s fitting that artists and other creative types should further confuse things by associating this bottle with other people named Klein.

1. Calvin Klein Bottle

Uffe Holm’s 2008 sculpture entitled, “A Unisex Fragrance On A One-Sided Surface” is a Klein bottle with ck one perfume from Calvin Klein:

The Klein bottle is a spatial impossibility, if we lived in a non-Euclidean space, but this version is a model, a piece of scientific glassblowing, which purpose is to illustrate a three-dimensional Möbius band. In an unreal world this plane isn’t supposed to contain anything, but in reality it works fine as a flacon for the perfume ck one, the unisex fragrance from the 90s.

The two elements are tied together by the surname of their originator, Felix and Calvin respectively, but they both imply the possibility of illustrating something that does not unite in practical reality. Outer is inner and the sexes are merged.

–Uffe Holm

2. Yves Klein Bottle

Mariana Castillo Deball’s 2011 “Klein Bottle Piñata” deliberately conflates German mathematician, Felix Klein with Yves Klein by painting her interactive sculpture with the French artist’s patented color: International Klein Blue.

 (After the manifold: Klein Beer…) (more…)

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 4, 2012

On the Shelf

“On the Shelf”: Michael Craig Martin’s 1970 sculpture (via: Russell Hill)

Three  Four sculptures by three four different artists: each featuring bottles with varying levels of liquid.


Top: “Just So” Tony Feher’s 2002 sculpture; bottom: “Landforms” Russell Hill’s 2011 floor sculpture

(I almost forgot about this one…)


Cildo Meireles’s “Inserções em Circuitos Ideológicos” [Insertions in Ideological Circuits] (1970)

April 25, 2012

Mouth-as-window: Package Eats Product


Top: Tequechongos!; 2nd row: Dusan Čežek’s Booster Engery 4-pack box; 3rd row: Design Herynek’s Adriana Mini-Pasta; bottom: Kanikko crab-shaped candy crab packaging

The 1971 ad for two discontinued Tootsie Roll products (Tootsie Tots & Tootsie Jesters ad from Gregg Koenig’s Flickr Photostream) reminded me that I’d been seeing more mouth-shaped windows on packages lately. Maybe now’s a good time for another round up.

Most of it’s food packaging, of course, but not all. As previously observed, when gaping mouths appear on packaging, they are not human mouths.

But seeing them all together, what’s really notable is that they are all illustrations. No photography.

I always liked the simplicity of seeing the product through a mouth-shaped window. As a consumer you’re invited to identify with the character (animal, monster, etc.) and imagine that product in your mouth.

There are also packages that open in mouth-like ways to dispense the product, but however clever these solutions, unless you’re a baby bird, there’s something off-putting about the idea of taking food from another mouth.


Colgate’s 2011 cross marketing effort to sell toothpaste from within a pizza box

Preston Grubbs (whose Spherical-Wedge Juice Packs we looked at last month) connects a chain of three boxes to form a puppet-like “S’mores” kit, in which the upper and lower boxes form a monster character’s mouth and the middle box serves as a sort of “serving suggestion.”

(A non-food monster pack example, 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…)

April 23, 2012

Rainbow Cigarettes & Rainbow Matches

Two more unrelated “Rainbow” brands: Rainbow cigarettes and Rainbow safety matches.

I guess it’s officially “Rainbow Stripes Week” on box vox, this being the third day and all. (Tomorrow: Candy Colored Stripes)

–Randy Ludacer

April 20, 2012

Rainbow Striped Bottles

More spectral color branding. This time: bottles.

Absolut Vodka’s 2008 limited edition bottle (marking the 30 anniversary of the LGBT gay pride flag) and a 2010 Antico Frantoio Muraglia ceramic olive oil bottle (“…made by the expert hands of skilled master ceramists and covered with rainbow stripes.”)

Earlier rainbow branded liquids include Rainbow Beverages soda bottles (an ACL label with a monochrome rainbow!) and, below: Rainbow Beer and Rainbow Whiskey, separate brands whose labels both included full-color rainbows and metallic gold borders.


Bottle photo from AntiqueBottles.net; label from Newfoundland Beer History


Label photo from Etsy; bottle photo from RubyLane

And because I like miniature stuff and I never know when to quit…

(one more, 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 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…)

March 29, 2012

Anthropomorphic Condiment Packaging


Photo of “Mr. Ketchup” from Inha Leex Hale ’s Flickr Photostream

I remember we featured an anthropomorphic jar of Miracle Whip manning a cash register back in 2009, but these European anthro-packs were brand new to me.

Amora and Calvé are both part of “the Hellmann’s worldwide brand family.” (See also: Our Family of Products)


Via: Global Packaging Gallery (Photo by Krissy Sauter)

Does this package design infringe on Bart Simpson’s trademark hairstyle? At any rate, the Calvé character has siblings and cousin’s as shown in the Amora commerical below…

(More anthropomorphic condiment, after the fold…) (more…)

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.

See also: Package as Skin, Packaging and Plastic Fruit and Terry’s Chocolate Oranges

–Randy Ludacer

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 15, 2012

Dummy Packaging | Packaging Dummies

1. Dummy Packaging

“Dummy packages” are the prototypes that package designers make for clients wishing to evaluate a new package design, or as part of a proposal presentation to a store buyer. (Also known as: “mock ups” or “comps”)  Traditionally, these dummy packages are constructed by hand (scored, cut & folded) at a drawing table.

The commercial above for Life Cereal shows their version of this type of dummy package.

These days, the dummy packaging we make is increasingly digital dummy packaging. That is, simulated 3D product images now serve many of the same purposes that were once served only by traditional mock ups.

2. Packaging Dummies

Research for Tuesday’s “Packaging for Dummies” led me to discover Clinton Detweiler’s ventriloquist dummies made from cereal boxes. One of which happens to be a Life Cereal box.

Life and Total were the two cereal brands most frequently requested as puppets. Kix came in as a close third place. I made a good number of these that were sold during the ’80s. Then as some of you know, I offered cereal box puppets (moving mouth and eyes) again in 2009.

–Clinton Detweiler

I was sorry not to find any videos of these cereal box dummies in use.

(More dummy cereal box packaging, 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 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 7, 2012

Trix Cereal X-Ray Pack

About a year ago, we featured some package design by Mark Oliver, Inc. (above, left) that used actual-sized product photography of cereal to cover the outside of some Vita Crunch cereal boxes. Not just a photo of cereal in a bowl with milk, but a continuous, all-over pattern of cereal covering the front, tops and sides of each box. As if the boxes were transparent and we could see the contents inside. (See also: Packaging & What Lies Beneath)

“The client wanted to sell breakfast cereals priced at 99 cents each. The budget was tight and limited to process color. We made the product the hero. We laid it on scanners to record, used 3-D type to grab attention, and created distinctive, fun, colorful boxes that jump from the shelves.”

Later I saw this Trix Cereal packaging and realized that there had been an earlier precedent for this kind of X-ray package design for cereal.

Above: the introductory Trix ad from a 1956 issue of Life Magazine.

These earlier, rabbit-less Trix packages were a revelation to me… modern, in the same way that Jackson Pollack’s “allover” drip paintings were considered modern in  those days…

“Allover painting refers to a canvas covered in paint from edge to edge and from corner to corner, in which each area of the composition is given equal attention and significance. This is a radically different approach from modes of painting that offer specific focal points, such as the sitter’s face in the case of a portrait. With an allover composition, our eyes are invited to wander the canvas from the top to the bottom, following lines, shapes, and colors.”

Allover Painting, Museum of Modern Art

As a kid, I was convinced that I could correctly identify colors on black & white television. Perhaps it was advertising like this that gave me this idea. Above, is a screen shot from one of the earliest black & white TV commercials for Trix. The way they labeled the colors on screen (raspberry red, orange, lemon yellow) reminds me of Jasper Johns’ allover paintings from around the same time.

Below: Jubillee and False Start from 1959. (via: Flourishing Mirth)

(More Trix-ray vision, 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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