packaging as content

February 14, 2012

Hearts & Packaging

Top left: Jamie Nash’s bee’s wings heart illustration for Lovely Honey; top center & 2nd row left: because olive oil is “heart healthy,” Soporte Comunicación’s package design for “Secret to Live” Olive Oil uses olive parts to make whole hearts (see also: The Incomplete Package); on right: Ralph Lauren “Love” perfume in its limited edition “Heart of Gold” bottle; lower right: Vanguard Creation’s faceted, heart-shaped bottle for Diesel’s “Loverdose”

Some heart-related packaging for Valentine’s Day. ♡

–Randy Ludacer

January 16, 2012

Super PAC Packaging

As we enjoy a new, hyperbolic political season, generously funded by large amounts of Super Political Action Committee money, I thought it might be a good time to take a look at some earlier types of Super Pac.

Not surprisingly, the name was previously associated with packaging.

SuperPac, Inc., whose logo appears at top, offers “A Tradition of Excellence in Flexographic Printing.”

SuperPAC™ (logo: above center) is a trademark of Thomasville Furniture:

Thomasville’s promise to provide our customers with the best overall kitchen, bath, and other room solutions initiated our development of SuperPAC, our patent pending packaging technique.

And SuperPac is also the name of a British company that makes a car stereo accessory. (Logo by Frankman Design)

Superpac is the new way to hold your detachable car stereo front. Designed to replace the dull black plastic case supplied with most car stereos, the Superpac offers you a stylish way to protect your cherished face-off style car stereo.

Mastey de Paris carries a SuperPac “Intensive Reconstructor Conditioner for Stressed, Damaged Hair” (above, right)

Superpac reconstructs damaged hair, rebuilding and reinforcing the hair’s protein chains. Superpac enables hair to retain its elasticity and structural integrity with newfound bounce and resilience.

Mastey de Paris

There was also a Timberland Super Pac boot. (via: Gwar Izm)

Nowadays, a candidate whose political campaign benefits from Super PAC money is not supposed to “coordinate directly” with his or her Super PAC benefactor. In practice, however, a candidate’s Super PAC is often run by a close ally—a Super PAC man. (e.g., Jon Stewart is Steven Colbert’s “Super PAC man”)

Not to be confused with an earlier “Super Pac-Man.”

Top & center: Commodore 64 “Super Pac-Man” packaging from Moby Games; bottom photo: a General Mills Pac-Man cereal with “Super Pac-Man Marshmallows” from Jason Liebig’s flickr Photostream

Now, if we were willing to be more liberal about the spelling of the term—accepting say “PAK” as a reasonable variant (as in Political Action Kommittee?)—then there’s even more to think about.

(More, after the fold…)

(more…)

December 30, 2011

Camouflage Package Design Continued

Lest anyone imagine that camouflage patterns were confined only to beverage packaging, here are some recent examples of camouflage package design, in general.

Because of its star logo, Amour Star seems ready-made for a patriotic camouflage treatment, although it’s debatable how American a “Vienna Sausage” can ever be. (Designed by Bob Oliva)

Jiffy Pop, too, has undergone camouflage treatment. (Via: Lester Of Puppets’s Flickr Photostream)

“Powderflage” powder concealer comes in a camouflage canister. (Note how its camo pattern is made of butterflies.)

Srixon’s camouflaged USO golf balls pack, we’ve mentioned before.

Yoder’s canned bacon comes in a camouflage patterned can.

“A Bathing Ape” (aka: BAPE) has for a while featured camouflage patterns in its branding.

And Huggie’s diapers have also supported our troops through camouflage patterning.

Also: camouflage candy…

and camouflage peanuts, for some reason.

(and one more example, after the fold…)

(more…)

December 8, 2011

Wooden Packaging

Top row: Anicka Yi and Maggie Peng’s cedar-encased fragrance bottles; 2nd row, left: Andrée Rouette’s ABCD veneer-covered maple syrup cans (via Packaging UQAM); 2nd row, right: Espen Hansen’s veneer-covered AO Vinje gin box; 3rd row, left: Society27’s wooden shoebox; 3rd row, right & below: Léo Breton-Allaire’s spruce gum chewing gum concept (via: Packaging UQAM); 4th row left & below right: Maude Bussières’s detachable wooden pencils concept (via Packaging UQAM); 5th row, left: Debowa oak-encased vodka bottles; bottom row: Gerlinde Gruber’s wooden, puzzle-like jewelry box

Packages made of wood (See also: Wood Framed Bottles)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

November 21, 2011

Shoe Bottles

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?

High-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)

I 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)

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

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…)

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September 26, 2011

Wood Framed Bottles

“Framing the product” might be one definition of what a retail package is supposed to do—providing an appropriate and complementary setting, both to contain and to display a product.

Taking this metaphor literally, these bottles are circumscribed by a signifying wooden frame. While a glass bottle by itself could clearly do the job of containing, the frame draws additional attention, setting it apart from the other bottles on the shelf. Framing the bottle as if it were a work of art or a tromp l'oile representation of a bottle (rather than a real bottle).

The effect is minimal and modern, although some might argue that adding gratuitous elements to an otherwise functional container is not really modern… That a bottle alone is more minimal and that a signifying frame is retrograde and redundant. Like drawing a line around a building. Or UNDERLINING a word that is already in capital letters.

Still, these are not ornate frames, so they are modern and minimal in that sense.

1. DSquared²’s “He-Wood” (top, left) is a fragrance bottle. Most bottles with wooden frames seem to be fragrance bottles, the idea being to visually frame a olfactory product. (via)

2. With Camarc, Ltd.’s wooden box for James Martin’s—(shown at top, on right)—the idea is to visually frame a gustatory product.

Manufactured in a limited quantity and hand-assembled this wood gift box for JAMES MARTIN'S Fine and Rare 20 year old is made with a frame of solid pine and rigid cardboard.

The wood frame also serves as display case for Point Of Sale. A magnetic system in the wood frame holds the bottle in place.

(Other wood framed bottles, after the fold…)

(more…)

September 14, 2011

Beautiful Breath: Package Design & Trade Dress Drag

On left: Rigaud’s 1915 Un Air Embaumé packaging; on right: Marcel Duchamp’s 1921 Eau de Voilette bottle

“Duchamp created this “perfume readymade” from an empty bottle of a Rigaud perfume called Un Air Embaumé (Scented Air) that had been designed by Julien Viard, a sculptor who was known for creating perfume bottles with figural stoppers.”

Victoria Rose Pass
Strange Glamour:
Fashion and Surrealism in the Years between the World Wars

The advertisement above (from eBay) shows Viard’s original bottle design. (A sculptural detail on the side of the Un Air Embaumé bottle is shown on right.)

“Julien-Henri Viard, an award winning French sculptor, worked for his father, Clovis, from 1900 until the father’s death in 1927. Julien continued to run the glass workshop until 1938 when it merged with glass producer Depinoix. Julien is best known for his elegant perfume bottles with many examples surviving until today in collections world-wide.”

Selling Things Webstore

_______________________________

“… the versatility of Julien Viard is such that it is difficult to fit all his work with a single type… a huge variety of containers, with exquisite patina and perfect finishes.”

Museu del Perfum

“Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water) is the amusing title Marcel Duchamp gave to a work of art that he made — with the assistance of Man Ray — in the spring of 1921. At first glance, it appears to be little more than an ordinary perfume bottle, although readers of French might confuse it with a mouth wash, which, if consumed, would give them, as the label indicates, belle haleine (beautiful breath). We now know that in order to produce this work, Duchamp appropriated an actual bottle of perfume issued by the Rigaud Company of Paris in 1915 for Un air embaumé, the name given to the most popular and best-selling fragrance the perfumery had produced in its sixty-five year history. Advertisements for this product feature a scantily clad female model holding a bottle of the perfume below her nostrils, the essence of the liquid rendered visible as an undulating, ribbon-like shape floating through the air. The model is shown taking a deep breath, her eyes closed and head tilted slightly back, as if to suggest that the scent possess the qualities of an aphrodisiac, rendering powerless all who inhale its intoxicating vapors. It may have been precisely these qualities that attracted Duchamp to this particular brand of perfume, for he wished to draw attention to the woman whose features are depicted on the bottle, his newly introduced female alter-ego: Rose Sélavy.”

Francis M. Naumann
Christie’s, November 2008

Left: Julien Viard; center: Duchamp in drag (Rose Sélavy); right: Francesco Vezzoli, also in drag

(More about Francesco Vezzoli, after the fold…)

(more…)

September 12, 2011

Boxes with Diagonal Motif

I don’t have a good name for this effect. The rectangular sufaces of the top two boxes are more or less bisected into two triangles, which (depending on how these areas are colored) can create geometric “wrap-around” effects.

And the side panels of the “Stella in Two“ boxes by Made Thought are also divided by diagonal lines. (via)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 30, 2011

Real & Imaginary PANTONE Package Design

Seeing 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…)

August 26, 2011

“God Save The Tea”
Jamie Reid and Specificity in Punk Package Design

Make International’s “Punk Range” china (designed by Keith Brymer Jones) comes in a carton that references two different Sex Pistols record sleeves, originally designd by Jamie Reid.

Reid’s ransom-note collage technique came to typify “punk” style in the 1970s, but it’s surprising how many packaged products there are today that reference these two specific designs: 1. the “God Save the Queen” single sleeve (& poster) and 2. the LP cover for “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols.”

As an American, I had the orange version of Never Mind the Bollocks, and I loved the intensity of the fluorescent orange, but I recognize that the earlier British release has more in the way of provenance. (See also: Talking Heads 77 fluorescent orange packaging)

(More, after the fold…)

(more…)

August 10, 2011

Holding on by a Fingernail:
13 Nail Polish Package Design Patents

After yesterday’s lengthy piece about Dura-Gloss and Cutex package designs you might have thought there wasn’t much left to say about nail polish caps with simulated fingernails. It turns out, we hadn’t even scratched the surface.

There were quite a few other inventors and package designers (besides Edwin T. Reynolds & Donald Deskey) who, in trying to solve the problem of how best to merchanidise nail polish in assorted colors, had thought of fingernails.

A collection of patented bottles and caps follows. All feature simulated fingernails, mostly as a color identifier and, in some cases, as a way of “trying on” a color by slipping a finger underneath a fake fingernail.

(13 patents, after the fold…)

(more…)

August 9, 2011

Uncapped Landfill Bottle #6

Two matching bottles: one chipped—one melted. More de-branded glass bottles from Dead Horse Bay, but in this case we have a patent number (110034) embossed on the bottom…

A bottle designed by Edwin T. Reynolds. No mention of what the bottle was meant to contain, but the patent was assigned to “Lorr Laboratories” of Patterson, NJ.

A search for any additional patents assigned to “Lorr Laboratories” turns up this odd “container cap”—also designed by Edwin T. Reynolds. Again, no mention of the product…

Could this be the cap the went with these bottles? It was patented around the same time. What did Lorr Laboratories manufacture?

“We manufacture a polish called Dura-Gloss and only produce it to be sold in all stores for 10 cents. Our business is to furnish that, and we also furnish some brands of miscellaneous drugs.”

–from Lorr Laboratories’ testimony before on “H.R. 8367”—a bill to amend the Tariff Act of 1930 by reclassifying brushes or hair pencils for manicuring purposes. April 18, 1940

Nail polish. That art deco bottle cap design was meant to represent a fingernail! Logical to show the nail polish color on the cap, and a good way to demonstrate its effect as a fingernail color. But, for some reason, lethally sharp and claw-like in its execution.

(Dura-Gloss trademark, bottle label, additional advertising images, and competition with Cutex, after the fold…)

(more…)

July 22, 2011

Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream

Egg-shaped tins from 1909 that once contained “Bassett’s Egg Shampoo Cream”

Unusual packaging for a shampoo, but the Bassett Supply Company of Rochester, NY may not have been the only company to use it.

There was also a “Marvelette” brand Egg Shampoo Cream using “a unique package in the form of an egg” on the market in 1910. Also based in Rochester. For all I know, Marvellette Laboratories may have just been a division of Bassett Supply Company.

July 7, 2011

Donald Deskey’s Odorono Jar

Celebrated industrial designer, Donald Deskey is well-known for package design of iconic brands below. Perhaps less well-known, is his structural design of the “Odo-Ro-No” Cream Deodorant jar for Northam Warren Corporation.

Deskey packaging from the exhibit, “Creative Conscious: The Unconstrained Mind of Donald Deskey” (Photo via: Gilmore Branding)

Based on advertising images, Deskey’s art deco jar was in use during the 1940s. Haven’t been able to find any photos online of an actual surviving jar of this type.

The embossed lid was apparently discontinued sometime in the 1950s in favor of a plain flat version. (as with the pink one above)

Don’t know whether Deskey had anything to do with Odorono’s graphic design.

(Odorono’s trademark papers, after the fold…)

(more…)

June 17, 2011

Uncapped Landfill Bottle #4

This bottle turns out to have contained either Fitch Dandruff Remover Shampoo or Fitch Ideal Hair Tonic. (The same bottles appear to have been used for both products.)

I like the way these men’s hair care bottles originally had matching embossed skirts & caps. The company’s founder, Fred W. Fitch, started out as a barber, so the slanting, slightly helical pattern is probably meant to evoke: barber pole.

And, as was so often the custom in those days, these bottles were, themselves, packaged in a carton. I like the concentric exclamatory graphics on the box.

In 1946 Fitch’s advertising ran afoul of FTC.

In 1892, Frederick W. Fitch was a barber in Madrid, Iowa (pop. 565). His shampoo became so popular that he quit barbering to make “Fitch’s Dandruff Remover Shampoo.” By last year, his company had annual sales of $11,000,000. The advertising that did the trick: “Fitch Shampoo removes every trace of dandruff on first application.”

Last week, after 54 years of such advertising, the Federal Trade Commission decided that it was “false and misleading.” Reason: it made the public believe that “dandruff is an abnormal condition.” The truth, according to FTC: “Dandruff is a physiologically normal condition . . . and cannot be removed permanently through the use of any cleansing agent.”

Fitch Won’t Save It
Time Magazine
Monday, June 10, 1946

(“Fitch Shampoo Airport” after the fold…)

(more…)

June 16, 2011

Uncapped Landfill Bottle #3

Third bottle up is barnacle-covered with vertical, corduroy-like ridges. This bottle turns out to have once contained a Marcel Rochas men’s fragrance called, Moustache. Launched in 1948–49, the product is still available, but comes in a different shaped bottle with a sans-serif logotype. (During the 1950s the “Moustache” logotype was, itself, mustachioed.)

Sometimes these bottles were sold in boxed sets…

Sometimes these bottles included atomizer bulbs…

In addition to a “citrusy opening” note, the Moustache scent is said to also include “the urinous aroma of animalic notes that recalls horses’ sweat.” (Which is fitting, considering that I found my bottle in Dead Horse Bay—final resting place for so many 19th Century work horses.)

Moustache was clearly intended as a mens product, but like Irish Spring and riding horses, some women like it too…

After the citrusy opening, the characteristic faintly floral and hay-ish powdery heart slowly gives way to the funk of the base notes with their sweaty, urinous and pungent leather impression which lingers quietly, intimately for a long time. Despite it being, marketed as a masculine scent, women who find citrusy or "hazy" suede compositions to their taste should definitely give it a try.

Rochas Moustache: fragrance review & history
Perfume Shrine, september 7, 2009

I thought there might have been a design patent for this bottle, but if there was ever an American one registered, I could not find it.

(Although I did find one design patent by Marcel Rochas for something else entirely, after the fold…)

(more…)

June 10, 2011

Uncapped Landfill Jar #3

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.)

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…)

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