Box Vox

packaging as content

April 3, 2012

Appropriated Ready Mades & Customized Containers


Landforms, 2011 (“Customised fabric conditioner containers”)

Some subtle sculptures with groupings of detergent and fabric softener bottles by Russell Hill. I like the the way he organizes these consumer products according to his own formal concerns. Lining them up by size, level of contents and color. (via: MKTG)

The thing with the rising and falling levels of fabric conditioner also reminds me of artwork by Tony Feher and Cildo Meireles.

By stacking 4 varieties of Fairy detergent, Hill creates a ready made color gradient. I like that he describes it as “appropriated,” acknowledging the package design to some degree. When artists use consumer packaged goods in this context, it’s sort of “have your cake and eat it too” situation. Clearly a critique on consumer culture, and yet exploiting whatever subliminal forces of attraction these (designed) objects may inherently possess. This was equally true for Warhol and other artists who have appropriated consumer packaging in this way.


Fairys, 2010 (“Appropriated ready made washing liquid”)


Horizon, 2011 (“Customised fabric conditioner containers”)

Below, an excerpt from a video about the Catlin Prize which Hill received in 2011…

(And a bit more, after the fold…)

(more…)

March 26, 2012

Majestic Milk and Package Receiver


©2011 Ray Ludacer

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 16, 2012

Packaging Puppets & Evangelical Ventriloquism

In addition to the Life Cereal box ventriloquist’s dummy that we looked at yesterday, Clinton Detweiler made quite a few other puppets from empty retail packaging.

What wasn’t explored in yesterday’s post was that the purpose of many of these packaging dummies is religious instruction.

These product containers that were designed to carry cleansing products for laundry, have been converted into puppets used to present Bible promises guaranteed to cleanse lives.

“What good is it for you to GAIN the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?”

“For ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

“Let us then approach God’s throne of grace BOLD-ly, so that we may receive mercy…”

–Clinton Detweiler

Lucas Conley, in his book, Obsessive Branding Disorder, compared retail spaces like the Apple Store to a “brand church.” And, in fact, this morning’s news mentions that just yesterday fervent consumers were lining up overnight outside of NY’s Apple Store, to purchase the new version of the iPad this morning.  Some marketers have tried to bottle this kind of customer enthusiasm as “evangelism marketing.”

So I’m familiar with the idea that stores nowadays were inspiring a more church-like devotion from consumers, but I hadn’t thought about it the other way round… that churches were becoming more like stores.

Just as consumers happily identify with anthropomorphic retail packages and the concept of fraudulent packaging resonates as a political metaphor, preachers are also finding parables in consumer packaging.

We’ve seen evidence of this before in the content of sermons about the Entenmann’s box and deceptive frozen food packaging, but I had never realized that the packages were actually attending church.

And I never knew there was such a thing as “Christian ventriloquism”…

In the late fifties a new theory on how to sway children to Jesus swept the culture and has survived for almost fifty years against all odds. Ventriloquism. The craze of using ventriloquist dummies to teach Jesus to kids became so huge in fact, that there remains today a heavily attended Christian Ventriloquists Convention held in San Diego every year. Hundreds of Christian ventriloquist LPs have permeated America, the biggest star of which was, of course, Little Marcy who recorded for several major Christian record labels.

Listener Kliph Nesteroff, From Subculture to Major Industry:
Mike Warnke and The Roots of Christian Stand-Up Comedy
WFMU Blog, February 11, 2007

These things being the case, I guess it makes total sense that today’s parishioners might be better able to hear “the word of God” when it comes from a detergent box.

–Randy Ludacer

March 13, 2012

Package Design for Dummies

It all started with this bronze head. (An enigmatic Christmas gift from my brother that he picked up at an auction somewhere.) A serious commitment of permanent bronze to an ephemeral cartoon head. At least, I thought this looked like a cartoon character. Or maybe a product mascot? Clearly, I needed to find out whose face this was.

Howdy Doody? No. Alfred E. Neuman? No.

Then I noticed some writing on the back of the neck, inside the head. (The head is no longer affixed to its wooden base.) I couldn’t read the writing because it was backwards and it extended way up beyond where the neck curves into the head. I thought about peering in there with a dental mirror, but I didn’t have one of those.

Then I thought of using some modeling clay to get an imprint…

“©1960 Columbia Pictures Corporation
A JURO Creation”

“Juro Novelties” turns out to be a manufacturer of ventriloquist dummies so I’m thinking they must have, for some reason, immortalized one of their dummies with this bronze statue.

My guess is that it was made by actually casting one the plastic, dummy heads. That would explain why the writing was backwards and why the details on the inside felt sharper.

The Columbia Pictures copyright lines suggests a movie tie-in product. But what movie did this ventriloquist’s dummy appear in?

The only Columbia Pictures picture I can find that that was released in 1960 and has anything to do with ventriloquism, was a movie called “Stop, Look & Laugh.”

This movie features the Three Stooges and ventriloquist, Paul Winchell who used two dummies: Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff. Of those two characters, I think the one that our “Juro Creation” head most closely resembles is Jerry Mahoney. (An actual Jerry Mahoney dummy head on left via: Ventriloquist Central Blog)

And Juro Novelties did manufacture Jerry Mahoney ventriloquist dolls so that sort of fits.)

Setting aside the remaining unsolved mystery —(Why make a bronze dummy head?)— I wondered how Jerry Mahoney and the other “Juro Celebrity Dolls” were packaged?

In my expert opinion, the very best package design for dummies was the “dummy carrying valise” above. This value-added retail carton with handles, references the sort of battered show-biz suitcases that, in those days, itinerant ventriloquists presumably carried their dummies around in. Classic sixties styling with modern trapezoidal shapes, overlapping illustrations and a nice faux alligator pattern in the background. Also note the low 1960s price of $14.95… (Package photo via: Mr. D’s Daily Ventriloquist Journal; catalog ad via: eBay)

(More Juro Novelties packaging for dummies, 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 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…)

March 6, 2012

My Belated Coverage of Freshkills Sneak Peak

In early October we attended The Freshkills Park “Sneak Peak.” There were a lot of package related artworks and events at the landfill that day, that I would have written about sooner, had I not been foolishly waiting on more information from someone who never got back to me.

So now, 5 months later, on the better-later-than-never theory…

1. Lisa Dahl | Suburban Export

I bought a house! It was part of this subdivision of houses above, built by Lisa Dahl for her Suburban Export project and situated at Freshkills landfill… a whole neighborhood of recycled food cartons.  Not what you’d first think of as the healthiest of locations for a neighborhood, and perhaps that’s why houses there were selling for only $10 a piece. Mine was made from a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes box and included a built-in neodymium magnet at the base to keep it from blowing away.

2. Linda Byrne | Ghost Net and Cup Nests

Made from recycled plastic six-pack rings, and installed on a bridge like some ethereal, alternate-universe chain link fence. Also: bird nests made from the same stuff. (Which probably does find its way into the composition of actual bird’s nests!)

3. DB Lampman | I am Within

DB Lampman’s performance with sculpture that took place on top of one the capped mounds of the landfill. This sculpture was originally installed in late August but was temporarily removed due to Hurricane Irene. (Nice to speculate about what someone might have made of this sculpture had it become airborne and landed in their yard.)  The performance above was from September.

(1 more after the fold…) (more…)

March 2, 2012

Pipe Shaped Bottle | Bottle Shaped Pipe

Sorry about the homonymic bait-and-switch. “Smoking pipes,” of course, have little to do with “plumbing pipes.” A disingenuous way, perhaps, to end “Pipe Bottle Week,” but, in my own defense, the whole series really started with Jonna Pedersen’s painting of a Skipper’s Pipes packet. (And I’ve already stipulated to personally conflating the two types of pipe!)

1. Pipe Shaped Bottle
As previously mentioned, Avon has produced figural bottles of almost any object you can name. Over the years they’ve produced quite a few smoking pipe shaped bottles for men’s products. I like that this particular bottle is in the shape of a corncob pipe since that adds yet another layer of figuration to the Treachery of Images: “This is not a corncob pipe.”

2. Bottle Shaped Pipe
This vintage pipe (from Dawnmist Studio Clay Pipe Shop) dissembles in a different way…

This is a pipe that begins looking like a champagne bottle but when unscrewed the lower portion accepts a stem and mouth piece to become a pipe! There are neat metal fittings for the thread and a metal-push fit stem with the mouth piece itself being made of yellow plastic (which is loose). Some of the varnish on the wood of the stem has worn off but otherwise the item is in good condition and was never actually smoked although I think it could have been. Perhaps it was originally made as a gentleman’s celebration gift? The pipe displays well and makes a rather unusual vintage talking piece. The image shows the pipe when assembled and as a complete bottle. Height when assembled 5 inches. (Sold)

Aside from these vintage artifacts, are there any more recent examples?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…) (more…)

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!

(See also: Elizabeth Royte on Packaged Water)

–Randy Ludacer

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 16, 2012

Spiral Neck Bottles

We did a round-up of helical bottles in 2010, but recently I’ve been noticing more examples.

The Welde-Biere bottle (on the right) strikes me as a radically different form from the subtle spiral of a vintage Pepsi bottle. This bottle is designed more like a ram’s horn. It’s not just the larger gauge of the shape twisting around. Earlier Squirt soda bottles were based on a similarly large spiral ridge. I think it’s partly because it’s the neck and not the body that’s twisting. A helix wrapping around a cylinder establishes more of a regular repeating pattern. A spiraling tapered neck, however, gives Welde’s bottles a wonky, less uniform look.

It was a look they fought hard to have trademarked when their initial application was refused. And even when trademarked, their bottle was so specific a shape that they were unable to prevent Kofola “Snipp” from using a shorter bottle with a less pronounced spiraling neck. (on left)

In the Judgement of the Court:

“…the mere fact that the two bottles have a helically formed neck does not lead to the conclusion that there is a likelihood of confusion…”

The earlier Squirt bottle, shown below, had a spiral body, but a plain, conical-shaped neck. The Welde bottles, with their plain, cylindrical bodies and spiral necks, reverse this.

In another recent spiral necked bottle, the helix is actually an internal feature. O-I’s “Vortex” bottle for Miller Lite uses embossed internal ridges to encourage a novel, twisting pour.

(Some Vortex bottle videos, after the fold…) (more…)

February 15, 2012

The Prell Shampoo Anthro-Pack

In our compulsive cataloging of anthropomorphic packages, we haven’t found many anthropomorphic tubes. (Only Hy-Jen toothpaste and Vademecum come to mind.)

Prell Shampoo’s “Tallulah the Tube” was controversial because it was was based on the actress, Tullulah Bankhead, who had not given permission and did not approve:

In the spring of ’49 my ears were poisoned with this jingle:

I’m Tallulah, the tube of Prell,
And I’ve got a little something to tell,
Your hair can be radiant, oh so easy,
All you’ve got to do is take me home and squeeze me.

Another verse had this line:

For radiant hair get a-hold of me
Tullulah, the tube of Prell Shampoo

This attempt to capitalize on my name stiffened my hackles. In my thirty years in the theater I had spurned offers adding up to a maharajah’s ransom to endorse this gadget, that cure-all. Quicker than a Prell-user could dry her mane, I slapped a suit for a million dollars’ damages on the two radio companies over whose networks the verses were broadcast, on Procter and Gamble, sponsors for the lather, and on the advertising agency which schemed the outrage.

Tallulah: My Autobiography

A sound file of “Tallulah, the Tube’s” radio jingle: (via: Old-Time.com)

(More about Tullulah, the Tube, after the fold…) (more…)

February 6, 2012

Colbert’s SuperPack Pack

If I had just waited a few more weeks, I could have made Stephen Colbert’s SuperPack pack the centerpiece of last month’s post about Super PAC packaging.

Colbert recently announced (facetiously?) that Ben & Jerry’s was coming out with a limited edition “SuperPack Pack” of his “Americone Dream” flavor. Whether or not this is true, it pleases me to see the packaging implications of “Super PAC” come to the fore.

Americone Dream’s package design has already undergone a few iterations. An earlier version had a red & white striped flag background, rather than the Ben & Jerry’s new blue skies. The new “SuperPack” pack also appears to now have red, white & blue banners, festooned under the lid.

To my way of thinking, Colbert’s Super PAC (“Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow”) is a brilliant piece of popular conceptual art. By legally forming a bona fide “Political Action Committee” with comedic rather than (strictly) political intentions, Colbert uses a similar stratagem to that of the “N.E. Thing Company”—artists who officially formed a corporation in 1966, hiring a corporate graphic designer to design their corporate logo, etc. and yet who had entirely non-corporate motivations for doing so.

Like N.E. Thing Co., Colbert used an existing legal entity (a Super PAC, in his case) as an opportunity to subvert and critique an institution while feigning participation. N.E. Thing attended trade shows and sent out corporate faxes. (The fax/facsimile was the latest thing in corporate communications in 1966, just as the Super PAC/Political Action Committee is the latest thing in political fund-raising in 2012.) Colbert ran faux political ads on television and tried (belatedly) to get on the ballot on the South Carolina Republican primary.

(A video of Colbert’s SuperPack pack announcement follows, after the fold…) (more…)

February 3, 2012

Capsule Packaging

Following the pharmaceutical thread, the earliest patent for a two-piece, telescoping capsule was granted in 1846 to Jules César Lehuby.

Hard two-piece capsules were first invented in 1846 when Parisian pharmacist J.C. Lehuby was granted French Patent 4435 for “Mes envelopes médicamenteuses”

Division of Biopharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics
Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Helsinki

I failed to turn up Lehuby’s patent, but above are patent drawing of various envisioned improvements and refinements by other inventors over the years.

I’m less interested here in ways of packaging capsules, than in the idea that the capsule, itself, is a package. A capsule’s main purpose is to shield us from the bad-tasting medicine it contains. Lehuby compared his invention to a “cylindrical box capable of containing the required medical substance in its interior.”

What is a capsule, if not a tiny, edible container? If you have any lingering doubt that it’s truly a “package” in the modern sense of the word, just consider the extent to which the capsule is branded. (e.g.: Nexium “the purple pill)

Capsule manufacturer, Capsugel even has a “Build You Own Capsule” app, enabling its customers to brand their capsules with Pantone color and logos.

What is that, I ask you, if not “package design?”

The capsule, in fact, is such an intriguing contraption that designers have sought to package other products in them, as well. Usually this is done by carefully implying “vitamins” rather than prescription drugs.

Vitamin Water capsule bottle concept by Cindy Ng & JJ Lee

There is, however, the occasional encapsulated product that will embrace the drug thing, as in the Sunshine Enema music package, in which the music is contained in a capsule-shaped USB drive. (Designed by Jeremy & Erin Fortes)

(More encapsulated products, after the fold…) (more…)

« Older Entries
» Newer Entries