packaging as content

December 5, 2011

Coca Cola’s Dripping Negative Space

On left: “liquidated” Coca Cola logo by Zevs; center: a recently discontinued Coke can; on right: Zoo’s package design for Rubén Álvarez yogurt.

The first time I saw the seasonal Coca Cola can above was from a distance of about 3 yards (2.75 m). I was in the back of the supermarket by the meat cases when I noticed some cans with what appeared to be dripping white frosting (or melting glacial ice?) on display in a Coca Cola end cap.

I left my shopping cart where it was and crossed over for a closer look. Not drips at all, but just the negative space behind some polar bears on a silver ridge.

Maybe I’m predisposed to seeing dripping graphics everywhere, but, even if this optical illusion is unintentional, a dripping white package does seem in keeping with Coca Cola’s frosty, cold gestalt. And, to my eyes, the white ink comes to the foreground and the silver metal of the can is the more natural background.

None of this matters much in the face of another negative controversy. The package design was intended to be part of Coke’s “cause marketing” effort to protect the polar bear, but this message is being overshadowed by the problem of diabetic consumer confusion.

“I purchased three six-packs because I thought they were diet,” Gail O’Donnell of Danvers, Massachusetts, told ABC News .

“I drank one and wondered why it tasted so good. I didn’t look at the can. … I am a diabetic and can only drink diet sodas. They need to make it so it is not confused.”

Coke and Diet Coke Cans Should Be Polar Opposites, Buyers Say

Coca Cola has therefore discontinued production of the white can, switching back to last year’s red version. So diabetics (like me) won’t get confused and drink regular, caloric Coke by mistake, screwing up their blood sugar.

Come to think of it, the red can looks a little like dripping blood.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

November 17, 2011

4 Cardboard Shoemakers

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

Left: 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…

Top 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

October 20, 2011

6 Chairs Made from Packages

1. The “Mad-700-Chair”— by MadC is an M-shaped double sling chair made from empty spray paint cans.

2. The “294 Liter Sitzen” —(Liter Sitzen is German for “I sit”) [see comments below]— is an armchair made from 294 Tetra-Pak cartons by Fabian Jochen Kanzler & Steve Michaelis.

3. The “Lucky Chair” is Roeland Otten’s armchair made from 400 empty packs of Lucky Stripe cigarettes.

4. The “Jar Chair” is made from 96 baby food jars by Johnny Swing.

5. A chair made from glass bottles, but I can’t tell you who made it.

6. The “SIE43 Chair” is made by Pawel Grunert from PET bottles.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 17, 2011

3 More Accordion Packs

In August we looked at some accordion-like packages that featured “bellows” mechanisms that allowed them to expand and contract. More examples have been popping up recently…

1. Nick Seville’s “Shaker Straws” duplicate the effect of a bendable straw. His solution to an assignment about packaging-as-added-value:

“…the brief was to repackage a pound shop item to make it worth double the price. This was achieved by creating a product that stood out on the shelves and made it more interactive for the customer to get a feel for the product.”

Consumers might regard it as a cynical ploy —a package designed to double the price of an item— but it does serve as an important reminder that an elaborate package will surely increase the retail price of a product.

2. Éva Valicsek’s “egg box” uses an accordion-like structure for egg packaging. Here the structure mainly serves to provide stabililty for the eggs, but the flexibility of the bellows structure allows the eggs to be easily inserted or removed from the carton.

Her labeling scheme also includes the barcode as a graphic design element —(similar to a CD package we looked at in 2009).

3. Directions Marketing’s “Tritainer” dog food concept (Grand Prize Winner in “Project 2020: The Consumer Experience”) makes compression a key feature:

“Accordion-type compression reduces container height as product is dispensed, and when empty, the container eventually folds flat for easy recyclability.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 7, 2011

Fresh Kill

Last weekend we went to the second “Sneak Peek” for Freshkills Park. Naturally, there was some package-related stuff there, which I’m planning to feature in a few days. In the meantime, I’ve been wanting to post this film by Gordon Matta-Clark for a while now…

Fresh Kill 1972, 12:56 min, color, sound, 16 mm film

This film records the complete process of the destruction of Matta-Clark's truck (which he called "Herman Meydag") by a bulldozer in a rubbish dump. Part of 98.5, a compilation of films by Ed Baynard, George Schneemar and Charles Simons, this piece was shown in Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany.

(via Freshkills Park blog)

Besides being an interesting conceptual art film in its own right, Fresh Kill provides an indelible “before” picture of the Staten Island landfill in the 1970s, before its ambitious makeover into parkland.

For a contrasting “after” picture, consider the photos below from last weekend’s “Sneak Peek.”

6214797220_f2c77a1a23_b Photo by Raj Kottamasu

(Another photo, after the fold…)

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October 6, 2011

Beer Can Collection Dumpster(s)

While searching for a photo of a Champagne Velvet beer can, I happened to find the Polaroid on the right from Sean Tubridy’s Flickr Photostream.

Turbidy is founder of Minneapolis-based graphic design firm, Blue Over Blue. The Champagne Velvet can (from his “Vintage Beer Cans on Polaroid” set) originally came from a huge beer can collection that had been thrown away:

…. these belonged to a guy known as “The Beer Can Man”. He had a place in our building and collected these along with bar signs and all sorts of other stuff. He died a while back and these are being hauled away. They can’t be recycled for the deposit because they are tin and steel.

By the end there were 12 trailer-size dumpsters of cans!

–Sean Turbidy, 2006

Turbidy also photographed some of the container-filled containers. Quite possibly a collector’s worst nightmare: you die and a lifetime of stuff that you valued gets tossed into one or more dumpsters.

Note how many of the cans appear to have intact pull-tab tops. I suspect this is because the cans were opened at the bottom with a church key can-opener—(a standard practice for beer can collectors).

Another Minneapolis-based firm, Studio on Fire, also has an extensive beer can collection. (below) Maybe some of the cans from “the Beer Can Man” dumpsters wound up in their collection. That would be nice.

(See also: A Collection of Cans)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

September 29, 2011

Modular Wine Bottle Desk Lamp

“Built-in interlocking joints and partially biodegradable materials… The reusable carrying case transforms into an energy-efficient LED desk lamp, using your empty wine bottle as a stand.”

from Miniwiz

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 24, 2011

Package Design on Your iPhone

Inexplicable drawn to Zero Gravity’s both at Gift Fair. When I saw some of their package-design iPhone cases, I figured that’s what must have been calling to me. Not all of their phone cases are designed to resemble consumer packaged goods, but enough so that it raises some questions. We’ve seen other cases of devices being made to look like packaging… cameras, radios and, yes, telephones.

But since Apple is unlikely to come out with cross-branded varieties of iPhone, if you are determined to possess a Velveeta iPhone, it falls to 3rd party venders of iPhone accessories to meet your needs.

Of course, there are also other package-related iPhone cases with different degrees of DIY.

Joanna Behar was experimenting with a candy-branded iPhone—(candy wrappers placed underneath a transparent iPhone case)…

In both of these examples—Zero Gravity’s faux-packaging and Johanna Behar’s DIY candy branding—the glossy plastic surface belies any sincere intention to fool the eye. These are still coveted hi-tech gadgets—with a glossy veneer of ironic low-brow branding.

Another DIY example: “Randomly Ross” has a Flickr Photostream about making iPhone cases from juice boxes and also offers them for sale on ArtBoxe.

Here’s a case in which the packaging cover serves a more truly undercover role:

“I was trying to find a material to make a case for electronic devices that would be durable, but not attract attention. Truth be told, the thing that first attracted me to juice-boxes is that they are ubiquitous and uninteresting. If someone looks into your purse and sees a book, some keys and a juice box, they aren't going to take the juice box. What if they see a brand new iPhone?”

In titling this post, it struck me how “Package Design on Your iPhone” could be interpreted two ways: as a covering to put on your iPhone and as an activity to do on your iPhone. Then I wondered, is there an app for that?

And I’m not the first pose the question. (See: Richard Shear’s Free iPhone package design app)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 22, 2011

Geografia’s Polyhedral Planet

We went to Gift Fair last week (NYIGF) and one of the booths where I lingered the longest belonged to Geografia, a company that makes polyhedral paper globe kits, among other things.

When I saw the cube-shaped globe, above left, I said, “I bet that‘s a magic cube.” Sure enough the “Earth & Sky Twistable Globe” was a fully-functioning, folding and unfolding “magic cube” made from 8 smaller cubes—(the same sort of cube as our own Gumball Cube Pack).

In one state, the “Twistable Globe” shows a map of the world. Turned inside-out, it shows a map of the stars. (Really like the inside-outside / introvert-extrovert idea of this.)

Another intriguing reversible globe was their “Lands & Nations Flippable Globe” which was very similar to Jessica Comin’s “laranja mecánica” that we looked at recently. In her case, the cube could be turned inside-out to form a rhombic dodecahedron. The “Flippable Globe” is a cube that can be turned inside-out to form a regular dodecahedron. And its parts are tabbed, rather than permanently hinged together.

The projection of maps onto polyhedral shapes is something that Buckminster Fuller and others have also explored, but Geografia’s products manage to provide fascinating new polyhedral perspectives and (geo)graphic insights.

Here’s a video showing one of their “Sectional Globes” being assembled…

(We’ll be featuring more stuff from Gift Fair over the next week or two.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 18, 2011

Accordion Bottles

As with yesterday’s look at “accordion packs,” although there is one example here of a literally accordian shaped bottle from eBay, accordion bottles, for the most part, are those bottles with expanding/contracting, bellows-like features.

Prior to digital photography, photographers had the option of storing their darkroom chemicals in “air reduction” bottles which “expand and contract depending on amount of contained liquid to ensure it’s air tight and lasts longer.

There are also collapsible sports bottles, sometimes in the shape of a ball.

The bottle shown in the lower left of the photo above is Tnuva Milkshake’s 2003 “Accordion Milkshake Bottle.”

By using the new flexible ‘accordion’ bottle space saving technology the customer stretches to full capacity the flexible bottle only when he wants to consume the product, then the customer shakes the firm closed bottle to desired foamy structure and then only the customer opens the bottle.

via: Global Packaging Gallery

Sometimes accordion bottles are used as syringe-like dispensors, as with the Kuhn Rikon cake decorating bottles below.

We also featured a 2008 collapsible carbonated soda bottle concept by Swerve that was meant to prevent soda from going flat (similar to the darkroom “air reduction” darkroom chemicals bottles), but in recent years, the accordion bottle has been continually reinvented as a space-saving ecological solution.

Here are five examples:

1. Oto Musalek and Josef Zboril’s 2005 “NDC PET” bottle:

My idea was to make a bottle whose volume could be easily reduced. It was obvious that it should fold like an accordion. But the first prototypes did not work because of certain properties of the plastic, so I had to adjust the design of the bottle.

via: Radio Prague

Their idea also includes an unusual non-adhearing label concept which is intended to make the bottle more efficiently recyclable.

Its design enables an easy separation of the raw materials — the bottle, the label, the cap — and a simple condensation of the empty bottle. Its label is not fixed with adhesives but it is just put on the bottle’s neck.

via: Czech Design

Their patent appears to be for sale.

2. Brengt Brummer’s 2009 “Pop Bottle” is actually a water purification device, and may be a bad example of the accordian-bottle-eco-space-saving idea. It’s ecological, but not by virtue of its recyclability. Like those sports bottles we mentioned above, its collapsibilty has more to do with convenience. Still, it’s a cool looking bottle…

The water filtering system introduced by Bengt Brummer is designed for active users in different environments where the water quality cannot be considered as safe. Dubbed Pop Bottle, the dynamite shaped water bottle has the ability to collapse and expand as required.

via: siahdiar.org

3. James Hart’s 2009 “Twist Bottle” is an accordion bottle, by way of origami:

“This bottle was influenced by collapsible origami cylinders and aims to change the way we interact with plastic packaging. Aesthetics have been improved, whilst re-use has been encouraged and made more enjoyable.”

(2 more examples, 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…)

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August 1, 2011

Karen Abel’s PBR Flowers

Karen Abel’s “site-specific work made from discarded Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cartons found in a concrete street planter at Brock Avenue and Bloor Street West in Toronto.” (via: The MKTG Tumblr Site)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 5, 2011

Owens-Illinois: Glass is Life

O-I’s new “Glass is Life” campaign is the latest salvo in the battle between glass and plastic. Citing the benefits like “Glass is 100% recyclable, endlessly” (unlike plastic) and “Doesn’t leach anything into food or drink” (unlike plastic), this campaign makes the rivalry between glass and plastic explicit. (While plastic has been busy cleaning up its perceived public image by touting the positive environmental impact of light-weighting, biodegradable plastics, etc.)

Interestingly, Owen-Illionois hasn’t always been so dead-set against plastic…

Until July 2007, the company was also a worldwide manufacturer of plastics packaging with operations in North America, South America, Asia-Pacific and Europe. Plastics packaging products manufactured by O-I included containers, closures, and prescription containers. In July 2007 O-I completed the sale of its entire plastics packaging business to Rexam PLC, a UK listed packaging manufacturer.

Wikipedia’s entry on Owens-Illinois

We’ve commented in the past on the contrast between relatively benign beach glass and the eco-disastrous microscopic plastic particles in the ocean’s floating garbage patch. Our trips to Dead Horse Bay have also got me thinking more about glass versus plastic. Add to O-I’s list of benefits of glass over plastic: “better for archeology.”

One odd, apocalyptical side-note: we went just yesterday to Dead Horse Bay Beach and were astounded to see this man in speedos and water shoes padding across the bottles and broken glass to go for a swim in Dead Horse Bay.

(Another video from the “Glass is Life” campaign, after the fold…)

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July 1, 2011

Formula No. 9

On left: an unearthed jar of Charles Antell Fomula No. 9 (photo by Debby Davis); on right: a 1953 photo of Charles Antell’s founder, Charles D. Kasher from Life Magazine

Okay, I know that I said that two weeks of Dead Horse Bay archeology was enough, but we went back there last weekend and I happened to find this Charles Antell “Formula No. 9” jar. Never heard of the product before, but its vintage styling and hormonal claims piqued my interest.

Promoted as a baldness cure—(“Did you ever see a bald-headed sheep?”)—the lanolin-based Formula No. 9 was the premier product of Charles D. Kasher’s Baltimore-based hair care juggernaut: Charles Antell, Inc. (“Antell” was his Mother’s maiden name.)

Originally this milkglass jar’s cap was white, enameled metal. (See photo on right from Pro Commerce) After 50 years buried in a Brooklyn landfill, its rusty cap has now bonded with surrounding rocks and roots. Giving the jar, itself, an epic hairdo.

Pictured above, holding a jar of Formula No. 9 in his hand, Charles D. Kasher looks like an interesting character. The product does not appear to have prevented hair loss in his case.

A gifted huckster, Kasher was a master of the unusually long sales pitch. (The more you tell, the more you sell.) His 30 minute television commercials (with titles like “A Hair Raising Tale”) were among the earliest examples of what would eventually be called, the infomercial…

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have done everything but go into your home and put it on your hair every day for thirty days. Now, it’s up to you. If you’re tired of hair trouble, and you believe as I do that [Charles Antell Formula No. 9] has the answer, step to your telephone now. Call the number you are about to hear. And if you don’t believe, or aren’t convinced, call the number anyhow. Because if it works, and it will, it’s certainly worth the price … if it doesn’t, it has cost you nothing.”

via: NY Folklore

His Life Magazine photo accompanied an article entitled, “Money Makers of a New Era”— subtitled: “Despite taxes they take risks and make money from own businesses.” (Note to today’s neo-Reagan Republicans: Charles Antell, Inc. made loads of money and employed people despite taxes and certain onerous governmental regulations…)

Docket 6102, Charles Antell Co., Inc., and others. Order issued December 18, 1953 The order issued by the Commission in this case prohibited false and misleading advertising of Charles Antell Formula No. 9… This order affected the advertising program of Charles Antell amounting to approximately $8,000,000 annually. Among other things the order forbade claims that Formula No. 9 would prevent baldness or loss of hair…

Annual Report of the Federal Trade Commission
For the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1954

One year later, Billboard reported that Kasher had cashed out, leaving the hair care company that he founded and starting a new television advertising company called “Television Advertising Associates” or TAA. (Note how Billboard characterizes Kasher’s career as a “meteoric rise” from “hepest of hep med workers” to “top spot on the totem pole at Charles Antell”) Although he does not yet seem to have a Wikipedia page, Charles D. Kasher was a serial entrepreneur whose main career was yet to be revealed…

(More about Charles D. Kasher, after the fold…)

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June 22, 2011

Shoe Box : Tissue Box

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)

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

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June 21, 2011

Package as Vending Machine

Another surprisingly elaborate package for the lowly gumballl. A far cry from the simplicity of the Lucky Cat packets, but no more absurd than our own Gumball Cube Pack.

I bought my miniature gumball-dispensing package, on left, at Rite Aid Pharmacy. I found the counter display picture online.

(Some other gumball machine packages, after the fold…)

(more…)

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