Box Vox

packaging as content

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…)

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March 9, 2012

Beer Can Track Lights

We did a round up of tin can lighting fixtures in September of 2010. These beer can track lights by ZAL Creations are similar.

They seem to have struck a chord with websites catering to the young, hetero, pad-proud, beer-consuming demographic. (See: “Ultimate Man-Cave Lighting System,” Menterests, Gizmodo & DormSlate, et al.)

I like the variety of oddball beer cans, chosen for this photo, but it looks as if you can also arrange to have your illumination emanate from matching containers, if that is your preference. $87 each. (ZAL also created one of the three Pipe Bottle Lamps we featured last week.)

(For more about Heineken “Keg Can” see: PackWorld; for more about the Budweiser “Cabottle” see: BeerCanGuide;  for more about the Sapporo Beer Can: see our 2008 post.)

–Randy Ludacer

March 5, 2012

Lenticular Flick

I’ve written a couple times about packages with lenticular labels. A potentially great solution to a common package design problem: “How to demonstrate a difficult-to-explain product transformation without resorting to a sequential series of images?”

And the thing is, without a video of the lenticular package in motion, a sequential series of images is exactly what I usually wind up showing you. (See: the lenticular  Changing Lanes wine labels.)

That’s why I insisted on leaving our new (Progressive) salad spinner gift in its box until I had a chance to film it.

–Randy Ludacer

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 28, 2012

Magic Packaging 2

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

Ours.

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

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

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

(See also: Choi’s Package)

-Randy Ludacer

February 9, 2012

2 More Design Patent Bottles by Donald Deskey

In addition to Tuesday’s patents for toothpaste tubes and other patented package designs by Donald Deskey, I recently found design patents for the bottles above.

Similar to the detective work that the bottles from Dead Horse Bay presented, finding a patent for a package design and then finding a photo of the actual retail package can be a difficult job. But somebody’s got to do it.

The 1951 patent drawing on the right was easy. It’s Joy Dishwashing Detergent. The patent drawing on the left from 1948 was much harder. I’ll tell you about that one tomorrow.

(More Joy, after the fold…)

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December 12, 2011

Laundry Label Bottles

LaundryLabelBottles2

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

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

(See also: Trompe l’Oeil Price Tags)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

November 16, 2011

2 More Trapezoidal Boxes

2TrapezoidalBoxes

Did a round-up of trapezoidal boxes a while back. Here are two more that I thought looked good together. They’re not new.

The one on the left is Milner Gray’s modern/classic package design for a 1950s Pyrex gift set (No.3a). I like how the handle (and the dark color) make this carton look like a hefty, 1-ton weight.  (via: BurningSettlersCabin)

The one on the right is a flat, trapezoid-shaped box for the ARC6 flashlight. (Now discontinued.)

Pairing them up together, I thought the ARC’s embossed “burst” logo sort of related to the Pyrex crown logo. And it also looks, in this photo, as if the ARC6 box had a silver-grey neutral color, matching the black & white Pyrex packaging photo. That, I think, is a misperception based on a skillfully lighted “hero shot.” The ARC6 flashlight box seems to have actually been white. (via: CPF Reviews)

(Another photo, after the fold…)

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November 15, 2011

Pensioners and Packaged Foods: Best Before …

BestBefore-1

“My wife’s 90-year-old grandmother — having lived through World War II — doesn’t believe in “best before” dates. It made eating at her house rather exciting. Sadly, she had to move to a home and clearing out her larder was as thrilling as being offered a snack. All the products here — going back decades — were, I believe, intended to be eaten.

James Kendall, “Best Before”

James Kendall’s photos of vintage (but still viable?) packaged foods, I can relate to on a personal level…

My late grandmother had a similar disinclination to discard foodstuffs. An elderly box of Nesselroad Pudding in her cupboard was an ongoing joke with my brothers and me.

Of course, in these days of reality television, all types of hoarding are undergoing a closer social scrutiny. Looking at my grandmother’s situation in retrospect, I now regret the smug superiority that we felt towards her housekeeping and her kitchen.

That certainty of ours — that my grandmother was crazy to think that anyone in their right mind would consider eating her box of Nesselroad pudding — was just a part of our being young and newly competent.

“Best before…” certainly does not constitute a drop dead expiration date. It’s more like a serving suggestion, really.

Best before or best by dates appear on a wide range of frozen, dried, tinned and other foods. These dates are only advisory and refer to the quality of the product, in contrast with use by dates, which indicate that the product is no longer safe to consume after the specified date. In spite of this, about a third of food bought is thrown away while still edible.

Wikipedia’s entry on Shelf Life

It’s easy to see why older people might want to push the envelope in this regard. It might even be an inescapable geriatric rule — that as we get older, the food from our kitchen will become increasingly less appetizing to our children. Whether this will be due to failing eyesight, financial hardship or simply our own declining standards of “freshness” is hard to say. Maybe all of the above.

BestBefore-2

Even if our children become freegans, their food will certainly be fresher than the food in these photos. But so what? Assuming the meal worms and pantry moths have not beaten you to that box of pudding mix: just dust off the top and you’re good to go.

If we can set aside our personal judgments about the “freshness” of packaged products, the importance of packaging in the lives of pensioners becomes more obvious…

(Why packaged food is preferable to home-cooked, after the fold…)

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October 20, 2011

6 Chairs Made from Packages

PackageChairs

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

September 29, 2011

Modular Wine Bottle Desk Lamp

ReWine

“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

Wine-bottle-lamp
Modular

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

 

September 19, 2011

Polyhedral Light Bulb Packaging
(Structural Package Design Patent from 1970)

PolyhedralLightBulbPack1

Bryon L. Lessar’s octahedral “Package for Light Bulbs” was patented in 1972.

PolyhedralLightBulbPack2

(First page of Lessar’s patent appears, after the fold…)

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September 1, 2011

2 Lemon Spray Cans

LemonSprays

Two lemon-scented air freshener spray cans:

StrawberrySpray 1. Conceptual package design for “True” air fresheners (by Berik Yergaliyev at Good!) relies on a soft rubber spray can cap enabling the user to spray the product as if by squeezing the fruit. (See: Packaging & Plastic Fruit)

Lemon is just one of three proposed scents. (Somehow the ice cream cone seems like the outlier in this envisioned product line… See: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others.)

TrueSprays

2. Kuumba’s “Clot” brand lemon tea air freshener spray comes in a spray-paint-style can whose graphics reference Krylon spray paint’s overlapping colored circles/balls. (Although real lemons mainly come in yellow.) Here, the colored circle/balls are given fruit skin texture highlights and lemon leaves.

The “Clot” brand, I suppose, alludes to clogging of spray paint nozzles, but it also reminds me of “lemon curd” for some reason.

(via: Ape to Man)

ClotLemon

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 30, 2011

Real & Imaginary PANTONE Package Design

PantonePacks

Hangers_1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1,114 examples, after the fold…)

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August 3, 2011

The Incomplete Package Revisted

Part-Whole

This is a follow-up to an earlier article about packaging designed with photos, graphics or typography wrapping around the corners. Here’s another batch of cartons with that kind of wrap-around imagery.

Look at one of these boxes from one side and you see only part of the picture. Viewed from a corner angle, the picture is complete and cubistically 3-dimensional.

Boxes designed using this technique also open up interesting display possibilities, since they can be stacked in ways that will complete the incomplete side pictures.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

June 24, 2011

Martha Stewart & Lifebuoy Soap

MarthaLifebuoy

Ever since we found a video of the Martha Stewart Tareyton Cigarettes commercial, we’ve been on the lookout for her 1956 Lifebuoy Soap commercial. Yesterday, it suddenly appeared on the Advertising Age web site. Unfortunately for us, that video was not the embeddable type, so last night I made this crude silent-movie version below…

Then this morning I found this embeddable version (via Professor Barnhardt’s Journal). It has a slightly reduced aspect ratio, but at least it’s a “talkie”…

 

Stewart mentioned her role in this commerical on Larry King Live in 2003…

STEWART: I remember making some commercials. I did a Lifebuoy soap commercial.

KING: You did?

STEWART: Well, when I was like 15.

KING: Lifebuoy, Lifebuoy.

STEWART: I played a young married. Can you imagine? As I say, I was 15-years-old.

CNN transcript of “Interview with Martha Stewart, Martha Kostyra”
Larry King Live, December 22, 2003

After seeing it again at an event last week Stewart commented, “I loved seeing that commercial because who smelled? — Did he smell or did I smell? It was done on Shelter Island. … I took off two days from school, I had a chaperone.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

June 22, 2011

Shoe Box : Tissue Box

ShoeBoxTissueBox

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

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

(Via: Packaging of the World)

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

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