Box Vox

packaging as content

May 14, 2012

Labeling a Klein Bottle


ACME brand Klein bottles (via)

Felix Klein’s non-orientable, one-sided surface was not originally imagined as a container, but was labeled as such because of a German pun:

The Klein bottle was first described in 1882 by the German mathematician Felix Klein. It may have been originally named the Kleinsche Fläche (“Klein surface”) and that this was incorrectly interpreted as Kleinsche Flasche (“Klein bottle”), which ultimately led to the adoption of this term in the German language as well.

–Wikipedia

At lease one source asserts that Klein’s surface was, for a time, called the Klein jar, but I could not confirm this.

When did they change its name from “Klein Jar” to “Klein Bottle”? Look in any projective geometry book published before, say, 1960 and you will see the above “bottle” referred to as a “Klein Jar.”

Whatever you call it, a Klein surface can serve as a container, albeit a fairly impractical one. If we accept that it’s a container, then what sort of label does it get?

If you draw the letter “R” on a clear label, then slide that label around the outside of a sphere, when you return it to the same place, the letter looks exactly the same. So a sphere is orientable. On a Klein Bottle, you can slide that label around so that the letter reads backwards. To do this, you’ll have to slide the label all the way inside the Klein Bottle (you’ll need a long pipecleaner). When it’s on the other side of the glass from where it started, the label will read as the mirror image. That’s nonorientable.

ACME Kline Bottle FAQ

This idea of the label sliding on its one-sided surface all the way into the inside of the Klein bottle and then being backwards, is a recurring theme.


Labeled Klein bottle (via Matematita); Poster by IDeAS

The image on the left demonstrates the backwards inner label. The Klein bottle on the right is decorated with an abstract symmetrical design which would look the same whether it was on the inside or the outside. (A good idea for Klein bottle branding: ambigrams.)

While ACME does not, for the most part, label their bottles, they do sell a flask with their logo…

… and that logo employs backwards & forwards type on a Mobius strip to highlight the product’s non-orientability.

(The “Klein stein” and filling a Method/Klein bottle, after the fold…) (more…)

May 3, 2012

We’re All Disposable Here


Vintage 1960′s Paul Winchell disposable razor display ($295 on eBay)

I know I did the dummy thing to death last March, but this is about another of Paul Winchell’s inventions: a disposable razor. Wikipedia lists it among his patented inventions, but other sources say different:

Paul Winchell actually invented the disposable razor, but he neglected to get a patent on it when friends told him, “Who would buy a razor just to throw it away?”

John Michaud

I’ve looked and could find no sign of a Winchell razor patent so I’m inclined to believe Michaud’s version. Still, Winchell apparently thought enough of the idea to team up with Ozzie Curtis who manufactured these disposable razors in the 1960s. (Note: the groovy typography with the safety-razor shaped “T”)


Vintage Ozzie Curtis disposable razor 2 Pack ($9.99 on eBay)

Of course, disposable razors didn’t really catch on until the disposable BIC Shaver came out in 1975.  “Devoted to disposability,” BIC’s founder Marcel Bich applied the same cost-cutting, reductivist product design principles that brought his company success with ballpoint pens and disposable cigarette lighters. (BIC Shaver bag on right from Gregg Koenig’s Flickr Photostream)

By then the competition was between BIC and Gillette. The Los Angeles based “Curtis Safety Razor Company” was no longer in the running. There’s not a lot of information online about this company, but Ozzie Curtis appears to have, for a while, been a regular on the Joe Pyne show, frequently appearing in the “beef box” as Ozzie Whiffletree:

One delightful impromptu moment came when a guest hit Ozzie Whiffletree, then Pyne’s side-kick, on the nose. On camera. The fist in the face was in response to a typical Whiffletree blast: “You’re a liar, that’s what you are, and a coward, too.” The ungrammatical ranting of Whiffletree— “Put your false teeth in backwards and bite your throat” — “Thank you very large” — “I’m aggravated all a time — I wear cheap shoes and tight shorts” made Joe Pyne look almost angelic.

Whiffletree, actually Ozzie Curtis, a wealthy Los Angeles businessman, no longer is on the show.

TV Guide, 1965

Whereas Winchell and his anthropomorphic dummies, half heartedly tried to profit from the disposable trend, BIC was “all in” right from the start. Even in their public service announcement, in which anthropomorphic disposable razors discouraged littering, they did so by touting “We’re all disposable here.”

Meaning: both package and product were now disposable. But if we’re all supposed to identify with these anthropomorphic disposable razors, how are we supposed to feel about that?

(A BIC Shaver commercial and another Ozzie Curtis display, after the fold…) (more…)

April 27, 2012

Remarkable New Food Packaging Invention

Led to this topic by Dan Goodsell’s rusty can of Oscar Mayer Wieners (on left) it turned out to be a different story than the one I thought I might tell.

At first I was thinking that it would be about orthographic graphic design in canned food labels.

Or maybe I’d compare its label design to the once popular: “Crown Roast of Frankfurters,” and give it an alliterative, Spiro Agnew style title like “Fifties Phalanx of Phallic Franks.” (As Jon Stewart has pointed out about the former Vice President’s name, “Spiro Agnew” is also an anagram for “grow a penis.”)

That was more or less the plan until I read about the later development, pictured on the right…

Sack-in-Can Package

A new food package, developed by GO Mayer, vice-president of Oscar Mayer & Co., of Madison, Wis., permits two foods of separate and distinct flavors to be packed in the same can without interchange of flavors. This has been utilized in canned wieners by putting a barbecue sauce-filled Pliofilm sack into a can of wieners. Blending of two separate food flavors during the canning process is prevented. Other ready-to-eat food combinations will soon be put up this way. The Pliofilm sack is heat sealed, after which it is air- and watertight and break-proof under normal handling conditions. Housewives can open the sack with scissors or a knife. Sauce and wieners can be heated together, or they can be heated separately and the sauce poured over the wieners.

Food Engineering (Volume 19) 1947

I knew that Pliofilm had been used in margarine color-packs, but this was news to me.

As wonderful an artifact as it is, Goodsell’s can must have seemed like a plain spinster aunt in comparison to this new and potent marketing mix of canned wieners with a patented sauce packet. Still mentioned in Oscar Mayer magazine ads, the plain brine version was relegated to a footnoted “also ran” status.

The glamorous young “Composite Food Package” was patented by none other than Oscar’s own brother, Gottfried O. Mayer…

Side bar: I’m very happy to see that the patent drawings above include additional orthographic views.

(Advertising, promotion, and modern art, after the fold…) (more…)

April 12, 2012

10 Tin Can Engines

Ten YouTube videos of “tin can” engines. These are homemade Stirling engines made by different people from recycled cans and other readily available hardware & household materials. (via: Boyd’s Tin Can Stirlings)

This is a fairly haphazard selection. I like the various engine noise soundtracks and the glimpse that they offer into the lives of tin can engine enthusiasts.

(5 more, after the fold…) (more…)

March 27, 2012

The First Really Modern Shampoo

I like the way this 1955 Life Magazine ad for “Mennen shampoo for men” (on left) touts the modernity of its bottle design.

Finally! A modern shampoo for modern man. In a slip-proof, unbreakable bottle.

The patent drawing on the right is a “combination shampoo bottle and massager.” Clearly, these two bottles were related, but I wasn’t sure how. The patent, by Charles M. Zampetti, was obtained three years after the ad, in 1958. So the design patent didn’t appear to cover the Mennen Shampoo bottle’s design. And the patent was not assigned to Mennen…

(Patent-puzzle solved, after the fold…) (more…)

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 17, 2012

Collapsible Spiral Bottles

Following the spiral thread a bit longer, there’s been quite a bit of inventive energy spent on making bottles collapse in a spiral pattern.

Similar to the accordion bottles we looked at last year, except that each of these bottles uses a helix-shaped bellows, rather than a bellows built from congruent circles.

These packages are also designed to take up less space after use. Similar to Jiwoon Park and Kwenyoung Choi’s twistable “Nnew Can” concept (see: Helix Redux) there is something intuitive and interactive about crushing a pack by twisting.

The patent drawings above are from 1993, 2010 & 2011.

Alessio Venturi’s “Spiral Bottle” concept, on right, won an honorable mention in the 2004 Macef Design Awards:

DREAM OF ECOLOGICAL BOTTLE

The characteristic SPIRAL shape, besides assuring as easy identification of the product, involves an easy management of the empty which will be reduced in size by pressing it and will not occupy much room in the dustbin.

(via: DesignBoom)

(Norwood, Dickie, and Jung’s patented bottles, after the fold…) (more…)

February 13, 2012

Vertical-Horizontal Jar

An unusual example of vertical/horizontal ambidexterity in packaging: Glen Robert Carpenter’s 1937 “Design for a Jar.”

Like Donald Deskey’s 1954 Drene carton (or the 2008 Lego Fruit Snacks box), this jar can be displayed in two positions. I don’t know what product this jar was meant to contain… maybe a counter dispenser jar for candy?

(Carpenter’s package  design patent, after the fold…)

(more…)

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…)

(more…)

February 7, 2012

Donald Deskey’s Toothpaste Tubes

Among the many brands that Donald Deskey designed packaging for, was Crest Toothpaste.

Mr. Deskey’s packaging designs are some of the most memorable and ubiquitous. A 20-year association with the Procter & Gamble Company included the design of dozens of household products, including the packaging for Crest toothpaste, which has not changed since its introduction in the 1950’s.

Donald Deskey, Innovative Designer, Dies at 94
by Suzanne Slesin, NY Times, April 30, 1989

Not that Deskey’s package design for Crest remained completely unchanged. In the 1960s Deskey’s red triangle became a left-pointing arrow for a time. (see photo below) By the 1970s the logo was changed to an italic, forward-leaning version, although the letters did retain their basic colors. More recently the dark blue and light blue letters were made the same color, although the red “C” was retained, the triangle is gone although there is still an arrow, but it points in the other direction.

Less well-known, however, were his patents —both design patents and utility patents— for collapsible toothpaste tubes…

Most of these were from the early 1940s and assigned to Bristol Myers. (Were these ever produced?) One of the patents, awarded in 1956 was assigned to Procter & Gamble, which seems related to Crest Toothpaste which was launched in 1955.

(More pictures & patents, 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…)

February 2, 2012

The Burgopak Slider Pack

Another patented interactive pharmaceutical pack: the Burgopak slider pack…

The invention after which the company is named was made by Yorkshireman, Burgo Wharton, whose fascination with pop-up books gave him the idea for packaging boxes with sliding drawers. You pull out one side and the other side goes out too — people think it’s magic! Burgo patented the idea and the company was formed with Mr Wharton as creative director.

Diary of a packaging innovation, The Daily Telegraph, May 26, 2009

Burgopaks have also been used to package CDs, SIM cards and electronics, but seem to have really caught on as pharmaceutical packaging. The counter-intuitive surprise of pulling in one direction and having something pop out in another direction is the key to this pack’s appeal.

Using a Burgopak to deliver their erectile dysfunction medication, Bayer’s brand manager for Levitra, comes close, but does not quite acknowledge the implied metaphor: “We chose the Burgopak design for our new Levitra formulation because it’s pocket-friendly, discreet and gives the product a playful edge over its competitors.”

Another name for the same brand is “Staxyn” which also comes in a black and orange BurgoPak, just like Levitra pack above. (I’m not sure why Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline created two matching brands for this one drug.) There’s a nice interactive demonstration of the package on the Staxyn website.

Come to think of it, both of their packs remind me of those black “5 Gum” packages.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

February 1, 2012

The GlaxoSmithKline “Diskus®”

Years ago, when I first started seeing these packages in advertisments for various GlaxoSmithKline inhalant powders, the design looked to me like something produced by some alien technology. (See below the Diskus® as compared to an alien “cutting disk” from the movie, “Predator.”)

Later I happened to see some patents for the device —(Diskus® in the US; Accuhaler® in the UK)— and I realized how ambitious a package it was.

The inhalers that I was previously familiar with had all used aerosol propellants, which the Diskus does not use. This inhaler also has a counter which counts down to “0” the remaining metered doses and unfolds open and closed on a rotational axis. The alien asymmetry of its profile is largely due to the fact that it’s mechanism was designed to be actuated by the thumb of one’s right hand.

I recently got a chance to interact with the alien technology of the Diskus, having been prescribed Advair for a temporary bronchial inflammation.

One thing that could have made more obvious for me, was that you don’t feel like you’re inhaling anything. I wound up impetuously double dosing until I noticed a slight crunchy residue of powder in my mouth. Reading more carefully, I noticed this fact was mentioned later in the instructions.

Last year, Advair was the 4th best-selling prescription drug at $4.7 Billion. (via: Consumer Reports)

Designed by Gregor Anderson, head of GlaxoSmithKline’s “Technical Packaging Centre of Excellence,” the Diskus won a “Gold Award” in the 2003 DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation.

(More about Diskus manufacture and its clockwork interior, after the fold…)

 

(more…)

January 20, 2012

Astronaut Water Revisited

Gemini9A detail from cbelt123’s photo, “Astronaut water from my dad’s basement”

Back in 2009, I wrote a post about Canada Dry’s mysterious Astronaut Water that, in the 1960s, came in a space capsule shaped plastic bottle. Clearly, the product was connected to the Gemini space program, but I couldn’t understand how plain, bottled water could have been promoted in those days as a kids’ beverage—even if it was the same stuff the astronauts drank in outer space.

Recently I was contacted by John MacLean, now head of Target Flavors, who, in the 1960s had worked at Canada Dry Laboratories and was uniquely qualified to clear things up for me.

Gemini8Water

McDonnellMaclean, shown in a 1965 press clipping above (holding, what I believe is, a Gemini “8” Astronaut Water bottle like the one on the left) explained to me that, despite its commerical packaging, Astronaut Water was never meant to be retail product. A small number of these bottles were distributed to the press as part of a promotional campaign to publicize Canada Dry’s important contribution to the space program.

John S. MacLean of Danbury, Conn., analytical chemist who drew up specifications for the water, holds a sample bottle of the triple distilled liquid. Not for sale to the public, Astronaut Water undergoes a thorough inspection at Greenwich Canada Dry Laboratories before it is used in space flights for drinking, reconstituting dehydrated foods and purging space capsule systems.

An unidentified Connecticut Newspaper, 1965

In contrast to today’s packaged water, which is generally promoted for its natural purity, Astronaut Water was publicized as a space-age engineering feat. Triple distilled in a platinum block… So pure that it doesn’t conduct electricity… (More of the water’s technical specs appeared in the 1966 “Press Reference Book” for Gemini Spacecraft Number Eleven, prepared by the External Relations Division, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, on right)

The Gemini “8” bottle was an ordinary glass beverage-bottle, but for the Gemini “9” version, they really pulled out the stops, opting for the plastic, space capsule shaped bottle. Although MacLean could not confirm this, it seems likely that the matching space-capsule-shaped-bottle-shaped savings bank (below) was part of the same publicity campaign.

AstronautWaterBottleBank

Once it had been made clear to me that it was journalists (and not children) who were the intended demographic for bottled Astronaut Water, I wondered if there were any articles to be found online about it…

(Astronaut Water meets the Press, after the fold…)

(more…)

January 10, 2012

TV Remote Bottle Openers

TVRemoteBottleOpeners

These four examples explored below…

1. The Clicker: a universal remote control with an integrated bottle opener feature, invented by David Dignam. ($24.99 with free shipping)

Clicker

As with any good idea, the Clicker was inspired by hanging out with friends and drinking a few beers… in Wisconsin. David Dignam, the inventor of the Clicker, was traveling back home to New York from a long Thanksgiving weekend hanging with the guys in a small town in western Wisconsin (hometown to one of the guys). The idea hit him, “why not combine a universal remote control and bottle opener, and have one less thing to have to look for in your own home”. Thus, the Clicker was born, the ideal union of two of the most important items in the home: the remote control and bottle opener (for some people)

2. Magnetic Remote Control Shaped Bottle Opener: a sort of “fridge magnet” bottle opener that happens to be shaped like a TV remote. Does not appear to actually change channels. Buttons include “OK” and “Hello.” ($1.49)

MagneticRemoteOpener

“This bottle opener is designed with like real remote control appearance and it is quite absorbing. You may think it is a remote control when they take a glance. But it is a bottle opener in fact.”

3. The “2006 World Cup Party Edition” of the Philips Universal Remote Control. (Not sure if this is still available, but at one time it cost $12.50)

Philips

“With this special edition remote control you’ll be more than ready for the 2006 World Cup. It even comes with a bottle opener, scorecard and extra battery, so you won’t miss a moment of the action.”

4. The Pop Pops Remote Control Bottle Opener by Russ: a faux remote control, but a real bottle opener, packaged in a bottle-shaped blister pack. ($6.99)

PopPops

“This cleverly designed remote control themed bottle opener is what you need to get the drinks and the conversation flowing! Hand painted, along with very detailed accents and a metal opener add style and functionality to this classic item.”

(See also: bottle-shaped bottle openers)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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