packaging as content

November 28, 2011

Nabisco 12 Pack Cartons

These Nabisco boxes caught my eye at the supermarket for a few reasons…

a. They seem to be trompe l’oeil renditions of wrapped tray packaging—as if we were seeing the inner packs through a layer of Cellophane.

b. As such, they also suggest orthographic packaging, where the contents of a box are projected onto the side panels. I don’t really know how these packets are arranged within, but it appears they are not accurately projected on all sides.

c. Since the package design relies on illustrations of the inner packs to communicate its contents, there is an odd repetition of information when the carton contains only one type of packet. This repetition strikes me as almost Warholian. One box looks like a stack of three. Each box, a microcosm of a stacked supermarket display. The effect is more conventional (less repetitive) when the box contains a variety.

(A few more examples, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 25, 2011

Nike & Newport (Swoosh and Spinnaker)

The similarity of Nike’s and Newport’s logo has been well noted. Not a problem between the two companies when shoes and cigarettes are clearly separate industries. But when they get mashed up together, as with Ari Foreman’s 2008 “Ari Menthol” shoes, and are packaged in an oversized flip-top cigarette shoe box…

The Newport symbol, first used in 1969, is called their “spinnaker” logo. Think: sailboats, wind, respiration. (See also: square-rigged sail logo of Banks Beer)

The Nike symbol (their “swoosh” logo) was designed in 1971 by Carolyn Davidson. Think: curvy checkmark, fluid motion, sports.

Another example of a Nike/Newport mash up are a 2009 series of “Nike Newports” by Danny J. Gibson:

I was wondering: has anyone ever mashed it up the other way round—as Nike Cigarettes?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…)

(more…)

November 16, 2011

2 More Trapezoidal Boxes

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…)

(more…)

October 28, 2011

Homophonic Consumer Confusion: Oxol Doll ≠ Oxydol

On left: a bottle of “Oxol” cleaner from a 1929 ad appearing in The Kingston Daily Freeman; on right: an Oxydol box for sale on eBay for $17.90

In the previous post we compared Oxydol’s early package design to Opal’s stunningly similar packaging. Same basic design, but different product categories — so no trademark infringement there.

Oxydol and Oxol, on the other hand, were both cleaning products. Their package design was not confusingly similar, but the manufacturers of these two products were nonetheless pitted against each other in the landmark trademark infringement case of PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. v. J. L. PRESCOTT CO.

In testimony about an ongoing Oxol radio promotion, Procter & Gamble set out to prove that Oxol had deliberately chosen a “doll” as a free product premium, in order for its “Oxol doll” to be mistaken for “Oxydol” and “sought to profit by the confusion that would result.”

“When you buy a bottle of Oxol, take the label off and send it to the Oxol trio in care of this Station, or address your letter to the J. L. Prescott Company, Passaic, New Jersey. … In return, they will send you the gaily colored "Oxol" rag doll that children love. … And don’t forget to send in an Oxol label for one of those little Oxol Rag Dolls.” The substance of this broadcast was repeated many times. Upon several occasions radio announcers referred directly to the “Oxol doll”. Instructions for completing the “Oxol doll” were sent to all who requested the doll from the Prescott Company.

It is obvious that when the tongue pronounces the words “Oxol doll”, or when the mind operates to put these two words together, a connection in thought between Procter & Gamble’s product and Prescott’s product is inescapable. Such a connection must have occurred to the Prescott Company. Why then was such advertising made use of? The answer is obvious. Ground for mistake in the public mind as to Oxydol and Oxol was well laid and the resulting confusion may not be described as a coincidence.

Confusion as to which company was offering the doll in return for the label immediately came to pass and this was admitted by one of Prescott’s officers. Many housewives sent Oxydol labels to Procter & Gamble and demanded the Oxol doll. An examination of the letters in evidence seems to indicate that the persons writing them were ordinary members of the purchasing public. One housewife wrote, “Am sending the clip off of the Oxydol box. Would you please send us one of your rag dolls…”. Another wrote, “Enclosed is a clipping from Oxydol. Kindly send me a rag doll, as promised over Radio.”

PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. v. J. L. PRESCOTT CO., 1931
via: Leagle.com

Assuming that the correct product label was sent, what the Oxol customer ultimately received via return mail was this:

Above: the “Oxol Doll” and the envelope that it came in (via: eBay)

Looks more like a paper doll than the “rag doll” they advertised, but “truth in advertising” is perhaps not so stringent when it comes to free promotional items.

(See also: Packaging and Consumer Confusion)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 27, 2011

Oxydol and Opal

On left is the early (earliest?) package design for Oxydol soap powder, introduced in 1914 by the William Waltke Soap Company. On right is the candy packaging for Opal Pastilles, designed in 1946 by Atli Már Árnason, one of the founders FÍT, the Icelandic Design Center. (via: CoolHunting)

Left: a collection of vintage Oxydol boxes (photo from iCollector.com); on right: varieties of Opal with color as differentiator

A later version of Oxydol was designed by Donald Deskey in 1959 (who also designed the Tide box in 1947) but the design of the early Oxydol box (with the concentric circles) appears to be unknown. Which is to say, that I can find no mention online, so the designer is unknown to me, at least.)

The Opal package with the multi-colored concentric bands contains a fruit-flavored assortment.

(Television commercial for both products and one more thing, after the fold…)

(more…)

October 21, 2011

Luxury Brand Package Design for Kids’ Cereals

Tricia Clarke-Stone’s Cereal Couture:

“I wanted to take something we all crave and give it a luxury lift. This tasty, chic collection gives a high-end, glam aesthetic to our favorite breakfast treats.”

Sip, Chat, Chow | The Glam Foodie

via: MKTG

(For a different take on “top shelf” kids’s cereals, see: Stealing Box Tops)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

September 6, 2011

Banks Beer Cigarette Pack Radio

One of these Things is Not Like the Others

This collection of cigarette pack radios includes a changling. Although the all of the radios above appears to be flip-top crush-proof cigarette boxes, “Banks” is actually a beer brand. (via: AntiqueRadios.com forums)

(Banks Beer bottles, etc., after the fold..)

(more…)

August 30, 2011

Real & Imaginary PANTONE Package Design

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(1,114 examples, after the fold…)

(more…)

August 26, 2011

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

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

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

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

(More, after the fold…)

(more…)

August 15, 2011

Diet Coke & Package Design Blogs

We received a mysterious Fed-Ex package on Wednesday (from Minneapolis-based Fast Horse) containing a 12-pack carton of “limited edition” Diet Coke, designed by Turner Duckworth. There was also a matching Diet Coke tote bag and a card that read in part:

“We’re excited to share with you our brand new look for fall before it hits the shelves. As a trendsetter in the fashion and design world, you are getting the first glimpse. Knowing you have great taste, we‘d love to hear what you think of our new look.”

We don’t usually get much in the way of swag, so I’m duly flattered for box vox to be among the package design blogs, selected to receive this. It would be nice to believe that (in some small, unprofitable way) box vox might be considered “a trendsetter” but it also provides us an interesting glipse into one small marketing initiative of the Coca-Cola Company.

I imagine similar packages have also been received by The Dieline, Lovely Package, etc. Richard Shear has already beaten everyone to the punch and blogged about it last Wedneday on The Package Unseen. But OK, I’ll bite…

Half Empty or Half Full Disclosure: As a diabetic package designer, the only kind of soda I ever drink is diet soda and most of the diet soda that I’ve consumed so far has been Diet Coke. Already the 12-pack of soda is nearly all consumed—(not that I didn’t have some help). Is this a conflict of interest or does it give me insight? Does a far-fetched, aspirational desire for Coke, as a client, color my analysis of their new package design? Does the free soda pop taint my judgement or does it deepen my review to have tried their product in its new packaging? 12 Times.

Before, we opened the carton, having only seen pictures of the can from one angle, I had imagined that the can might be another “Incomplete Package” —a fragmentary package design with the potential to create a larger “whole” display, as with the red aluminum bottles with the large Coca-Cola script wrapping around the sides—(also by Turner Duckworth.)

As it turns out, the largest legible display you can create is still just a small part of their logo spanning two cans. Certainly this logo is familiar to consumers, and it’s a testament to Diet Coke’s dominance of the market that they can experiment with such an extremely abbreviated version of their logo. Unlike some new fledgling brand, they can be confident that consumers will immediately recognize even a tiny portion of their logo. Not that the logo, in its entirety does not appear elsewhere on the can. Smaller versions do appear. (Four times.)

The 12-pack carton, on the other hand, with its diagonal can spanning the edges, fits squarely into our Incomplete Package category. Taken individually, each carton shows only a small fragment of the new can, but if three cartons are stacked a certain way, it’s possible to build a picture of the entire can.

Not that they necessarily intended for supermarkets to stack them up like this. I’m guessing that sideways aluminum cans are not as structural strong as upright (or even upside down) cans. A super-ambitious wall of cartons stacked in this way might be a bad idea. See: 8-Bit Soda Display (Although a smaller 3-high counter display might be safe and effective.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 4, 2011

Jonna Pedersen:
Product Stories & the Inner Lives of Packaging

As branding experts tell it, “narrative marketing” is the best way to sell something. “Tell the product’s story,” they say, “and consumers will listen.” But whatever story the brand chooses to tell, there are other, more personal stories that consumers will also hear.

Danish painter, Jonna Pedersen, explaining her recent focus on packaging, says, “To me, the outside says something about the inside. It’s all about reading the barcode.”

A product logo can unleash half-forgotten memories and sensations. We have all had this experience. Expressing the zeitgeist, consumer products can become cultural icons. Product graphics and packaging obviously matter. Visual impact and narrativity characterize those products that are deemed “classic.”

…A consumer product’s iconography is always ambiguous… A product’s packaging inherently carries a visual or textual content signaling what’s inside. There is no controlling the meanings and values that the consumer subsequently attributes to the product. That is entirely dependent on an individual’s baggage and frames of reference. In principle, the product is open to uncontrollable added meanings.

… Jonna Pedersen’s stories about consumer goods are more than representations of actual objects. They are images of our time. Familiar objects from our cultural heritage are interpreted and painted: graphic imprints and sensual experiences with numerous cultural, social and geographical references. Images of uniquely Danish products alongside images of exotic products, Greek olives or American ketchup, tell a story about an upheaval in Danish (food) culture.

Excerpts from Bente Jensen’s essay, “Product Stories”
from the book Documentary, Jonna Pedersen: Painting

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

August 2, 2011

Pep Brands Packaging

“Pep” is a word not heard much lately. Once it was the root word for any number of soda brands (Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Pep Up, etc.). “Pep” has mostly fallen out of fashion. People today would more likely want energy (or buzz) rather than to be full of pep.

“Pep” sounds as corny and dated today as it did in 1973 when Felix Unger wrote his Happy & Peppy song. And yet it also has its dark side, as in “pep pills”—(1950’s Methamphetamine).

The blue box above gives “Pep” a more contemporary spin, indicating that it stands for “provides energy and performance.” The package does refrain from calling its product Pep pills—these are Pep tablets, caffeine tablets to be precise.

Among the other Pep brands featured here, we have Kellogg’s Pep—tying into the early cereal-as-health-food origins of Kellogg’s and other companies. Pep as in vim and vigor. Sodas, as we mentioned above, have long been peppy. The vintage bottle with the orange Pep logo is from Mexico. The beverage above that is contemporary: Pep Sea Buckthorn and Berry Juice Drink.

The Pep brand at the bottom is vintage fruit crate in which the logo is shown emerging from an illustrative burst as if it was so full of pep it could not be contained by its red background any longer.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

July 15, 2011

Atom Bomb Bottles: 2 Kinds

On left: vintage “Atom Bomb” perfume by Jergens (via: iOffer “wanted” ad); on right melted bottles on exhibit at the Hiroshima Peace Museum (photo from: alq666’s Flickr Photostream)

Yesterday’s post about bomb-shaped bottles leads us inexorably to “atom bomb bottles.”

1. “Atom Bomb” perfume, trademarked by Jergens in 1948, came in a rocket-shaped bottle. (Its bottle cap looks a bit like a Devo hat)

2. Bottles that have been melted by atom bombs, on permanent display at the Hiroshima Peace Museum.

On left: melted bottle on exhibit at the Hiroshima Peace Museum (photo from: Fidel Ramos’s Flickr Photostream); on right: “Atom Bomb” perfume bottle (for sale on eBay for $24.99)

(Jergens “Atom Bomb” trademark and more melted bottles, after the fold…)

(more…)

July 7, 2011

Donald Deskey’s Odorono Jar

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

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

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

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

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

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

(more…)

June 27, 2011

Wacky Packages Display Box

7x8x1.25" deep empty box originally contained 48 packs. Topps 1974. Lid art includes grocery bag containing “Wormy Packages, Quacker Oats, Mrs. Klean.” Edge wear with one corner split. Still glossy and Fine. ($75)

via Hakes

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

May 24, 2011

Cat Head Packaging

Yesterday, Paul Heidenreich from Australian firm, The Grain Creative Consultants, emailed me their design refresh for Whiskas cat food, on right. Whiskas is a brand that I wasn’t familiar with, but the iconic cat-head shape of their logo reminded me of another cat food carton that I’ve been saving a picture of: Elmwood’s “Purely” cat food box for Pets at Home, with the cat-head shaped die cut window.

Which led me to notice other cat head shaped cat food packs…

These Whiskas pet treat containers were (I think) designed by Nick Brown.

Meow Mix and Purina Friskies, each employ cat head shapes in their cat treat containers. (Note the cat-head “M” in the pictorial Meow Mix logo. Anyone know who designed this feline logotype?)

Eric Hart’s canned cat food project, “Snookums” also features cat heads, although in his case they are sans-ears.

(A couple more things, after the fold…)

(more…)

February 17, 2011

Beverage Brand & Body Image

The recent negative publicity surrounding the Fashion Week introduction of Diet Pepsi’s new “skinny” can design just goes to show how closely we identify with our product packaging. (See: Package as Metaphor—Body)

While it’s generally understood how photographs of emaciated fashion models might have a negative impact on a person’s body image, it’s surprising, perhaps, that a skinny soda can could be deemed a similarly harmful influence.

What did Diet Pepsi do to provoke such a backlash? It wasn’t that they used their new can shape to suggest that drinking Diet Pepsi might make a person skinnier, but in suggesting that their “slim, attractive new can” was an apt metaphor for “beautiful, confident women” in general.

The skinnier can shape is nothing new and has been in use overseas for a while. The Australian Coke can (above, right) is not a diet drink, but it has the same narrow shape. Its Coke-bottle-figure pictorial logo, however, has long been associated with a certain non-anorexic body type. (from: Roberta W.B.’s Flickr Photostream)

And diet product packages that emulate body types is also nothing new—as the 1963 Slim-Mates bottle, below, will attest. (from RoadsidePictures’ Flickr Photostream)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

packaging as content

Contact Box Vox

Packaging Songs

join our pack

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives

November 28, 2011

November 25, 2011

November 16, 2011

October 28, 2011

October 27, 2011

October 21, 2011

September 6, 2011

August 30, 2011

August 26, 2011

August 15, 2011

August 4, 2011

August 2, 2011

July 15, 2011

July 7, 2011

June 27, 2011

May 24, 2011

February 17, 2011

Kudos

Consumer/Culture

other pack-blogs

links

More Links

Categories