packaging as content

January 3, 2011

Sticky Fingers Packaging: Zipper vs Tin Can

1. Zipper

Like The Velvet Underground’s “banana” album cover with its novel peeling banana sticker, the other well-known Andy Warhol produced album cover (the Rolling Stone’s “Sticky Fingers” on left) also had novel, conceal/reveal packaging gimmick: a functional zipper, beneath which was another photo of the same model wearing jockey briefs. (See also: Packaging Junk)

Warhol’s chief collaborator for this (as well as the Velvet’s banana cover) was actor & graphic designer Craig Braun. The success of the project was nearly derailed when the zipper packaging began damaging the product:

…a problem was to arise when the first pressings were shipped. Stacking the albums on top of each other caused the zip to press into the album above. This succeeded in damaging the vinyl, ruining side 2, track 3: Sister Morphine. The designer, Craig Braun, was threatened by the record’s distribution label Atlantic, with a substantial lawsuit—but he was to come up with an ingenious, yet simple, solution whilst “very depressed and very high” of pulling down the zipper before shipping so that any damage would only occur to the central label.

–Nick James

2. Tin Can

The album on the right was the alternate cover (designed by Hispavox Records) released in General Franco’s Spain, when authorities objected to the suggestive zipper package. Not the most appetizing of product placements for Fowler’s West Indian Treacle, but this was probably before anyone had ever thought of suing for product displacement. Note the vintage-style bull’s head can-opener. (via: Sleevage)

(After the fold: Jagger writes to Warhol, “Please write back saying how much money you would like.“)

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December 31, 2010

The Velvet Underground: Book & Banana

Only collectible because of the influential band that named themselves after a copy they found in the street: this 1963 paperback “The Velvet Underground” by Michael Leigh (on left) was given to me as a birthday present around 1983–84. (from someone in another rather influential band)

Can’t say I’ve ever read it cover to cover, but I like the whippy “T” typography and have kept it in its protective plastic for 28 years. (Also: am I crazy or is the S&M boot illustration by Paul Bacon Studio on the cover kind of related to Warhol’s early shoe illustration work?)

The book on the right was a 1968 follow up sequel. (Nice that it features a photo of the earlier book.)

Also collectible: the first Velvet Underground album (below left)—the one with the peel-able yellow banana skin sticker. (We have one of those too, but only because Debby was cool enough to buy one and her records are mixed in with mine.) It always struck me funny how Andy Warhol’s signature was so prominent with no mention at all of the Velvet Underground or Nico on the front cover. Similar to Robert Brownjohn’s humorously arrogant stationery design for Michael Cooper. (Of course there might have been more information on a label affixed to the disposable shrink-wrap…)

The album with the green banana (on right) is the 2007 “Unripened” bootleg LP, made from an acetate pressing of an earlier version of the official 1967 release. (different mixes, different takes, etc.)

On the original cover the small printed instructions read, “PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE”; the instructions next to the green banana read, “UNRIPENED LISTEN SLOWLY AND HEAR.”

There are lots of other versions of (and allusions to) this album cover, and Warhol’s silkscreened banana design has been pretty influential in its own right.

(A bootleg book/record cover and some related Warhol/Velvets banana merchandise, after the fold…)

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November 22, 2010

Back in the Boxes

Packaging for two products, each called “Back in the Box”

1. Back in the Box™ by Classic Games Company was a packing puzzle in which 17 tetrahedra of various sizes are fit back into a cube-shaped box.

Despite rectangular box inside, the shape of the package is more exotic. Appears to be rectangular box with one corner truncated to make a triangular top flap. A rare example of polyhedral puzzle packaging reflecting its unusually shaped contents, the truncated corner simulates the shape of the tetrahedrons inside. (Photos, on right and above, left are from Baxter Web Puzzles)

2. “Back in the Box” the 1994 seven-song "David Byrne" CD: design and photography by Deborah Norcross.

I like the blurry photo of the little box, and of course I want to know, what did it once contain that we are now meant to imagine going back in the box?

Note: track one is parenthetically entitled, “Vox in the Box mix”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

November 17, 2010

Tattooed Consumer Packaged Goods

We’ve already touched on CPG tattoos yesterday and last week. Here now is a fuller accounting of the product range that some loyal consumers are wearing. Permanently.

Note: The upper right photo of the man with the Hellmann’s Mayonnaise tattoo is © by Robert “Ferd” Frank who played in a band called the Aerovons and recorded an album called Resurrection [album cover here] at Abbey Road in 1969 and who later played bass with John Cougar Mellencamp.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 27, 2010

Bouzouki-bots & Ionic Ouzo Bottle Caps

After yesterday’s post about Annabouboula’s ouzo-style CD package, it might have been nice to do a whole “Greek Week,” but I only have enough material for a Greek couple of days… Think of it as a mid-week “Greek Weekend.” I try not to blog on the actual weekend. (Seldom on Saturday. Never on Sunday.)

The bouzouki-shaped ouzo bottle (shown above, left and center) is part of the same figural bottle tradition that brought us other stinged-instrument bottles: viobots and banjobots. Are bouzouki-shaped bottles called “bouzoukibots?” I don’t know, but I’m guessing they are highly collectible.

The column-shaped Ouzo bottle on the right features a large Ionic capital as a bottle cap and is obviously a prized collectible object.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

October 26, 2010

Immortal Water

Finally got a chance to design some more music packaging—a cross-referential CD package with an Ouzo-style bottle label for Annabouboula’s long awaited 3rd album, Immortal Water.

The Greek expression “annabouboula” means a confusing noise that aouses passion. We present to you a collection of Greek songs, some old and some new, that convey our confusion and our passion. Our confusion is an ingredient of our identities: Greeks of the Diaspora dreaming of the Greece of a recent past that no longer exists (if indeed it ever existed), as we confront the Greece of the present. Our passion is the main ingredient of Immortal Water, a life-giving potion that flows from the soul and is a distillation of all the varied music we love. We all imagine ourselves, and this is the modern Greek music of our imaginations.

Annabouboula, the band, is the preeminent Greek-American trio consisting of producer/anthropologist Chris Lawrence, guitarist George Barba Yiorgi¹, and singer, Anna Paidoussi.

The title track of the new album is based on Marika Papagika’s 1928 recording of a traditional karsilamas 9/8 folk tune of Greek Asia Minor…

“From your sweet eyes, aman aman, immortal water does run; And I asked you for a little bit, aman aman, and to drink you gave me none”

Aidhinikos Horos (The Magic Fountain of Your Eyes)

Tears, fountains, Ouzo, shipwrecks, mermaids… clearly, there are deeper meanings for “Immortal Water” than are dreamt of in my philosophy, but from my limited, mono-cultural perspective, I just really like the idea of “bottled tears” as Annabouboula’s new consumer product.

What they did was take a traditional belly dance and rembetiko music (smokey Greek blues) and electrify them, adding a funky rhythm and a wild psychedelic undertow to these dark and moody songs of passion and heartbreak.

Wikipedia entry on Annabouboula

And the music? The swooping keyboard riff—(a descending glissando, I think it’s called)—in the very first song (Hello Sailor) worked on me like a (psychedelic) undertow and carried me happily out to sea for the duration. (Hear for yourself!)

(Footnoted Digressions, after the fold…)

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October 8, 2010

Opening Bottle Credits

Back in May, box vox featured some packaging-related opening title sequences. Here are two more—each including an electric guitar soundtrack and a multitude of bottles.

The one below (via: Watch The Titles) is for “Kill Your Friends,” Kris Clarkin’s proposed film adaption of John Niven’s book of the same name:

Haven’t read the book, but I gather that the story’s protagonist is an indie music A&R man who becomes a serial killer:

Stelfox freely indulges in an unending orgy of self-gratification. But the industry is changing fast and the hits are drying up, and the only way he’s going to salvage his sagging career is by taking the idea of “cutthroat” to murderous new levels.

Harper Collins

The bottles here signify excess & moral turpitude, setting the scene for the “unending orgy of self-gratification” mentioned above—or the packaging aftermath of such. The music is by Richard Lightman, whose name appears in the credits (apporopriately enough) on an album cover.

The second opening title sequence (with another multitude of bottles), is actually the one that that I saw first: HBO’s Boardwalk Empire. Here the bottles are a reference to prohibition & bootlegging in Atlantic City—(the bailiwick of this TV series)—as well as implying a certain message-in-a-bottle thing…

Initially, I was irritated by the anachronistic electric guitar music of this intro. Was there no music from the period that might have signaled “Nucky” Thompson’s inner psyche just as effectively? But now that I know it’s a song by The Brian Jonestown Massacre, I’m suddenly willing to cut them some slack because I do dig it.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

September 7, 2010

Rough on Rats

“Rough on Rats” was a turn of the Century rat poison brand from Jersey City manufacturer, proprietor—(& sometime music publisher)—E.S. Wells.

Ephraim S. Wells invented a rodent-elimination product in 1872. His wife jokingly called the poison “Rough on Rats.” The name stuck, and the product was a huge success.

The Chicago Tribune)

Promoted as a leading cause of cat unemployment, the inclusion of cats in “Rough on Rats” advertising also highlights our discriminatory hiring practices with regards to animals. (Pets versus pests: the animals that we humans want around, and the animals we don‘t.)

Pets were also featured in the 1882 promotional “Rough on Rats” song, although the lyrics were as rough on pets as they were on rats. The chorus:

“R-r-rats! Rats! Rats! Rough on Rats, Hang your dogs and drown your cats:
We give a plan for every man to clear his house with Rough on Rats”

(Via: The Virtual Dime Museum)

(See the sheet music, after the fold…)

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July 15, 2010

Brownjohn vs Cooper

Following yesterday’s thread about Robert Brownjohn’s conceptual-art-style stationery for Michael Cooper, Painter, Bobby Gill has suggested that Michael Cooper was so unaccomplished, that having had Brownjohn design his stationery was, perhaps, his only accomplishment.

“It was very much the style then to have a witty letterhead. Brownjohn designed one for this guy Michael Cooper, who was somebody who hung around, but he didn’t have much personality. The only thing this guy had done was to ask Brownjohn to design his stationery.”

Bobby Gill
(via: Robert Brownjohn sex and typography: 1925-1970, Life and Work)

Smells like hyperbole, right? Well, I thought so, and a little research shows that, in fact, Cooper’s life and accomplishments, when compared to Brownjohn’s, match up in a lot of ways.

1. They both designed album covers for the Rolling Stones.

Cooper photographed and art directed the cover (the first 3D album cover ever) for “Their Satanic Majesties Request.” (above, left)

Michael Cooper was in charge of the whole thing, under his leadership. It was handicrafts day… you make Saturn, and I'll make the rings… People always ask, Are John and George in there? … They are all in there. And Paul and Ringo… we had to put a stop to it. We were getting the whole of Sergeant Pepper in there, just for the hell of it. It was getting late and Michael finally got Saturn suspended… It was really funny… we should have done a gig that night.

Keith Richards, 1971 (via: Time Is On Our Side)

(Regarding “Satanic Majesties” see also: Tony Meeuwissen)

Brownjohn designed the album cover for “Let it Bleed.” (above, right)—(Photography by Don McAllester; Cake by Delia Smith)

2. They both had smoking habits (also heroin)

They both were smokers. In yesterday’s post we showed photos of Brownjohn and Cooper, as young men. Details from those photos, above, show them each with a cigarette in hand. See also: Brownjohn’s design for a Bachelor’s brand cigarette pack. (Note: we have an ongoing interest in photos of celebrity smokers. See: George Arents Jr. and Bridget Riley’s Rolling Papers)

Robert “Bj” Brownjohn had already made a name for himself as a designer
in 1950s New York when he arrived in London in 1960. He claimed that he
came over for the city’s creative energy. His girlfriend, the
super-chic fashion designer Kiki Byrne, remembers it differently. “You
could get heroin on the National Health back then,” says Byrne. “And Bj
did have a problem.”

Via: Matt’s Morgue

Cooper has been described as “A heroin addict whose worsening condition confined him to a wheelchair.”

(More similarities, after the fold…)

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July 1, 2010

Audio Promo Packs

Vintage patents for adding audio promotions to packaging: records embedded on the sides of cereal boxes—six-packs with CDs, etc.

(More about these patents, after the fold…)

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June 29, 2010

The Bridget Riley Sound

Above: Vintage Brazilian album covers from Sabadaba (via: Martin Klasch), except for the “phase 4 stereo” album which is from Epiclectic’s Flickr Photostream

If manufacturers of the 1960s were generally “trying to give their packaging the Bridget Riley Look”—it was manufacturers of records that exploited this look to its fullest. Not that there is really any one “Bridget Riley Sound” but the rhythm, repetition and pattern in her paintings obviously struck many people as an appropriate visual analogy to a number of different styles of music. Riley, herself, in an early interview spoke of her work in fairly
musical terms, saying that “repetition acts as a sort of amplifier.”

Riley who was already plenty dismayed at the appropriation of her paintings by 1960s fashion designers, must have been similarly irritated by this trend. Some covers are obvious imitations. Some are actually reproductions of her paintings. (I wonder if she received a licensing fee for use of her paintings in those cases?)

On left: the original LP cover for “The Faust Tapes” was Brigit Riley’s painting “Crest”; on right: the later “Wumme Box” version used a related sonar-typography image

On left: Jan Celt’s album, “Lookie Tookie” reproduces another Bridget Riley painting; on right an “op art” sleeve for Jerusalem and the Starbaskets “Bengal Traitor Split” (a 7" single)

Aside from functioning as a sort of audio-visual parallel universe, many of Riley’s motifs (and op art in general) evoke additional music-related associations. Sound waves. Intensity. Swinging sixties.

For Stefan Sagmeister, this strong tendency to associate “op art” with a specific point in time might be seen as a negative.

Sagmeister’s 1996 Grammy-nominated packaging for Marshall Crenshaw’s “Miracle of Science” CD

From Steven Heller’s 2004 interview with Sagmeister…

Heller: So, what do you think is your most dated looking work, and why?

Sagmeister: Among others, that Marshall Crenshaw CD looks rather old now, because of its holographic printing on the disc (in 1996 this was fresh), its op art patterns as well as the type set in rigid boxes.

If the “Miracle of Science” package looks old, it’s probably not because it reminds us of the 1960s, but because it’s reminiscent of the 1980s. A lot of “new wave” music and fashion was, after all, a reprocessing of sixties styles. (Think: black and white checkerboard, etc.)

But if the “op art” trend did not stop in the 1960s, it also didn’t end with the 1980s.

The Smiles and Frowns “Mechanical Songs” 7" with die cut sleeve (via: The great Pop Supplement)

(The beat goes on, after the fold…)

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June 8, 2010

Helmut Smits’s Drum Kit (& other package-related works)

Drum Kit, 2003 (tin cans, metal wire)

“Helmut Smits is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.”

Not all of Helmut Smits’ work is package-related, but enough so that, if I were a more patient and strategic man, I could cherry-pick images from his web site to feature here—one at a time—for quite a while. Instead, I’m presenting them as I found them—all at once.

On On left: “0.26 Gallon of Oil” 2007 (1L Coca-Cola bottle filled with oil) Photo by Lotte Stekelenburg; on right: “The Real Thing” 2006 (An installation to filter Coca-Cola into clean drinking water.) Photo by Rick Messemaker

Above are two separate works from 2006 and 2007 that each involve Coca-Cola. When I look at these now, in 2010, because of what’s going on right now with the on-going BP oil spill, I cannot help but associate both of these artworks with that.

“I liked the fact that oil looks the same as Coca-Cola. One is: the product that America dominates the world with [Coca-Cola], the other is: the product that America consumes the most worldwide [oil].”

–Helmut Smits from an interview in Chief Magazine, Issue #7

The Coke bottle full of oil, I had assumed, was a reference to the petroleum used to make PET bottles. Like Luis Camnitzer’s “Coca Cola Bottle filled with a Coca Cola Bottle” here, too, a bottle that contains what it is made of. This, of course, is exactly the sort of negative connotation—(conflating Coke with crude oil)—that Coca-Cola was hoping to address with their recent “PlantBottle™” initiative.

In “the Real Thing” Smits ironically treats Coca-Cola as if it were polluted water—an impurity to be removed so that the water can be made “clean” enough for drinking again. (I’m guessing that, for the foreseeable future, Smits will not be one of those artists, invited by Coca-Cola to design a “limited edition” designer bottle.)

Below, Smits takes a more benign view of “roll-on” deodorant packaging…

(Several more of Helmut Smits works, after the fold…)

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May 3, 2010

Audio-Visual Packs

Antonio Papania-Davis draws on some enviable home-brewed electronics skills in his artworks and experimental gizmos. Above, are two versions of his Coke-can “micro-projectors.”

(An audio example, after the fold…)

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April 22, 2010

In Six Moves

Another Rubik’s Cube related package¹. On Tuesday we featured Invader’s “Rubikcubist” recreations of famous album covers. Yesterday we looked at the original Hungarian package for Rubik’s Cube. Today we’re looking at a more recent vinyl record release, “In Six Moves” by the Almería-based band, Moon Unit. (No relation to Frank Zappa’a daughter, I don’t think—and not to be confused with the Gasgow-based, Moon Unit.²) The cover with Rubik’s Cube graphics is by Almería-based design studio, Globulart Diseño:

The title of the LP came during a conversation with David Bailey, singer and lead guitar of the band; the idea was to use the famous Rubik’s Cube to take advantage of some coincidences:

The LP contains six songs / the cube has 6 sides.
The world record in solving the Rubik’s Cube is six moves / again, the concept of the six songs.

Except for the CMYK color palette, the cover illustration is remarkably similar to the illustration featured on the original Politechnika Rubik’s Cube packaging which is maybe appropriate considering both products were manufactured and packaged in Eastern Bloc countries. (“In Six Moves” was pressed and printed at a factory in the Czech Republic.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

(Four footnoted digressions, after the fold…)

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April 20, 2010

Packaging via: Rubikcubism

Some package-related artworks by Invader—the French “street artist” best known for installing unauthorized tile mosaics of 8-bit¹ video game graphics in public places.

The album cover mosaics, above, and Campbell’s Soup can², on right, are actually assemblages of Rubik’s cubes. (See: Rubikcubism)

Like Space Invaders, the Rubik’s Cube is an 80s game made from colored squares. It’s a fascinating object, as it’s both extremely simple and extremely complex. Did you know there are over 43 billion possible permutations for a Rubik’s Cube? I use the Rubik's Cube like an artist uses paint. I like the idea that it wasn’t intended to be used this way, and that ultimately it works really well.

Invader

For me, the bitmapped album covers, easiest to decipher, are those that I’m familiar with—that I actually owned and listened to. (Above: Abbey Road, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Country Life, and Nevermind) They simultaneously hark back to the obsolete, orphaned medium of vinyl records, while more closely resembling a low-res iTunes thumbnail.

But it’s not all conceptual post-digital pointillism. This work also flaunts an impressive mastery of Rubik’s cube moves as shown in the video below. (Please note: the opening shot…)

(Another photo & footnoted digressions, after the fold….)

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April 1, 2010

Steve Roden’s Packaging Acoustics

Top photo: Roden’s 2002 “moonfield” installation at the Stadt Galerie, Saarbrucken, Germany; lower photo (from Jasmine Park’s Flickr Photostream): Roden’s 2005 “transmission” installation at the “In Resonance” show at the Seattle Center

Bottles on the floor—cans hanging from the ceiling: some package-related work from sound/visual artist, Steve Roden. Just one small part of a diverse body of work that includes recording and performing minimalist musical compositions (see: lowercase), making paintings that employ arcane systems (relating to language and musical notation) and creating sculptural/sound installations, sometimes involving small speakers contained in bottles or cans.

These accumulations of bottles and cans may look, a first glance, like other recent packaging-recycled-as-artworks, but Roden’s interests and intentions seem different. Yes, he is the co-author (with illustrator, Dan Goodsell¹) of the vintage packaging book “Krazy Kids Foods”—but in the context of these site-specific sound installations (above), his use of re-purposed, unbranded packaging is maybe beside the point. Still, he does stipulate to drawing some key inspiration from package-related sources.

Below, Roden explains how Joseph Cornell’s 1933 “Song Title Lunar Bottle” and the 1961 “Jury Gagarin in Space”² (record & record jacket) came to influence his “moonfield” installation.

When I stumbled upon it a Paris fleamarket, Jury’s face and the crudely drawn Earth (or is it the moon?) simply spoke to me — this wonderfully awkward eye candy of the front cover; and then the back, with Jury Gagarin In Space written in seven languages. I still can’t believe that the word ‘space’ in English is equal to the evocative ‘espacio cósmico’ in Spanish; nor that the black printing isn’t really a dark shade of green. With so much to let my eyes wander over, the cover rested comfortably in my painting studio for years before I ever listened to the record inside.

It seems like destiny that the American artist Joseph Cornell became the inspirational doorway for Jury Gagarin In Space to enter my work, as the cover looks like it could have been collaged together by Cornell himself. When a work of Cornell’s inspired me to try to find a way to put the moon inside of a bottle; there was Juri looking down at me, suggesting I finally listen. The record ended up as source material for a sound piece running through 100 small speakers housed in 100 glass bottles.

Steve Roden, Wire Magazine

(See how “transmission” ties in, after the fold…)

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March 26, 2010

The CardTalk Cardboard Record Player

Further clarification on the cardboard record player: the earliest patent I could find for this concept appears to have been J. Jauquet’s “Pocket Speaking Devices” (on right) filed in 1953. Another more complicated, manually-operated, foldable record-player was J.S. Weiner’s “Sound Emitting Device”—patent applied for in 1967. The more recognizable version of the concept (on left) was from the “Record Player” patent of Max Meier-Maletz, applied for in 1972.

Global Record Network (GRN)—the Christian Missionary organization that was most responsible for the relative success of this version—claims that development of this design began around 1964. They call it the “CardTalk” and used it, not for music, but for religious indoctrination. The CardTalk was prominently featured in a documentary film about the history of GRN.

(3 cardboard record-player patents, after the fold…)

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