Box Vox

packaging as content

May 18, 2012

Peter Cuba’s New Art

These were new to me: Peter Cuba’s 2010 photographs of Budweiser labels applied to an assortment of products other than beer.

Regarding his unauthorized brand extensions, the Chicago-based illustrator/designer says simply:

“My new art is putting Budweiser labels onto other things. Goodbye painting, hello drinking.”

(Diluting the brand, but never the beer.)


Beer Family

I hadn’t realized at first that last Wednesday was the start of “Budweiser Fine Arts Week,” but I see now that’s where we’ve been heading. Please stay tuned.

(See also: Marlboro Beer and The Brand Dilution of Duff Beer)

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…)

May 2, 2012

Packaging of Miniature Dummy Heads

Speaking of miniature stuff, I’ve had this leftover image since “Dummy Week” last March. (See: Package Design for Dummies)

I got the image from Clinton Detweiler’s site, but I think it originally came from Tom Ladshaw’s “Gottle O’ Geer” site.

Like dime store packaging, the carded packs for these novelty keychains were structurally simple and graphically in-your-face:

“The keychains were sold two different ways. You could order them in “loose bulk” (for insertion in gum machine capsules, etc.) or carded.  The flocked head keychains were only available carded.”

Tom Ladshaw


Die-cut carded pack for Jerry Mahoney dummy head keychain. (via: Toy Tent)

 

April 30, 2012

Can Within a Can

Another “Sack O’Sauce” can, but this image caught my interest because of the Droste-like self-referencing. (via: Small Works in Wool)

Does this represent the product’s actual label design? Or was it a clever shorthand image from some grocery store circular to simultaneously communicate the product in its opened and closed states. (A sort of Shrödinger’s can paradox.)

The thing is: the label’s design is really only effective from a very limited point of view. From a certain perspective (centered, 3/4 view from above) it’s as if we’re peering into a can which contains a shorter opened version of itself, and which, in turn, contains a bag of sauce. Seen from the side or from a lower perspective, of course, this illusion would be lost.

The idea of actually finding a can within a can, however, is apparently not so farfetched…

-Randy Ludacer

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 26, 2012

Package Eats Logo

Sometimes an illustrated open mouth, depicted on a package, is not a window, but a graphic device containing the product logo. Caveman Cookies and Snackle Mouth packages both have stacked logotypes contained in the gaping mouths of their illustrated characters. (Kristina Sacci designed and illustrated the packaging for Caveman Cookies; Nate Dyer of Moxie Sozo designed and illustrated the Snack Mouth packages.)

Package design for Fresh & Easy kids cereals (by P&W) uses a similar device, except that, along with the Fresh & Easy logo, the mouths contain additional typography.

(One more example, after the fold…) (more…)

April 24, 2012

Candy-Colored Stripes


Fruit Stripe gum photo from MeBeMelissa’s Flickr Photostream; the other three wrappers are from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

With multicolored products lines, colors are often used to differentiate between fruit flavors. When candies come in assorted packages, those assortments are often represented by candy-striped, rainbow colors. Skittles, of course, also uses this idea in their tagline, but lots of candy makers do the basically same thing.


1989 Skittles wrapper with “Rainbow Machine” offer from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream


1950s Life Savers 5-Flavors wrapper from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

The color stripes on a roll of assorted Life Savers make a sort of orthographic diagram of the contents. Technically not a “rainbow” since non-consecutive colors are adjacent, and yet multi-colored stripes will invariably convey the rainbow idea. Note: 5 flavors, but only 4 different colors.


Back of a 1986 box of Circus Fun cereal from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

The illustration for this Circus Fun cereal, “free Life Savers” offer, clearly represents a rainbow and also adds an additional lighter yellow to represent the fifth flavor.

In the 2010 “retro” package, above, Life Savers rearranged the color order, creating a bona fide rainbow striped wrapper. (Photo via: A Treasury of…)


Beech-Nut Fruit Stripe pack from a vintage ad on Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

Similar to the the Life Saver 5-Flavor assortment, Fruit Stripe gum’s also had five flavors, but only 4 colors in their technically incorrect rainbow. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. They were always more about the stripes than the rainbows. Love their ad in black and white. (See also: Trix Cereal Colors in black & white)


Beech-Nut Assorted Candy Drop wrapper from Jason Liebig’s Flickr Photostream

An earlier Beech-Nut wrapper for Assorted Candy Drops, however, does use uses a rainbow sunburst with colors in correct spectral order.

(More candy stripes, after the fold…) (more…)

April 20, 2012

Rainbow Striped Bottles

More spectral color branding. This time: bottles.

Absolut Vodka’s 2008 limited edition bottle (marking the 30 anniversary of the LGBT gay pride flag) and a 2010 Antico Frantoio Muraglia ceramic olive oil bottle (“…made by the expert hands of skilled master ceramists and covered with rainbow stripes.”)

Earlier rainbow branded liquids include Rainbow Beverages soda bottles (an ACL label with a monochrome rainbow!) and, below: Rainbow Beer and Rainbow Whiskey, separate brands whose labels both included full-color rainbows and metallic gold borders.


Bottle photo from AntiqueBottles.net; label from Newfoundland Beer History


Label photo from Etsy; bottle photo from RubyLane

And because I like miniature stuff and I never know when to quit…

(one more, after the fold…) (more…)

April 19, 2012

The Optics of Rainbow Striped Package Design

We’ve already focused on multicolored product lines and their effectiveness in product differentiation when displayed all together, but just recently it occurred to me that there was another kind of rainbow packaging in which all the refracted colors come together in a singular package design.

Rainbow stripes as a packaging motif, probably reached their peak in the 1970s, although they really got started in 1968 with Paul Giambarba’s spectral branding for Polaroid:

“The original color stripes were to differentiate between the new Type 108 Colorpack Film and the gray color stripes that identified Type 107 black and white film.”

Apple used a similar sequence of colored stripes in spectral order for the second incarnation of their logo in 1977. Asked whether the rainbow colors were a reference to “hippy” culture, logo designer, Rob Janoff said,

“Partially it was a really big influence. Both Steve and I came from that place, but the real solid reason for the stripes was that the Apple II was the first home or personal computer that could reproduce images on the monitor in color.”

So in each case (Polaroid’s color film and Apple’s color monitor) the rainbow stripes are meant to convey the color capabilities of the product. Their founders —Polaroid’s Edwin Land and Apple’s Steve Jobs— have also been compared and found to be similar in some ways. (See Forbes article: What Steve Jobs Learned From Edwin Land of Polaroid)

Giambarba’s package design for Polaroid explored the geometric possibilities of the company’s rainbow stripe motif in some depth for nearly two decades.

Most of Giambarba’s designs displayed well, and some used the trick of wrapping shapes around corners to achieve completion when displayed. (See: The Incomplete Package: Part of a Larger Whole)

While Giambarba’s rainbow striped branding may have preceded Apple’s, there were also other rainbow-striped cultural influences which may have played a role.

Frank Stella’s 1966 painting, Concentric Squares apparently preceded Polaroid’s rainbow striped packaging by two years. Like Polaroid and Apple, Stella’s fluorescent paintings introduced a new color capability whereas his previous paintings had been black (and white).

(More rainbow striped ruminations, after the fold…) (more…)

April 17, 2012

Art & Kitty Litter

On left is one of Robert Gober’s 1989 “Fine Fare Cat Litter” sculptures. (From an edition of seven)…

With Cat Litter, Gober invokes a “hand-made-ready-made”, stemming from the Duchampian tradition. While Marcel Duchamp chose everyday, industrially produced objects as his ready-made works and elevated them to the status as an art object in the act of re-producing and declaring them to be so, Gober scrupulously recreates an already existing product; Gober uses plaster-casting and then paints by hand the imagery to imitate the real object.

In speaking about the Cat Litter sculptures, Gober explains, “The kitty litter I never saw as being that far a step from the wedding dress…for me the kitty litter was to a large degree a metaphor for a couple’s intimacy – that when you make a commitment to an intimate relationship, that involved taking care of that other person’s body in sickness and in health. If I had chosen to do a box of diapers, which is an equivalent of a bag of cat litter, it would have been obvious. But because I was juxtaposing a low symbol which a high symbol and a deflated symbol with an inflated one, people had a very hard time reconciling the two, and they had a hard time, I think, seeing that I could be connecting the two with some respect”

Robert Gober: Sculpture + Drawing, 1999 (via: Phillips de Pury & Company)

Fine Fare is a New York “Metro Area” supermarket chain. (There was also a UK “Fine Fare” but I don’t believe they are connected.) I like their multi-colored pinwheel logo on the Gober sculpture, which I think has inherent fine art associations having to do with color wheels and additive color mixing. The animated gif on the right is not from Fine Fare’s logo, but from the website of package printer, J.M. Fry Printing Inks.

(See also: Untitled Packaging Sculptures)

–Randy Ludacer

April 16, 2012

The Trickle-Up Effect


On left: one of Linden Gledhill’s photographs of paint reacting to sound vibrations; center: Patrick Hill’s “Gravity Wine” package design concept; on right: a painted jar from an Etsy listing (now down, but the same object appears on majama29’s Flickr Photostream)

I’m no economist, but I always suspected that being wealthy didn’t automatically make someone a “job creator” and I wondered whether the whole “trickle-down” theory of economics might not make a lot more sense the other way round.

As it turns out, there is a “trickle-up” theory:

The trickle up effect argues itself as more effective than the trickle down effect because people who have less tend to buy more. In other words, the poor are more inclined than the wealthy to spend their money. This being so, proponents of the trickle up effect believe that if the lower and lower-middle classes are given benefits, such as tax breaks or subsidies, the increased funds would be spent at a much higher rate than would the upper class, given similar fund increases. Furthermore, the trickle up effect argues, many upper-class individuals do not spend their entire yearly salary to begin with, which is an indication that they will not spend any additional funds. Instead, they will save additional funds, thereby withholding those funds from the economy and increasing the gap between the rich and the poor.

Wikipedia’s Entry on The Trickle Up Effect


Gravity-defying, paint-dripped ceramic planters project from The Lovely Cupboard

(More trickle-up imagery, after the fold…) (more…)

April 9, 2012

Shari Mendelson


“Pom Vessel and Vinegar Urn” plastic from discarded bottles, hot glue, acrylic polymer, paint, 11″x3″x3″ each, 2009-10

While hunting for other examples of postmodern structural packaging, I happened upon Shari Mendelson’s “vessels.”

Sort of the other side of the postmodern/ancient coin: taking plastic bottles that may not seem obviously ornamental to us, Medelson deftly reconstitutes them into decorative antiquities.

Dasani water bottles are particularly prized for their color and shape, but she’ll take an Evian or Volvic bottle in a pinch. Recently, she was hankering after Poland Spring bottles…

“I’ll be walking behind someone in Midtown and they’ll be drinking a bottle of water, and I’ll just want it.”

Talking With Shari Mendelson
Penelope Green, NY Times, June 23, 2010


“My Metropolitan” (installation proposal)


“5 Vessels” plastic from discarded bottles, hot glue, acrylic polymer, paint, 7″x5″x5″ -12″x5″x5″, 2009-10

(More vessels, after the fold…) (more…)

April 6, 2012

Lion Bar Egg Package

Not sure what the connection is between lions and Easter eggs, but I do like this Nestlé Lion Bar milk chocolate egg & 2 Lion Bars box.


Photo from Elysia in Wonderland’s Flickr Photostream

(More about lions, eggs and The Troggs, after the fold…) (more…)

April 5, 2012

Postmodern Structural Packaging

If “form follows function” is a modernist idea, then using mock functional features as decorative elements is surely “postmodern.” Hence, the little Polar mixed fruit jar’s tiny useless lug handles may suggest old world tradition, but are in no way functional handles.

Similarly postmodern, are the bottles with mock, pitcher-style spouts like the Tropicana orange juice and Coombs Family Farms maple syrup jugs below.

Here, a pointed spout shape may point up the pourability of the bottle’s contents, but it is through the hole in the cap that the pouring actually happens.

I’m thinking there must be other examples.

–Randy Ludacer

April 3, 2012

Appropriated Ready Mades & Customized Containers


Landforms, 2011 (“Customised fabric conditioner containers”)

Some subtle sculptures with groupings of detergent and fabric softener bottles by Russell Hill. I like the the way he organizes these consumer products according to his own formal concerns. Lining them up by size, level of contents and color. (via: MKTG)

The thing with the rising and falling levels of fabric conditioner also reminds me of artwork by Tony Feher and Cildo Meireles.

By stacking 4 varieties of Fairy detergent, Hill creates a ready made color gradient. I like that he describes it as “appropriated,” acknowledging the package design to some degree. When artists use consumer packaged goods in this context, it’s sort of “have your cake and eat it too” situation. Clearly a critique on consumer culture, and yet exploiting whatever subliminal forces of attraction these (designed) objects may inherently possess. This was equally true for Warhol and other artists who have appropriated consumer packaging in this way.


Fairys, 2010 (“Appropriated ready made washing liquid”)


Horizon, 2011 (“Customised fabric conditioner containers”)

Below, an excerpt from a video about the Catlin Prize which Hill received in 2011…

(And a bit more, after the fold…)

(more…)

April 2, 2012

Brands Make Ü Happy

Bliss Buter-Thompson’s observations about package design that seeks to evoke positive feelings with smiley faces (see: Kraft Macaroni and Cheese) reminded me of another persistent graphic design trend. The umlauted, sans-serif “U” as a happy face.

Gü, Frü—(now merged with Gü), pür, güd (designed by Baldwin&),  yogen früz, Fünf, jüni, men-ü… (the second dot of men-ü’s logo is an encircled ™, giving its happy face an unfortunate dead eye.)

This kind of anthropomorphic typography in package design also reads as an emoticon: (“The letters Ö and Ü can be seen as an emoticon, as the upright version of :O (meaning that one is surprised) and :D (meaning that one is very happy).”) If consumers can respond to this method of expressing emotion on their cell phones, then why wouldn’t they respond to it on packaging?

There are plenty of other brands, not pictured above, whose logo designers have also sought to get happy in this way. (Füd, Güd Füd,  Nü Car Rentals, Trüf Creative…)

Writer, Douglas Coupland has commented on this attraction to the umlauted Ü:

The idea that this particular character in this particular typeface is the most attractive seems to intentionally conflate typeface with happy face. In his 2003 novel, Hey, Nostradamus!, Coupland also wrote this sentence:

“But the Quails spoke only their own language, which had only one word, glü, with a jaunty, Ikea-like umlaut on the ü.”

For a completely different type of happy umlaut pack, also inspired by Coupland, see the Knotoryus Eastpak Artist Studio Bag, below. The logo is also featured on their Ü website.

(See Also: Douglas Coupland’s Plastic Bottle Sculptures)

–Randy Ludacer

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