Box Vox

packaging as content

May 22, 2012

“I Just Wanted You To Be Proud of Me”

Above, a 2011 sculpture by Cayla Lewis: 22 empty Budweiser bottles on a hand-made shelf with brass plaque reading “I JUST WANTED YOU TO BE PROUD OF ME.” I like the title’s implication of an untold story contained in these 22 Budweiser empties.

Below, a 1986 sculpture by Bill Schwarz, entitled 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, but whose five shelves actually contain 100 bottles. (via: Tom Moody)

Personally, I had always envisioned the “99 bottles of beer on the wall” from the song being lined up on the top of an outdoor brick wall. If the bottles in the song were meant to be on wall-mounted shelves, I think the song would be called “99 Bottles of Beer on the Shelf.”

That said, here are two more brand-specific artworks for Budweiser-Fine-Arts week. Like the Fleming Twins, “100 Cans of Tilted Beer” from yesterday’s post, both of these sculptures above reference that song, but do not illustrate it.

Although 11 is a factor both of the 22 bottles in Lewis’s sculpture and in the 99 bottles Schwartz’s title. (See also: Birthday Mathematics)

May 21, 2012

Another Budweiser Triptych


Alan & Michael Fleming: Balancing, Levitating, Opening (two cans of beer), 2010, 3-channel video [excerpt]

Part of a 2010 group show at SIAC’s Sullivan Galleries entitled The Joke is Irresistible, this “video triptych” by Fleming twins, Alan and Michael is interesting to compare with the Budweiser Triptych by Banks Violette that we looked at last Wednesday.

Whereas Violette’s redacted, black and white Budweiser label spelled out “die” and contained a certain gravitas, the three Fleming videos are more about gravity…

“In this video triptych two ordinary cans of beer are transformed into ephemeral sculptures through the act of drinking. The result is a series of poignant and playful studies of everyday objects imbued with a new life and form of their own. This piece reflects on the studio as a site for games, trials and tricks.” -via

In their show at threewalls last month they expanded on the balancing beer can trick, demonstrated in the first video.


100 Tilted Cans of Beer, 2012, cans of Budweiser, 6″ x 8′ x 8′

I never knew about this particular bar trick, but I like how it relies on the beveled edge of the beverage can, and I love the idea of 100 half-full cans of beer remaining precariously balanced on the floor of the gallery for two months.

I guess it also adds to the whole “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” thing.

 

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 17, 2012

Nigel Sense’s Annotated Label Paintings


Budweiser, Stella Artois, Toohey’s Blue

Another annotated Budweiser label (on left) led me to the paintings of Nigel Sense.

As with Wacky Packs, the beer labels here provide a loose framework for satirical commentary, but in Sense’s paintings the content is nearly always about artists. (And sometimes about the economics of his art career choices—fine arts versus commercial art, graphic design, etc.)

Hence a Budweiser label becomes Jean-Michel Basquiat, a Stella Artois label is about Marcel Duchamp, and an Australian Toohey’s Beer label is revised as a comment on Australian artist Brett Whiteley. (I had to look that one up.)

Interesting to compare this video with the video in the previous post: two tattooed artists who created artworks changing the Budweiser beer label, each of whom emphasizes the role that personal experience has played in their work.

(A few more package-related Nigel Sense paintings, after the fold…)

(more…)

May 16, 2012

Redacted Budweiser Label

Banks Violette’s 2011 “Budweiser Triptych” features a redacted Budweiser beer label design spelling out the word “die.”

Origins of the concept are explained in the video below…

May 15, 2012

Calvin Klein, Yves Klein & Klein Bottled Beer

If Felix Klein’s paradoxical one-sided surface is represented as a bottle only because of a German homophonic pun, it’s fitting that artists and other creative types should further confuse things by associating this bottle with other people named Klein.

1. Calvin Klein Bottle

Uffe Holm’s 2008 sculpture entitled, “A Unisex Fragrance On A One-Sided Surface” is a Klein bottle with ck one perfume from Calvin Klein:

The Klein bottle is a spatial impossibility, if we lived in a non-Euclidean space, but this version is a model, a piece of scientific glassblowing, which purpose is to illustrate a three-dimensional Möbius band. In an unreal world this plane isn’t supposed to contain anything, but in reality it works fine as a flacon for the perfume ck one, the unisex fragrance from the 90s.

The two elements are tied together by the surname of their originator, Felix and Calvin respectively, but they both imply the possibility of illustrating something that does not unite in practical reality. Outer is inner and the sexes are merged.

–Uffe Holm

2. Yves Klein Bottle

Mariana Castillo Deball’s 2011 “Klein Bottle Piñata” deliberately conflates German mathematician, Felix Klein with Yves Klein by painting her interactive sculpture with the French artist’s patented color: International Klein Blue.

 (After the manifold: Klein Beer…) (more…)

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 11, 2012

Perforated Klein Bottles

Elizabeth Paley’s Klein bottle, on left, is another bottle with holes, similar to the Porous Coke Bottle that we looked at on Monday. But while drilling holes in a normal bottle may render it non-functional, a Klein bottle is fairly non-functional to begin with.

The bottle on the right is a plastic Klein bottle, designed by Nancy Shaw and available for sale on the ACME Klein Bottle site. ($30)

There’s also a $72 Klein bottle opener that is similarly perforated…

Does it therefore follow that there are perforated Klein bottle caps?

(Asked and answered, after the fold…) (more…)

May 9, 2012

Life-as-Bottles Meme


Esperanza Gómez Carrera’s 2008 “The Life in a Bottle” installation

The idea of representing a lifetime with a row of 4 or 5 bottles. Usually starting out with a baby bottle & a Coke, and ending up with an intravenous feeding bottle. (With an alcoholic beverage bottle in between.)

Typical internet post includes a rueful comment about already being at the “third”(alcoholic beverage) stage.

Some 4-bottle examples:


Upper left: the most prevalent example found online (can’t tell you who made it originally); on right a display at a restaurant in Oaxaca City (see: Pattie & Richard); 2nd row, left: via; on left: tee shirt design A; 3rd row, left: tee shirt design B; on right: via

(Some additional 5-bottle examples, after the fold…)

(more…)

May 8, 2012

Bottles & Bar Charts


Mark Swanson’s bar graph comparing alcohol content of beers

Last Friday’s look at 4 sculptures (with bottles containing varying levels of various liquids) brings us to another idea: bottles-as-bar-chart.


Courtney Gibbons 2009 bar graph showing monthly alcohol consumption


Ugleah’s 2010 “Booze Bar Chart” as inverse measure of job satisfaction and happiness

“…heard this great idea from David Gartner: celebrate project milestones with a bottle of Scotch. I’d occurred to me that you could flip this on its head and celebrate the failures instead. A cool byproduct: the bottles turn into life-sized bar charts of project successes and happiness.”

–Ugleah


Graphic comparing Champagne bottle sizes via Gastronomista


Stacy Levy’s Calendar of Rain installation

“Each day of the show is represented by a bottle sandblasted with that day’s date. The current day’s bottle is placed under a flask. If it rained or snowed that day, the precipitation is funneled into the gallery. After 24 hours, the bottle is capped and placed back into the calendar, a series of five glass shelves representing each month. By the end of the show, the piece had created a bar graph of rainfall for each week.”

The infographic for the “2012 Cone Green Trend Tracker” uses sideways bottles and gravity defying liquid levels in bar chart representing American’s expectations of corporate responsibility & environmental impact.

(Also works with cans, after the fold…) (more…)

May 7, 2012

Pakoh’s Porous Coke Bottle

Don’t know a lot about the glass artist, Pakoh. Grew up on Long Island. Went to RISD. Made this vintage glass Coke bottle porous. pour us? (Rot in Coke, 2007)

He also did this to a light bulb.

(He makes water pipes, as well, which reminded me of  a certain “English object” we featured in 2009.)

See also: Pipe Shaped Bottle | Bottle Shaped Pipe, Coke Bottle filled with a Coke Bottle and Light Bulb Bottles

May 4, 2012

On the Shelf

“On the Shelf”: Michael Craig Martin’s 1970 sculpture (via: Russell Hill)

Three  Four sculptures by three four different artists: each featuring bottles with varying levels of liquid.


Top: “Just So” Tony Feher’s 2002 sculpture; bottom: “Landforms” Russell Hill’s 2011 floor sculpture

(I almost forgot about this one…)


Cildo Meireles’s “Inserções em Circuitos Ideológicos” [Insertions in Ideological Circuits] (1970)

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)

 

May 1, 2012

Handful of Miniature Soda Cans

Via: Western Paperback Novels

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…)

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