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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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 12, 2010

5000 Cans of Cremains

Photo by Melanie Conner for The New York Times

Eva York died in a bathtub in 1896 at the Oregon Asylum for the Insane. After an inquest, which absolved the hospital staff of any blame, no one claimed her corpse, so she was buried in the asylum cemetery and forgotten.

Eighteen years later Eva’s remains were exhumed, cremated, placed in a copper urn and forgotten all over again. Today the corroding canister containing her ashes sits on a plain pine shelf in what’s called the “Cremains Room” at the 122-year-old Salem institution, now known as the Oregon State Hospital.

Eva York is one of about 5,000 patients whose cremains are neatly stacked in that stark, lonely room like cans of paint in a well-stocked hardware store.

Rick Attig, All The Lonley People
The Oregonian, January 9, 2005

The collection of copper urns came into being in 1913–1914 when the state thought to make better use of the land occupied by the asylum cemetery. The bodies were exhumed, cremated and put into these canisters. All of the cannisters started out with paper labels identifying whose remains each contained, but most of those labels have fallen off or decayed over the years. (See also: Cans Without Labels)

Photo on left by Rob Finch for The Oregonian; photo on right by David Maisel

…at least one former patient said the cremains should stay where they are, in deference to how those patients had truly lived and died — in obscurity.

“To me those cans are a very honest representation of where we were,” said Grace Heckenberg, an advocate who was a patient at the hospital in 1969 and 1970 and said she believes the ashes of one of her ward mates are in an unclaimed urn. “And to take them out and put them out in some nice cemetery with a nice monument — it would just be a lie, a lie about my life, a lie about his life.”

Sarah Kershaw, Long-Forgotten Reminders of Oregon’s Mentally Ill
NY Times, March 14, 2005

In 2005, photographer David Maisel made a series of photographs of the copper urns, now made into a book.

On my first visit to the hospital, I am escorted to a decaying outbuilding, where a dusty room lined with simple pine shelves is lined three-deep with thousands of copper canisters. Prisoners from the local penitentiary are brought in to clean the adjacent hallway, crematorium, and autopsy room. A young male prisoner in a blue uniform, with his feet planted firmly outside the doorway, leans his upper body into the room, scans the cremated remains, and whispers in a low tone, “The library of dust.” The title and thematic structure of the project result from this encounter.

David Maisel, Library of Dust

(Some additional photos, 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 14, 2010

Letterhead as Conceptual Art

Above is the business stationery that Robert Brownjohn designed in 1967 for photographer, Michael Cooper. Another example of conceptual art’s influence on graphic design.

Rather than designing stationery with a logo and the usual typographic arrangement of name & address, Brownjohn labels each part of Cooper’s stationery system—letterhead, business card & label—with a conceptual-art-style declarative statement, which happens to include Cooper’s name & address. Calling attention not so much to Cooper’s business activities, but rather to Brownjohn’s role in producing Cooper’s stationery.

On left: young Robert Brownjohn; on right: young Michael Cooper

What are we to make of this?

This simplicity of form is matched with clarity of expression. There can be few more straightforward statements than ”Robert Brownjohn designed this letterhead for Michael Cooper.” But, of course, the design’s appearance and tone of restraint prove misleading. They transpire to be a means of casting Brownjohn’s outrageous subversion of the function of the letterhead into even greater relief. It takes quite a nerve to convert a piece of typography intended as an advertisement for someone else into a promotion for yourself. Every communication Michael Cooper made on this paper could not help but be at least as much about Brownjohn as it was about its subject.

Bob Gill has suggested that the letterhead was designed in reaction to being cajoled into doing the job as a favour: “This is the greatest free job ever done by a designer. What does he want to say? I did this for nothing, that’s what.” Meanwhile, Gill’s then wife Bobby had a somewhat different interpretation: “Michael Cooper was somebody who used to hang around, but he didn’t have any personality. Bj thought and thought of something to do for his letterhead, but the only thing this guy had done that was in any way interesting was to ask him to design it.” The truth is probably somewhere between the two. The desire to wreak revenge on exploitative “friends” will resonate with most graphic designers, but accounts of Cooper do hint at a paper-thin personality…
…It could be the case that his letterhead for Cooper was intended as a subtle swipe at the whole King’s Road scene. Although Brownjohn obviously enjoyed his notoriety, his increasingly exaggerated manners and extravagant outfits imply that he had a perpetual sense of the absurd.

Dick Fontaine has suggested that Brownjohn had a 1950s sensibility very different from that of the “velvet-suited” brigade of Cooper and Fraser. It was a case of conceptual art and jazz versus hippy philosophy and psychedelia.

Robert Brownjohn sex and typography: 1925-1970, Life and Work
By Emily King and Eliza Brownjohn

If, as Bob Gill and his wife suggest, Brownjohn resented the project or didn’t respect Cooper, then why even do it? Maybe the sheer audacity of the idea was, for Brownstreet, kind of irresistible.

“In his short but intense working life, Brownjohn helped to redefine
graphic design, to move it from a formal to a conceptual art.”

Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, 1995

Or maybe this was just a combative, but friendly rivalry among creatives? (You know, like between the Beatles and the Stones?) Despite the Bobby Gill’s harsh appraisal of Cooper’s “paper thin” personality, his life and accomplishments actually match Brownjohn’s in number of surprising ways… (which we’ll take a look at tomorrow.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

April 6, 2010

Cildo Meireles’s Coca-Cola Project

Cildo Meireles, Inserções em Circuitos Ideológicos [Insertions in Ideological Circuits] (1970)

In the 1970s, soda bottles in Brazil were still being returned, refilled & resold. Asserting that “the container always carries with it an ideology,” artist, Cildo Meireles began “inserting” his own subversive messages into the cycle.

For the Coca-Cola Project Meireles removed Coca-Cola bottles from normal circulation and modified them by adding critical political statements, or instructions for turning the bottle into a Molotov cocktail*, before returning them to the circuit of exchange. On the bottles, such messages as ‘Yankees Go Home’ are followed by the work’s title and the artist’s statement of purpose: ‘To register informations and critical opinions on bottles and return them to circulation’. The Coca-Cola bottle is an everyday object of mass circulation; in 1970 in Brazil it was a symbol of US imperialism and it has become, globally, a symbol of capitalist consumerism. As the bottle progressively empties of dark brown liquid, the statement printed in white letters on a transparent label adhering to its side becomes increasingly invisible, only to reappear when the bottle is refilled for recirculation.

–Tate Online

(Some money shots & more, after the fold…)

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March 24, 2010

Things Inside Brock Davis’s Refrigerator

In designing packages, we usually think in terms of how a product will look “on the shelf” — but this is surely an unforeseen angle.

Part of Brock Davis’s 2009 “Make Something Cool Every Day” project: “One piece of creative work made every day for 365 consecutive days.”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

February 18, 2010

Cigarette Pack as Flash Diffuser

via: instructables

January 13, 2010

Canned Camera

Not a packaging camera, but a cross-category, canned camera.

Unbelievably, the whole cat motif is based on the idea that this is a camera designed specifically for taking pictures of cats. The camera has flashing colored lights and “meows” to attract a cat’s attention. Not so good for taking candid shots of cats. Although if we define a “candid photo” as one taken without the subject’s knowledge, then, perhaps, it’s debatable. What does a cat know? Does looking at the camera make it “self-conscious” ?

Huh! It’s gradually dawning on me that this “cat” camera is packaged in a can as a reference to cat food. I didn’t get that at all until just now. Maybe this is because the graphics on the can are not particularly cat food-like. Never-the-less, I do like the way the photo is cropped. (Imagine cropping out the cat’s eyes…)

(Another Holga, canned cat camera, after the fold…)

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December 23, 2009

Cross-Category Packaging (Part 1: Cans)

Sometimes a product is put into a package, borrowed from another product category. Clothing, sold in cans, for example. I call this “cross-category” packaging. The motivation behind this potentially confusing marketing move? Partly a “category disruption” to stand out on the shelf and partly a flippant novelty to charm the consumer. Why flippant? Because canned goods have acquired a humble, sometimes humorous connotation. (Canned music; canned laughter.) A cross-category “canned” product mocks itself and invites us to share in the joke.

Sometimes the category hopping seems arbitrary—(why a bra in can? why not in a bag or a box?)—other times there’s an underlying logic. Malted milk balls packaged in a milk carton, for example, to highlight a key ingredient. (milk)

The Levi 501 Jeans in a paint can, I first saw via Lovely Package. These seem like an example of the “arbitrary” approach—(unless they’re “painter’s pants”)…

I wish I could remember where I found the Voyeur brand store-packaging, but I give up. (Try searching online for “Voyeur” + “underwear” and see what you find.) Voyeur’s canned underwear packaging takes the “flip-novel” approach, although the graphics appear to be totally in the manner of Barbara Kruger and I wonder whether she’d approve of that.

The Paint Can pinhole camera is a little different. A different type of packaging camera from the ones we featured earlier—here the can is the camera, although the connection between photography and house paint seems to be of the “arbitrary” type. Still, the can is pretty important since the package is pretty much the product.

Many times, when a product is cross-categorically packaged in a can, the can is an essential part of the concept and is featured in the name. (As in: “Any Product You Can Think of in a Can”) This also ties into the idea of packaged “kits,” where batches of items are kitted together into a convenient (or humorous) product concept. Think: ”Party-in-a-Can,” “Bed-in-a-Bag” and the like.

(One more thing, after the fold…)

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December 11, 2009

Packaging Cameras

Top row, left: Velveeta box camera from Allee Willis’s Blog; on right: Coke Can cameras from eBay; 2nd row, left: film canister camera via I New Idea; 3rd row, right: Fanta can camera from CircusCat’s photostream; center: King’s Cigarette box camera from Rick Soloway’s photostream; on right: instant coffee jar camera from eBay; 4th row left: chocolate milk box camera from Four Corners Dark; center: juice box camera from Zebriana’s photostream; on right: Budweiser Beer can camera (from eBay, I think); bottom row, left: Smarties camera from RockyCameras.com; on right: “Zeon Tech” Pepsi camera from Arthur Smokes’ photostream

There seems to be no end to the personal accessory categories in which you can find objects designed to resemble consumer packaged goods. We’ve already covered cigarette lighters, telephones and transistor radios. (Not to mention: salt & pepper shakers) Now we’re looking at package-shaped cameras.

Are they merely advertising promotions or are they products in their own right? Are they toys or another example of extreme brand loyalty?

(Another packaging camera—& the box that it came in—after the jump…)

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November 12, 2009

Shopping Cart Toy?

I got this shopping cart last month from the Salvation Army. Is it a toy? I’m not so sure. It’s pretty utilitarian and, aside from being little, there’s nothing to indicate that it was meant to be a toy. (No toy company branding, etc.) I was thinking it might be some sort of retail display prop. If it is a shopping cart toy, it’s the second shopping cart toy that we’ve featured here on box vox—(see: the first one)—and the only shopping cart that I ever actually bought. It’s about 1/3 actual size, but I got it for 1/2 off. ( $12.00 ÷ 2 = $6.00 )

For the photo I loaded it up with groceries and foodstuffs that we had on hand. A couple of these brands, we’ve covered before. (Remember this one or this one?)

(Update: All questions answered by an astute commenter, after the fold…)

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November 9, 2009

More Marbles

Top row left: jar of marbles from Plow Plane's Flickr Photostream; on left: water cooler jug and 2nd row: shelves of jars from from Dusty 73’s Flickr Photostream; bottom left: Lipton Ice Tea bottle from Tare Panda’s Flickr photostream; to the right and on far left: photos from eBay, I think; milk bottle of marbles from Santa Cruz Bread’s guess-the-quantity contest

In case you haven’t noticed, I like to follow a thread. Therefore: from a jar of marbles with manufactured meaning (sold at a significant profit on eBay) to more reused containers, containing other (less significant?) collections of marbles.

Jars and bottles seem to be de rigueur among collectors for the display of their collections, although not the type of container in which they’re generally sold. (More about that tomorrow.)

(One more collection of marbles, after the fold…)

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October 22, 2009

Can Cars: 2 types

On left: this photo of Stephen Hooper’s “Canvertible” car is from Sweet n' Sour’s Flickr Photostream; On right: Sandy Sanderson’s “Buggy”

Following the threads of vehicular packaging (and other beverage can vehicles)... Here are two types of aluminum can car:

1. The Canvertible by NJ-based art car guy, Stephen Hooper (AKA: Hoop). His Canvertible is a Fiat 850 decorated with aluminum cans, and although he has a penchant for gold and silver spray paint, some of the original beverage branding does show through in spots.

Mr. Hooper, who goes by the name Hoop, is an artist who uses cars as canvas, making what he considers a public art form. He refuses to give his age, but when a garbage collector who stopped to gawk at his works guessed 45, he allowed that it was not a bad estimate. He has created dozens of car-based artworks over the last 15 years, sometimes putting the same vehicle through several incarnations.

The consistent threads in his works are imagination, recyclable materials and contact cement. Beyond that, every creation is one of a kind, and usually relates to more traditional artwork he is doing at the time...

…Although he used to work in studios in Manhattan, on 14th Street and Prince Street, Mr. Hooper returned a few years ago to the Clifton house he grew up in when his mother had a stroke and needed care.

His vehicles, unusual in any setting, seem all the more surprising on his prototypical suburban New Jersey street.

Artist Takes the Ordinary For an Extraordinary Spin
By Roberta Zeff
The New York Times, Sunday, October 22, 2000

2. Buggy is a model of a beach buggy made by New Zealand-based Sandy Sanderson from 30 Waikato Beer cans. For Sanderson, the beverage branding is a key feature of his “can cars.”

When I was 40 years old I started to play the electric bass and joined a local band for more than 12 years. This led me to change from model aeroplanes to designing and building electric stringed instruments. It had been my intention to retire from teaching and carry on full time as a luthier.

Unfortunately, I had an accident on the bike that shattered my left wrist. This required reconstructive surgery, 4 plates, 8 screws, and a bone graft off the hip, to fix it. The great news is that I can still ride the bike and do stuff like that. The not so great news is that I have lost the sensitivity, fine control, and strength that was there previously. No more working with woodworking power tools! No more sensitive bass riffs!

While I was off work recovering from the accident I picked up the drawing instruments and started taking a serious look at the Coruba and Cola cans that I had held back from the recycler. I have seen pictures of some very fine model aircraft made from drinks cans but they had the plain aluminum from the inside of the cans on the outside of the model. This defeats the purpose of using the drinks can as far as I am concerned. You want everyone who looks to be able to see instantly what your basic resource was. Celebrate the fact, don't hide it!

from Sanderson’s Can Car website

(Photos of each artist and more of their work, after the fold…)

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October 15, 2009

Soup Can Columns

Soup can columns on the exterior of the Warhol Exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy marking the 20th anniversary of Warhol's death (Photo by Tom Rolfe, 2007, Edinburgh, Scotland).

Credited with the idea of converting their columns into stacks of giant Campbell’s Soup cans, the National Gallery of Scotland’s “in-house marketing team” was awarded a Media Guardian Innovation Award last April.

(Another package related Warhol photo by Rolfe, after the fold…)

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October 7, 2009

Shipping Pallet Exhibition Space

Top photo by Mike Shane; second row: drawings by Archicorp; third row: photo by Debby Davis; bottom: photo of The Great Unwashed performing among the pallets by Mike Shane

Shipping pallets, formerly a
behind-the-scenes, invisible part of packaging are now enjoying a new
limelight. (Perhaps because of their current prominence in warehouse stores? Or a general ecological desire to recycle used lumber?)

Archicorp and COAHSI used the idea of “pallet forts” as the guiding
principle for creating smaller exhibition areas within the vast container terminal…

The Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI) turned Staten Island’s massive New York Container Terminal into a contemporary museum for a special arts weekend highlighting the work of ten borough artists. The exhibit, entitled “Mapping Staten Island,” explores these artists’ perceptions of their resident borough, through physical installations, video, light, and musical recordings. The exhibit space—created by the newly established firm Archicorp—will be a work of art in itself, as actual shipping pallets will be used to build walls, tables and other structures to display the artwork. After the exhibit, the pallets will be recycled and used for their original purpose of transporting consumer goods…

The selection of the New York Container Terminal as the venue for the exhibit also builds on Staten Island’s specific geography and history. Each exhibition room was constructed from shipping pallets and designed like a fort, 20 x 10 feet long. The pallets were literally “branded” by hot iron brands, bearing the logo or tag line of each sponsor. Deconstructed after the gala, these branded pallets will now rejoin the flow of global trade, sharing with the world a small part of Staten Island.

adapted from COAHSI’s Press Release (I changed from future tense to past tense since the event took place last week.)

(More shipping pallet projects and products after the fold…)

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September 24, 2009

All the Young Dudes Original Album Cover Art

“Dude ’72” photo by Mick Rock (Camden Town, Summer 1972)

For obvious reasons I really like Mick Rock’s photo of this English boy, outside with his cardboard guitar. (I'm guessing the kayak must have been for Regent’s Canal since I don’t see any other bodies of water on a map of Camden Town.)

We went to the opening of Mick Rock’s Glam! show on Staten Island a couple weeks ago. This photo was there.

The original cover photo for Mott The Hoople’s classic Bowie-produced album “All The Young Dudes” … Why it wasn’t used I can’t remember, nor can Ian Hunter, must have been a chemical shift.

Mick Rock
Glam! An Eyewitness Account

A chemical shift or just a really bad executive/creative decision? The album cover that they ultimately went with—(with a 1940s-style illustration of some English public school chaps in suits)—was so crummy by comparison, it was embarrassing. (I don’t even want to stink up the blog by showing it; you can go here to see it, if you want.)

In my second year at college, I remember going to a Providence record store to buy that album and just cringing when my girlfriend at the time held it up and, from across the store, called out, “Randy, here’s Mott the Hoople!”

I think I might have held my head a little bit higher, if the English boy with the cardboard guitar had been on that album cover instead.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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