packaging as content

May 3, 2013

John Dogg’s Final Curtain of Cans

I’ve had a picture of this curtain of empty soda and beer cans on my computer for about a year: “Final Curtain” a 2005 artwork by an artist identified as “John Dogg.”

Dogg, it turns out, is actually Richard Prince. (at least partly)

Which, come to think of it, makes sense since Prince made a similarly constructed basketball hoop that we saw in 2008. I like the way he used a package-appropriate connecting fiber for these artworks—everything fitting together as structural packaging designers intended.

The fact that six-pack rings are sold to beverage manufacturers on long rolls enabled him to seamlessly string together these much longer configurations of cans. (Although the NY Times refers to them as “custom-made 12- to 14-foot-long strands of plastic ring holders,” so who knows?)

This one’s from the Rubell Family Collection, but it seems like there may be more than one version.

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

May 2, 2013

Drinking Straws Boxes with Drinking Glass Windows

Vintage drinking straws boxes: Glad on Etsy; Fiesta from hmdavid’s Flickr Photostream; Sweetheart on Etsy

It used to be a thing for drinking straws packaging to be designed with drinking glass shaped, die-cut windows. As if straws were a beverage—although, in a way, maybe they do accurately represent the accumulated total of sipped “straw-fulls” of beverage per glass…

May 1, 2013

Mobius Strip Branding: A-1 Beer

Last night I dreamt I was at some bar, talking with the bartender about vintage beer can packaging.

Maybe he could have told me who originally designed the tri-color Mobius strip logo for A-1 beer, but I didn’t think to ask him.

The photo on the right shows the logo I’m thinking of. It’s from William Legoullon’s 2010 “A-1 Country” series.

LeGoullon became intrigued with the story of The Arizona Brewing Company as well as its flagship beer, A-1, a true symbol of southwest beer-drinking culture. …Though many people have never heard of the brewery itself, its emblematic history, the evolution of its branding, and the symbolic narrative of A-1 have become primary influences on LeGoullon’s “A-1 Country” works.

It’s true that there were many evolutionary steps to A-1’s branding and package design over the years, but, it’s those versions of the packaging with the Mobius strip logo that I’m most interested in today.

There were earlier versions of this label with the brand name “Lancers” set in a script font, but to my mind, this version (with the chunky, wave-shaped terminators in the “A-1” typography) shows A-1’s branding at its most highly evolved.

Was this version a refinement that Carling introduced after its 1964 buy out of the brand? Or was it developed sometime before that? (as suggested by the bottle label below which does not include the brand name “Carling”)

In his History of The Arizona Brewing Company, Ed Sipos mentions a Phoenix-based “Curran-Morton Advertising” agency that was brought in to help promote the brand in 1962. Maybe someone there created A-1 Beer’s Mobius strip motif.

An A-1 Beer bottle label from Домашняя страница

(More about the A-1 Beer brand, after the fold…) (more…)

April 30, 2013

Kaleidocyclical Package Design

The first time I’d heard the term “kaleidocycle” was in the Doris Schattschneider’s M. C. Escher Kaleidocycles—a cut out book of three-dimensional, rotating models that I was given some years ago.

Not wanting to cut up my book, I never constructed any kaleidocycles at the time, but the photo on the right shows what one of them looks like.

The “FlipFood Lunchbox” above, designed by Ilias Markolefas and Nathalia Martinez Saavedra, is a kaleidocycle.

(A video and more, after the fold…) (more…)

April 29, 2013

Fishing Lures & Bottle Openers

Kyle Surges, “Fishing Lure and Bottle Opener,” oil on panel, 2012

I had originally thought to follow Friday’s post about bottle cap fishing lures with one about “fishing lure bottle openers” like the one on the right, designed in 2007 by Steven W. Cruthirds.

Then I found Kyle Surges’ painting above from his “Sharp and Pointed” series and decided to go a different way…

In Surges’ painting, the fishing lure and bottle opener are not combined, but paired. The bottle opener, however, is a church key—a combined bottle opener/can opener. His point in presenting them as a pair, is to compare the prongs of the fishhook with the sharp part of the can-opener…

(Another painting and more package-related fishing lures, after the fold…) (more…)

April 26, 2013

Bottle Cap Fishing Lures

Top: Bottle cap “clam” style fishing lure by Robbie Martin; below: detail from Norm Price’s patent drawings

We’ve featured stories about bottle caps and, oddly enough, we’ve featured stories about fishing lures, but I only recently learned about bottle cap fishing lures.

There are a surprising number of people and companies making these. All using the same basic design of a bottle cap bent around 2 lead weights with a three-pronged hook attached at one end.

Norm Price is credited with having invented it sometime around the year 2000.

Robbie Martin, however, says his “paw paw” showed him how to make a bottle cap fishing lure in 1991 or thereabouts. Prior art?

(More about who really invented the bottle cap fishing lure, after the fold…) (more…)

April 25, 2013

Mystery Solved

Top row: “Smarty Arty Orange” and “Grumpy Grape”; bottom row: “Berry B. Wild” and “Chucklin’ Cherry”

Solving the aforementioned mystery of who designed the original Squeezit bottle characters, I’ve been asking around and here’s what I’ve learned:

“Regarding the original designs, I’d have to say it was a true collaboration between myself and Ed Newmann at Calabash. [Calabash Animation in Chicago] These characters were a wonderful project and fun brand to create…”

Chris McKee at Flint & Steel

(4 trademarks and a less cropped view of Berry B. Wild follows, after the fold…) (more…)

April 24, 2013

Mysterious Anthropomorphic Bottles

I happened to find these anthropomorphic bottle characters (above) on six separate 1994 trademark documents from General Mills. Eventually I figured out that they were bottles for the now-discontinued “SqueezIt” drinks, a product that was not even on my radar at the time…

“Squeezit was a fruit-flavored soft drink made by General Mills and marketed from the mid-1980s until the middle of 2001…

Each flavor had a different character intricately designed into the plastic bottle… The Flavors included Chucklin’ Cherry, Berry B. Wild, Grumpy Grape (later changed to Gallopin’ Grape), Silly Billy Strawberry, Rockin’ Red Puncher, Mean Green Puncher, Smarty Arty Orange, and Troppi Tropical Punch.”

from Wikipedia’enty on Squeezit

Hard to find good photos of the bottles. The photo of the later “SqueezIt 100%” six packs on the right is pretty ubiquitous online, but doesn’t really feature the anthropomorphic bottles to their fullest.

The Squeezit logo is interesting. I found two versions, both of which use a squirting, bottle-shaped “i”—(see also: Packaging in Pictorial Logos.)

(Much more, after the fold…) (more…)

April 23, 2013

4 Extremely Polyhedral Egg Cartons

Some extremely polyhedral design solutions to the problem of how to best package eggs.

Not that eggs, themselves do not possess a geometry of their own, but “egg” geometry is parabolic rather than polyhedral.

Which is why it’s sort of fascinating to see what alternative containers can be constructed for eggs from the flat planes of folded cardboard. (The “Geometry of the Egg” diagram on right is from Vismath, the electronic journal of the Mathematical Institute in Belgrade)

(More about all 4 package designs, after the fold…) (more…)

April 22, 2013

Stephanie Watson’s Bread Tag Wedding Dress

First saw Stephanie Watson’s wedding dress on Unconsumption: a 10 year accumulated collection of bread tags, made into a wedding dress.

Like BB King’s guitar (Lucille), this dress has a name: “Nadine” taken from one of the 10,000 bread tags that were painstakingly sewn onto it. (I wonder: Is “Nadine” an Australian bread brand?)

Watson kept a blog/diary of the project called Constructing Nadine.

“When Will and I first started seeing each other I started saving bread tags in a jar. It became a running joke that when I had enough bread tags to make a wedding dress we would get married.

Friends and family also started collecting them for us. That was 10 years ago. We have a lot of fricken bread tags.”

Stephanie Watson, December 2011

The small size and large quantity of bread tags also imbued the dress with another layer of symbolic meaning…

“…the bread tags have become more than a gag. Bread tags actually have expiry dates printed on them, so every date on the dress is going to be a date that Will and I have been together.”

In July of 2012 Watson notes that Chuck Berry (who did not name his guitar) had a song entitled Nadine:

As I got on a city bus and found a vacant seat
I thought I saw my future bride walking up the street
I shouted to the driver, “Hey conductor, you must
slow down, I think I see her, please let me off the bus”

Nadine, honey is that you?
Oh, Nadine, honey is that you?
Seems like every time I see you
Darling, you got something else to do

packaging as content

Contact Box Vox

Packaging Songs

join our pack

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Archives