box vox

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...)

Significant Jar of Marbles

I’ve briefly touched on the “Significant Objects” project (here) in my post about Joshua Glenn & Carol Hayes book: Taking Things Seriously, 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance.

A joint project by Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker, “Significant Objects” is a sort of spin off from that book. Previously insignificant objects are given new meaning and increased monetary value, by virtue of having been written about in a story. The objects are then put up for sale on eBay. I bid on a cursed bottle, but (luckily for me) I lost.

Since then, I’ve been monitoring closely for significant packaging-related swag, but I haven’t really coveted any of the objects quite as much. Until now with this jar of marbles.

The weird thing is—as unappealing as some of this stuff is at first glance—these stories do a great job at transforming your initial repulsion into a desire to purchase. I was not instantly drawn to this reused Beechnut Baby Food jar and I don’t collect marbles, but after reading Ben Ehrenreich’s disturbing story about how this particular batch of marbles came to be contained in this jar, it has, for me, become a very desirable item.

I pull a marble from your skull each time we kiss. “Give it back,” you say, each time.

“Darling,” I say. “Baby,” I say. “No.”

I put the marble in my pocket. Later, I will hide it with the others. But not now, because now you’re watching. Now you’re getting mad. I knew you would, and now you’re doing it. You cross your arms. Your features droop. Not just your lips but your eyelids and ears and the cleft ball of your chin. All of it droops. I laugh at you. “Come here, Droopy,” I say, and I try to kiss you, but you pull away.

–Excerpt from Jar of Marbles by Ben Ehrenreich

Unfortunately with the bidding already up to $28.05 and with three more days to go before the auction ends, I don’t think I can compete for ownership of these marbles. Not when I’m paying out of a joint bank account. Even if I were willing to spend $50, $100, maybe even more on this super-significant jar of marbles—how on earth would I explain it to my significant other?

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Packaging Disaster(s)

Via The Huffington Post: a spectacular packaging disaster in Moscow, captured on a warehouse security camera. Most of the news coverage is focusing heavily on the irony. (Hapless Russian forklift operator, driving while under the influence of alcohol, destroys over a $100,000 worth of Cognac & Vodka) Some of the coverage also seeks to use the event as a teaching opportunity about Russian alcoholism. (See: NY Times News blog)

But isn’t our interest in this video more prurient than sociological? It may be mean-spirited schadenfreude, but who among us is not fascinated by this kind of disaster porn?

And yet... if you’ve ever glanced warily up at the towering shelves in a warehouse store and wondered if you were truly safe wandering the aisles below, this footage will not reassure you.

(Another video and a faux packaging disaster, after the fold...)

Volt

Photo on left and photo on right were both found on LiveAuctioneers.com

Another light bulb shaped bottle—(see: “light bulb bottles”)—that I somehow missed: A 1922 Baccarat bottle for LT Piver’s “Volt” perfume.

(Some “Volt” advertising, after the fold...)

Freshkills Park: Native Meadow Mix

Back in September, (when I had the honor of inaugurating Freshkills as a new battery-powered, outdoor music venue) one thing that really struck me was how the short scrubby grass that I had seen there last Fall had, over the Summer, become like “amber waves of grain.” Atop the landfill: a bucolic meadow.

The “Native Meadow Mix” seed packet was designed in-house by Raj Kottamasu, community coordinator for The New York City Parks Department’s Freshkills Park project. (Coincidentally, Raj is profiled in today’s NY Times.)

The seed packets are not for sale, but will be given away to those attending the free, public bus tours of the Freshkills Park site. The seeds, indigenous to the NYC Metro area, were collected by the Greenbelt Native Plant Center and are the same species that will be used in the restoration of the former landfill site. 

(More photos after the fold...)

Damian Ortega & Mexican Coke

Damian Ortega, “120 Days” (2002)

In 2002 Damián Ortega collaborated with Italian glassblowers to make alterations to 120 Coca Cola Bottles. Entitled “120 Days”—in reference both to the de Sade novel “The 120 Days of Sodom” and to the film Salò—this artwork follows the logic of the package-as-body metaphor to it logical (sadistic) conclusion.

“The idea of the Coke, the disorder produces fun but also some strange feeling, like something is wrong. ‘This Coca-Cola is so weird. Something’s wrong with them.’ It’s like the birds in the Hitchcock film, no? It’s like, hmm. Who are we? What are we doing? What are we thinking? What is our own relationship with the objects within society or the context.”

From Greg Cook’s Interview with  Damian Ortega
The New England Journal of Aesthetic Research

“Molecula de Glucosa Expandidais” (an installation composed of bottle-caps strung on steel, loosely based on the glucose molecule)

In “Molecula de Glucosa Expandidais” Ortega used bottle caps to make a giant hanging glucose molecule. (Coincidentally alluding to that secret ingredient that has recently set Mexican Coke apart in the minds of some consumers—namely: sugar.)

“Molécula de glucose expandida is a work that deals with the consumption of sugar in Mexico as a collective and cultural phenomenon. It is exhibited as a molecule formed by particles that are soda bottlecaps collected from stores and restaurants in Mexico City. I enlarged the molecule to a huge size. It is a rhizome hanging from the ceiling, growing and expanding in the space like an alien. This work can be grasped from the inside or from the outside. It is a chemical structure, but also a social one: micro and macro.”

–Damián Ortega from Champ de Vision, Damián Ortega Part 2
by Anna Hiddleston and Sinziana Ravini

(A couple more photos, after the fold...)

Budweiser Phones

Researching prior art for the earlier post on Bud Light’s audio speaker box, I found there were quite a few Budweiser telephones available for sale on eBay. (Mostly beer can-shaped phones, but a few shaped like bottles, as well.) A similar advertising promotion to package-shaped transistor radios, I suspect that these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Lucky Cat Candy Packet

Tiny cellophane packet achieves a surprisingly effective illusion: transforming its contents —(two gum-ball shaped candies)— into a miniature Maneki Neko.

Different packets feature different facial expressions.

(More photos after the fold...)

Bud Light Speaker Box

Lower photo from DrunkenTailgate.com

Part of Bud Light’s new “Tailgate Approved” campaign: a 24-Bottle Case “Speaker Box” with a built-in, disposable speaker. Not their first excursion into audio gear, but a milestone, perhaps, in “convenient” disposability. And a strange counter-insurgency for Budweiser to be promoting a disposable sound system at a time when DIY recyclers are making home-brewed speakers out of tin cans and the like. (See: Tin Can Amp)

Some have compared the audio quality of the single speaker to that of a novelty greeting card, but maybe it’s a monophonic teaching moment for tailgate party-goers to fully appreciate those vintage, pre-stereo mixes.

(Some earlier Budweiser audio gear, after the fold...)

Liquid Lustre-Creme

On left: photo from Mankatt’s Flickr Photostream; on right: a detail of a magazine ad from Melanie’s Flickr Photostream

Liquid Lustre-Creme: the amber shampoo with the star-shaped label. Their ads featured a coterie of female film stars of the 1950s & 60s.

While five-pointed stars are not used as often on packaging as the more the rounded ‘sunburst’ shape, a star-shape of this type has its own set of associations to impart. Hollywood “stars” in this case, but it can also imply a western theme (sheriff’s badge) or even Communism.

(Another Liquid Lustre-Creme commercial, after the fold...)

Groppers

From Mankatt’s Flickr Photostream: a Roche Advertisement from the January 26, 1976 issue of Advertising Age (or maybe it was from Food Product Development Magazine). Either way, it illustrates another reason why an existing package might acquire an added graphic burst.

Roche, with the tagline, “The food improvers,” sought to promote their vitamin additives by suggesting that a product with flagging sales would benefit from a graphic burst with a product claim such as, “Now Fortified with 8 Essential Vitamins.”

I believe that “Groppers” is a fictional product because it seems doubtful that any of Roche’s clients would have wanted to be portrayed as the poster boy for declining sales.

The “how to claim a heath benefit” aspect of this ad also seems pertinent to the recent dialing down of the Smart Choice Program, now under scrutiny from the FDA. (The Smart Choice Program had provided manufacturers with voluntary nutritional guidelines, under which the children’s cereals with the highest sugar content, for example, were somehow able to claim a health benefit.)

(A close up of the Groppers boxes, after the fold...)

History of the Graphic Burst

1905 sheet music; 1940 Halo Shampoo ad; 1927 Oxydol Detergent box

A “history of the graphic burst”—that’s what this post would be if I really knew anything about the subject. I had imagined that the burst, so ubiquitous on packages during the 1950s and 1960s, might have started much earlier—perhaps at the dawn of the in-your-face packaging of patent medicines. I could find no evidence, however, to support this idea.

So lacking any real authoritative information... I will here define the “graphic burst” as any jagged, radial shape containing a typographic message—(sometimes with an exclamation point)—or a picture. Burst messages are usually short... (as in: “FREE” or “On Sale!”)

Sometimes the burst is part of a product logo and an integral part of a package’s design. More often, it is a “violator” in the sense that it’s a sort of graphic intrusion, temporarily violating the integrity of the more ‘permanent’ package design. But where did this device come from? Who used it first?

I would hazard a guess that the graphic burst may have evolved from a number of different sources, because it seems to be associated with different symbolic meanings. (Here are four that occur to me.)

1. Ballistic Bursts  As in fireworks and “bombs bursting in air.” The idea being, to convey some dynamic sense of excitement and urgency. A lot of popcorn packaging seems to feature bursts of this type.

2. Bursts of Light Sometimes used for light-related products (light bulbs and the like) but also used to lend a dynamic excitement to the proceedings. Behind a product or a person’s head, this kind of burst can imply a sort of heavenly aura. I think the Statue of Liberty relates to this idea. While one might assert that the radial spikes behind her head are a hat or a crown, I think the effect is a classic “burst of light.”

3. Seals of Approval (Think: Good Housekeeping.) This type of burst must have regular, not-too-jagged spikes, and was probably intended to resemble the sort of gold stickers one sees (or used to see?) attached to official documents.

4. Illustrative Bursts Sometimes a burst, while still a graphic device, is also an illustration. It may be an illustration of something from nature, (like a sunburst or a star burst) or anything that lends itself to a spiky, radial motif. (Sometimes even daisy petals can be given a flower-power, burst-like aspect.) The “ballistic burst” can also be more on the more literal, illustrative side—and less in the symbolic, comic-strip style. I recently saw this guitar package (see inset on right) with bursts that were trompe l’oil illustrations of torn paper. These “bursts” are like faux die cut windows bursting holes right through the package. (Similar to the splat-shaped bursts of some recent Starburst packaging.)

These days the burst is mostly looked down upon. Crass and vying for attention. Sometimes used with a hip irony, but inappropriate for tasteful, upscale merchandise. As such, some say it’s overdue for a big, recessionary comeback.

(Lots more ways to burst your inflationary bubble, after the fold...)

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...)

Art & Politics of Prescription Pill Bottles

Got an email from MoveOn.org that included this tiny photo of wheelbarrows full of prescription pill bottles. It’s a good example of how packaging can be used as a political symbol. Really, I guess it’s a symbol of health care (or consumption of health care), but in the sense that health care has become a politicized issue, I figure these prescription pill bottles are also a political symbol. There are supposed to be 20,000 of them and each one contains a written message (a message in a bottle) in support of Dawn Smith who has been denied coverage by CIGNA for treatment of her brain tumor. I was surprised not to be able to find other, larger photos of this image. Quantity is powerful and, had it been up to me, I might have wanted to make more of this image. (The video posted yesterday now seems to be doing this.)

On the other hand, maybe 20,000 pill bottles is not really “on point” for their message since Dawn is being denied medical treatment. Mass quantities of pill bottles might tend to suggest the opposite. So many pill bottles implies a prolonged, ongoing treatment of a chronic illness or condition. The pills that you must take for the rest of your life—in order to go on living. And wheelbarrows full of prescription pill bottles, perhaps, speak more to drug company profits—(rather than to insurance company profits).

Another thing that inevitably comes to mind (when you see huge amounts empty packaging) is consumer waste. I’ve written before about my own negative feelings as a consumer of diabetic supplies. Every time I use up another small canister of test strips (or other diabetic supply that I will presumably be using every day for the foreseeable future)—I feel a certain remorse about the packaging waste. Considering Dawn Smith’s situation, I know that I should count myself lucky that my health insurance continues to pay for my medicine and supplies. And yet glimpsing the cost that my insurance company actually shells out for all these supplies, never fails to give me anxiety about how much longer it might continue to do so. It doesn’t strike me as sustainable.

On left: “Corporate DNA” a helix shaped sculpture by Ron Jones; on right: Rocky Stroup’s “Borrowed Time (13 Years of Pill Poppin’)”

Jean Shin’s “Chemical Balance”

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Buckyballs Packaging: Before & After

Maybe you’ve seen the YouTube videos of someone’s expert hands, artfully wrangling these magnetic ball bearings into different polyhedral arrangements. A fun crystal-structure teaching opportunity (and cool that it references Buckminster Fuller and fullerenes, AKA: buckyballs)

Zoomdoggle recently switched their packaging from a glass jar to a PVC box. (I met owner, Craig Zucker last August at Gift Fair and learned that the design of the new pack was handled in-house.)

(A Buckyballs display, after the fold...)

Soup & Cigarettes: Separated at Birth?

Jeff Goran’s “A Lighter or a Spoon” conflates Campbell’s Soup with Marlboro Cigarettes

Jeff Goran’s packaging mash-up has already appeared in blogs aplenty... but I like it too!

I like how, in swapping the trade dress of these two products from two non-competing categories, he creates a momentary confusion. Although not the same sort of “confusion in the mind of the consumer” that motivated Philip Morris when they took King Mountain Cigarette Company to court earlier this year:

Philip Morris claims that the appearance of King Mountain’s packaging is a close copy or imitation of its Marlboro packaging such that consumers are both actually and likely to be confused, that Philip Morris’s Marlboro trademark is infringed and diluted, and alleges that its reputation is tarnished. King Mountain, on the other hand, argues that its packaging depicts Mt. Adams—known as “Pahto” in the Yakama Nation—a mountain of spiritual and cultural significance to the Yakama Tribe and that any resemblance to Philip Morris’s packaging is inadvertent and incidental. King Mountain applied to register its package design but the USPTO refused registration, citing two of Philip Morris’s registrations.

via Seattle Trademark Lawyer

Regarding Campbell’s and Marlboro, there’s little likelihood of any confusion (under ordinary circumstances) because they are sold in different, non-competing product categories. But they are similar...

Perhaps the most successful package redesign of all time was that done for Marlboro cigarettes in 1955 by the designer Frank Gianninoto. The Marlboro cigarette had existed previously in a white pack covered with weak graphic elements and a lot of copy. It was associated with women, at a time when buyers of filter cigarettes were most likely to be women. But filters were beginning to catch on with men too, and the redesign was prompted by the desire of Philip Morris, the tobacco company, to have a filter cigarette that would appeal to all. Gianninoto’s simplification was, in fact, very like the Campbell’s soup can— red on top, white on the bottom, with a coat of arms that like Campbell’s gold medal, tends to disappear. The white meets the red as an arrow pointing upward, a very simple graphic device visible on even the snowiest television set.

Marlboro Country Was Once No Man’s Land
By Thomas Hine, NY Times, Sunday, April 16, 1995

Interestingly, it was Gianninoto’s firm, Gianninoto Associates, that in 1999 altered the iconic Campbell’s packaging that Marlboro’s packaging most resembled. (See: After 102 Years, Campbell Alters Soup Labels)

Another thing that I like about Goran’s picture is how the two packaging shapes (can and box) work together like fraternal twins. (Sort of like this can-shaped product packaged in a box.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

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...)