box vox

Hyperbolic Package Design(a potato sack and a couple of beer cans)

“I wore a certain red dress to a party at the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a beautiful dress. It cost a fortune. I got it at I. Magnin’s. It was a copy of a French original. But one lady columnist wrote that I was cheap and vulgar in it and I would have looked better in a potato sack.”

Marilyn Monroe interviewed by Pete Martin
Pete Martin Calls on Forty of the Most Fascinating and Controversial Celebrities of Hollywood and Broadway

In answer to the highlighted hyperbole above, Monroe’s agent, Johnny Hyde, “promptly went down to L.A.’s warehouse district, got a couple of sacks, and had some photos taken of her wearing one.” (via)

This story is very similar to the story of how Jasper Johns came to create his cast bronze, “Ale Cans” sculpture, based on a crack that Willem DeKooning once made about art dealer, Leo Castelli ...

“Somebody told me that Bill de Kooning said that you could give that son-of-a-bitch two beer cans and he could sell them. I thought, what a wonderful idea for a sculpture.”

Jasper Johns
As quoted in “Jasper Johns” by Richard Francis

It’s telling that, in both of these rather backhanded hyperbolic statements, the packaging represents the lowest imaginable thing. A potato sack. A couple of beer cans.

The idea of taking a hyberbolic statement and running with it (as Johnny Hyde and Jasper Johns did) accomplishes two things. It paradoxically proves the point and exposes the fallacy behind it. Burlap bags are not fashionable. Or are they? Beer cans are not fine art. Or are they?

I wonder if a similar rhetorical strategy could be used in package design?

For example, someone could say something like, “Acme Widgets could come packed in a pickle jar and they would still outsell their competitors!” A culturally-savy package designer might then design a category-disrupting “pickle jar pack” for widgets.

The package would still be the scapegoat of the story—(the lowly, loathsome pickle jar)—but the hero of the story would be Acme’s wonderful widgets whose virtues somehow win out despite everything.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Modular Wine Bottle Desk Lamp

“Built-in interlocking joints and partially biodegradable materials... The reusable carrying case transforms into an energy-efficient LED desk lamp, using your empty wine bottle as a stand.”

from Miniwiz

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

 

Pet Food Package Design: Die Cut Paw Prints

Similar “paw print” shaped windows on different brands of pet food.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Shapeshifting Diet Pepsi Can

Pepsi has fattened up its diet “skinny” can with a redesign that aims, perhaps, to distance itself from a controversy that bubbled up earlier this year.

The Independent, September 14, 2011

But if Diet Pepsi’s “skinny” can embodied a negative “body image” message, then how are consumers to interpret such an abrupt change from tall, skinny cans to short, fat cans?

Now that soda cans are understood to be proxies for our own body shapes, this drastic change of shape surely carries with it a subliminal message about Yo-yo dieting and weight cycling. (Or, perhaps, height-cycling since both 250 ml cans above would actually weigh about the same.)

See also: Beverage Brand & Body Image

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Wood Framed Bottles

“Framing the product” might be one definition of what a retail package is supposed to do—providing an appropriate and complementary setting, both to contain and to display a product.

Taking this metaphor literally, these bottles are circumscribed by a signifying wooden frame. While a glass bottle by itself could clearly do the job of containing, the frame draws additional attention, setting it apart from the other bottles on the shelf. Framing the bottle as if it were a work of art or a tromp l'oile representation of a bottle (rather than a real bottle).

The effect is minimal and modern, although some might argue that adding gratuitous elements to an otherwise functional container is not really modern... That a bottle alone is more minimal and that a signifying frame is retrograde and redundant. Like drawing a line around a building. Or UNDERLINING a word that is already in capital letters.

Still, these are not ornate frames, so they are modern and minimal in that sense.

1. DSquared²’s “He-Wood” (top, left) is a fragrance bottle. Most bottles with wooden frames seem to be fragrance bottles, the idea being to visually frame a olfactory product. (via)

2. With Camarc, Ltd.’s wooden box for James Martin’s—(shown at top, on right)—the idea is to visually frame a gustatory product.

Manufactured in a limited quantity and hand-assembled this wood gift box for JAMES MARTIN'S Fine and Rare 20 year old is made with a frame of solid pine and rigid cardboard.

The wood frame also serves as display case for Point Of Sale. A magnetic system in the wood frame holds the bottle in place.

(Other wood framed bottles, after the fold...)

Vademecum

Four more things about the Swedish toothpaste brand, Vademecum, whose “toothpaste key” commercial we featured on Wednesday...

1. Photo above shows their use of an actor in an anthropomorphic packaging costume in a 1930 advertising campaign. via (See also: Hy-Jen Toothpaste)

2. In 1938 Mickey Mouse also promoted Vademecum. Here he is holding a tube of Vademecum toothpaste, saying something in Swedish about the product to Minnie Mouse. Note: logo is up-side-down. (Swedish comic strip panel via: The Daily War Drum)

(Two more things, after the fold...)

Mixing Toothpaste Brands

Steve Vigneau’s 2008 experiment in which he combined expired sample tubes of competing toothpaste brands, Colgate & Crest...

Reminiscent of Ciprian Muresan’s video “Choose” (in which his son pours equal parts of Coke & Pepsi into one glass and then drinks it) — Vigneau’s project also combines competing products in an inseparable mixture. 

“I stirred it all together, found that a spoon will almost stand up in it, then put some on my toothbrush and brushed my teeth with it.”

Here, however, the colorful bowl of toothpaste trumps any corporate rivalry between Colgate and Crest. It’s more like a lesson in subtractive color theory using admixtures of artificial coloring.

How does it all taste when they’re mixed together? [Colgate Total Advanced Fresh Gel and 10 different varieties of Crest]

“This multi-sample toothpaste concoction didn’t taste bad, but was overwhelmingly mint backed by a few other unidentifiable herbs.”

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

4 Toothpaste Keys

And speaking of toothpaste tubes and human endeavor ...

This Vademecum Toothpaste commerical (#1) about Svend Vademecum III, his research and subsequent discovery is rather relevant. (Note: You have to follow the link to YouTube to actually watch this video. It’s not the embeddable kind.)

The take away from seeing this vintage commercial is that there have been earlier attempts to address the shortcomings of the toothpaste tube. The Vademecum commercial looks to me like it’s from the 1960’s, but a similar “compression key” also appears in this 1909 ad (#2) for Dr Sheffield’s Crême Dentifrice (via)...

There was also a sterling silver Tiffany’s toothpaste tube key (#3)...

Which raises the question: How many dollars should one pay for a tool that saves pennies? Although, as suggested by Daniel’s comment from the previous post — (about fugality “...to the point of pathology”) — consumer purchases are sometimes compulsive — more subject to psychoanalysis than to cost/benefit analysis. (See also: Dooby Brain)

(Our 4th and final toothpaste key, after the fold...)

Toothpaste Tube Squeezers & Human Endeavor

At Eastpack this Summer we met Ray Liberatore who showed us the “EZ Squeeze Tube.” Having recently broached the subject of consumers actually cutting open their toothpaste tubes (in order to get what they paid for) now seems like a good a time to take a look at Liberatore’s package-improving product.

Tube squeezers are one of those inventions that point up the inadequacy of a certain kind package. Up until the invention of the can opener, cans were being opened with knives and rocks. (See: Early Can Opener Patents)

The toothpaste tube has provided a similar inspiration for human endeavor. Consider the range of patented ideas shown above, invented between 1919 and 2010.

Although they make a reusable consumer product (inset above right) Liberatore’s real innovation is in proposing that such a device should not just be a packaging accessory, but an integral part of the package. Not such an outlandish proposal considering how adverse many consumers are to wasting even a small amount of something they’ve purchased. What’s more frustrating than a package with inaccessible contents?

(More patent illustrations of toothpaste tube squeezers, after the fold...)

Polyhedral Light Bulb Packaging(Structural Package Design Patent from 1970)

Bryon L. Lessar’s octahedral “Package for Light Bulbs” was patented in 1972.

(First page of Lessar’s patent appears, after the fold...)

Cutting Open Toothpaste Tubes

While researching the previous post, I happened to see this photo on CopyRanter which reminded me of those earlier toothpaste tube dissections we admired in 2009.

I was wondering how this tube was cut apart so cleanly when I found the photos below, clearly showing that it is by freezing a tube of toothpaste, that this is acomplished.

The motivation for cutting up the toothpaste tubes above appears to be intellectual curiosity. (About the stripes.) But consumers are cutting up toothpaste tubes for other reasons, as well.

While manufacturers have stealthily shrunk packaging capacity, many consumers, desperate to get everything they can out of the package, have resorted to scissors.

Addressing the need to get every bit of the toothpaste out of the tube, Guo Lili proposes adding a nick (for tearing) to the base of a conventional toothpaste tube — giving the package a sort of Achilles heel.

In contrast to the simplicity of this design, consider the complexity of Crest’s “Neat Squeeze” container below, invented in 1989 by Van Coney.

(Neat Squeeze, after the fold...)

Don Poynter’s Cocktail in a Toothpaste Tube

Scotch whiskey flavored toothpaste tube and carton via Whiskey Wednesday

A follow up to our 2009 post about cosmonauts with vodka in toothpaste tubes... I figured it was high time we brushed up on the subject of six proof toothpaste.

I like the argyle-patterned branding of these 1950s alcoholic-beverage flavored toothpastes from Poynter Products. I also like the cross-category referencing of sideways bottles on the box and the tube. (Note how the bottle silhouettes are pointing in the opposite direction from the business end of the toothpaste tube.)

Invented by founder Don Poynter, these novelty toothpastes really did contain a small amount of their corresponding flavors. (Scotch, Bourbon, Rye...)

Examples of Poynter’s advertising for these products appear on the right. (Top right photo from Michael Dietsch’s Flickr Photostream; lower right photo from DigitalObjectsArchivist)

Photo of 1954 Rye whiskey flavored toothpaste tube and carton (via: Etsy)

These products enjoyed a brief but heady run for their novelty and amusement value. Poynter appeared on “What’s My Line?” in 1956.

Photo by Wallace Kirkland from Life Magazine, 1955

Soon there there were jokes about the product appearing in print...

An extensive test of a new whiskey-flavored toothpaste was made, comparing it with a control group using a similar formula, but without the whiskey-flavored ingredient. Researchers found that those using the whiskey-flavored toothpaste brushed their teeth after each meal, including lunch at work, — and — as many as fourteen other times during the day. The results showed that these people — using the special whiskey-flavored toothpaste — had twenty-one percent more cavities but they couldn’t care less!

Pit & Quarry, Volume 57, 1965

But as outlandish as the product concept was, Poynter was really not the first to think of it. Joan Blondell’s 1935 film “Traveling Saleslady” had posited exactly this sort of product line.

Still from “Traveling Saleslady” — (I’m guessing that’s a tube of “Cocktail Toothpaste” in her hand)

The latest in the Warner Brothers series of commercial comedies tells how Joan Blondell combines her charm with Hugh Herbert’s inventive genius and wrecks the toothpaste market. Being no admirer of the orthodox dentifrice flavors, this reporter considered that both Mr. Herbert and Miss Blondell deserved to succeed with their Cocktail Toothpaste. A whisky flavor for a morning pick-me-up, a Martini flavor for the hour before dinner, and a champagne flavor at bedtime ought to help the disposition as well as the teeth. Miss Blondell thought so too, and so did her clientele. The big out-of-town buyers were, in fact, so delighted with the new product that they bought it on its own merits, and did not lose their tempers when Miss Blondell declined their invitations to dinner.

Andre Sennwald, 1935 NY Times Movie Review

Again, publicity about this movie mostly played the product concept for laughs, little suspecting that in two decades the market would (for a time) embrace the concept.

Cocktail Toothpaste: For years and years, starting way back around 1929, we have advocated the use of various cocktail, cordial and wine flavors in tooth paste. It remained for First National Pictures to recognize the value of this contribution to the marvels of merchandising and to make use of it in a movie, “Traveling Salesladies.” Many of those who have seen this picture and who are no admirers of the orthodox tooth paste flavors have commented very favorably upon the Cocktail Tooth paste which the entrepreneurs of this cinema market throughout the country.

Drug and Cosmetic Industry, Volume 36, 1935

(Some competing cocktail-flavored toothpastes, after the fold)

Beautiful Breath: Package Design & Trade Dress Drag

On left: Rigaud’s 1915 Un Air Embaumé packaging; on right: Marcel Duchamp’s 1921 Eau de Voilette bottle

“Duchamp created this “perfume readymade” from an empty bottle of a Rigaud perfume called Un Air Embaumé (Scented  Air) that had been designed by Julien Viard, a sculptor who was known for creating perfume bottles with figural stoppers.”

Victoria Rose Pass
Strange Glamour:
Fashion and Surrealism in the Years between the World Wars

The advertisement above (from eBay) shows Viard’s original bottle design. (A sculptural detail on the side of the Un Air Embaumé bottle is shown on right.)

“Julien-Henri Viard, an award winning French sculptor, worked for his father, Clovis, from 1900 until the father’s death in 1927. Julien continued to run the glass workshop until 1938 when it merged with glass producer Depinoix. Julien is best known for his elegant perfume bottles with many examples surviving until today in collections world-wide.”

Selling Things Webstore

_______________________________

“... the versatility of Julien Viard is such that it is difficult to fit all his work with a single type... a huge variety of containers, with exquisite patina and perfect finishes.”

Museu del Perfum

“Belle Haleine: Eau de Voilette (Beautiful Breath: Veil Water) is the amusing title Marcel Duchamp gave to a work of art that he made — with the assistance of Man Ray — in the spring of 1921. At first glance, it appears to be little more than an ordinary perfume bottle, although readers of French might confuse it with a mouth wash, which, if consumed, would give them, as the label indicates, belle haleine (beautiful breath). We now know that in order to produce this work, Duchamp appropriated an actual bottle of perfume issued by the Rigaud Company of Paris in 1915 for Un air embaumé, the name given to the most popular and best-selling fragrance the perfumery had produced in its sixty-five year history. Advertisements for this product feature a scantily clad female model holding a bottle of the perfume below her nostrils, the essence of the liquid rendered visible as an undulating, ribbon-like shape floating through the air. The model is shown taking a deep breath, her eyes closed and head tilted slightly back, as if to suggest that the scent possess the qualities of an aphrodisiac, rendering powerless all who inhale its intoxicating vapors. It may have been precisely these qualities that attracted Duchamp to this particular brand of perfume, for he wished to draw attention to the woman whose features are depicted on the bottle, his newly introduced female alter-ego: Rose Sélavy.”

Francis M. Naumann
Christie’s, November 2008

Left: Julien Viard; center: Duchamp in drag (Rose Sélavy); right: Francesco Vezzoli, also in drag

(More about Francesco Vezzoli, after the fold...)

Honeycombs and Structural Package Design: More Ways of Taking Up Space

I recently received an email from an eminant mathematician, citing errors in a 2008 post in which I listed the 5 polyhedral shapes with regular faces that could be arranged in space-filling “honeycomb” configurations. I went back and reconsidered my earlier survey and realized that I had, indeed, made a mistake.

Although I was apparently correct about the number of space-filling polyhedrons with regular faces, one of the examples I gave did not belong in the set: the rhombic dodecahedron.

There are only five space-filling convex polyhedra with regular faces: the triangular prism, hexagonal prism, cube, truncated octahedron, and gyrobifastigium.

Wolfram MathWorld

If the point had been that all the faces be “regular,” I should have included the gyrobifastigium—two joined triangular prisms (above). The rhombic dodecahedron (below) while highly symmetrical with identically shaped (congruent) faces, did not fit the bill, since each of those faces was rhombus-shaped and therefore not regular.

Really, I should have just omitted “regular faces” as a requirement. For our purposes here, there’s nothing about the squares, equilateral triangles, regular hexagons, etc. that makes these five polyhedral shapes more suitable as packages. If the point had been that the packages should fit together with no space in between, there are many more than five examples. How many?

Being careful to avoid contributing any further to the misinformation on the internet... I would have to say, (based on what I read about space-filling polyhedra on Wolfram’s MathWorld site) that the number is in the 100s. At least.

Another space-filling polyhedron (with non-regular faces) that I like pretty well is the trapezo-rhombic dodecahedron.

I also like Ruggero Gabbrielli’s space-filling polyhedron below with 13 faces...

“A new space-filling polyhedron with 13 faces. Halfway between the rhombic dodecahedron and the truncated octahedron.”

There are also space-filling polyhedrons with concave portions that fit together in interesting, puzzle-like ways.

The Wolfram site mentions an attempt do a fuller reckoning of all the space-filling possibilites:

“In the period 1974-1980, Michael Goldberg attempted to exhaustively catalog space-filling polyhedra... more space-fillers have been found subsequently... A modern survey would be welcome.”

You know who would not be qualified to do a survey like that? ...

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Boxes with Diagonal Motif

I don’t have a good name for this effect. The rectangular sufaces of the top two boxes are more or less bisected into two triangles, which (depending on how these areas are colored) can create geometric “wrap-around” effects.

And the side panels of the “Stella in Two“ boxes by Made Thought are also divided by diagonal lines. (via)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Spectral Branding: Color as Part of the Larger Whole

Arda Kissoyan’s rebranding for “Salgado Grand Crus” chocolate uses color to differentiate between varieties. There’s been a lot of recent multicolor package design for chocolate product lines. (See also: Green & Black and 100% Chocolate Cafe)

As with other “Rainbow Array Packaging” (as well as the PANTONE products we were recently looking at) the full effect is in seeing the entire product range. One product by itself is is just one color, but all together they add up to the whole visible spectrum.

In this way, using color as a differentiator is a similar to the “incomplete” package design idea we were looking at yesterday. One might even say that any single color, by itself, is incomplete. A visual need for color completion might tend encourage a consumer to purchase the whole set. Or maybe one just hopes that a favorite color package contains a favorite flavor.

I was also intrigued by Kissoyan’s flavor diagram on the back of these packs...

“The package also contains extensive information about the product and its origin, and graphs representing the aroma descriptors (tasting notes) and the intensity in the mouth (taste intensity) of each type of cocoa.”

Attempting to map flavors on Cartesian coordinates, this chart looks quite a bit like charts mapping color gamut. (See inset on right)

The idea of that colors and flavors are somehow analogous is very reminiscent of color synesthesia which has its own implications for package design.

(Some additional photos of Kissoyan’s package design for “Salgado Grand Crus,” after the fold...)

Cigarettes & Cat Food

“Some people with NSRED [nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder] have even been known to eat cigarettes and cat food.”

TheStressOfLife.com

______________________________________________________

The Broward Sheriff’s Office said Thursday it was looking for two men suspected of burglarizing more than a dozen vehicles in Parkland.

Deputies said the men are suspected of breaking into a man’s Cadillac in Parkland on July 1 and stealing a wrist watch and a credit card. The suspects then went on a shopping spree at a CVS pharmacy in Boca Raton, buying cat food and cigarettes, authorities said.

Sun Sentinel, 2007

______________________________________________________

“He draped a black sheet over the picture window in his bedroom and did not answer the phone. He went out only to buy cigarettes and cat food, wearing a black sweatshirt, the hood pulled down over his eyes.”

Mental Health: The Profession Tests Its Limits
By Erica Goode and Emily Eakin
NY Times, September 11, 2002

For people in a certain demographic group we’ll call “cat-loving smokers,” these two items —cigarettes & cat food— form their most pared down, irreducible shopping list of basic necessities.

The cigarette packs and cat food cans pictured above, however, are shown together, not because my shopping list has come to that, but because they are each examples of “incomplete package design” — packages that may look a little incomplete by themselves, but are designed to form a larger whole when combined.

1. Cigarettes

 These, of course, are the same Winston cigarette packages that we were wondering about yesterday. We now know that these were designed in 1997 by Kevin Flatt as a Senior Designer for Duffy.

The packaging was featured at length in the July 1997 issue of “Caravan” the in-house magazine of R.J.Renolds.

“The new packaging style carries the traditional Winston family fonts and red-white-red color scheme, but takes on a contemporary feel with a wraparound pack.”

via: Tobacco Documents Online

2. Cat Food

Milton Glaser’s extensive redesign for Grand Union (1970s though 1980s) included the cat food box (above, left) in which cropped cat photos on the front of the boxes, combined to form whole cats when displayed in a group. (See inset photo on right from: The Graphic Designer’s Guide to Clients)

“...some fun with partial images that relies upon store workers to line up the boxes correctly.”

A Grand Union, Beth Kleber
October 6, 2010
Container List, Glaser Archives

Grand Union’s canned cat food, also included some fun with partial images. The pet food packaging on right is from the portfolio of Blake Waldman (Paperkut Design) who was a Junior Designer at Milton Glaser, Inc. from 1989-1990.

Waldman also designed a 2002 version of the Winston wrap-around pack called the “Evo flask.” See: Winston debuts ‘flask’ pack

(And apropo of nothing: Yogi Berra on Camel Cigarettes and Puss ’n Boots Cat Food, after the fold...)

Winnowing Down the Winston Logo

Not sure what year these cigarette packs are from. The truncated typography struck me as a similar package design idea to the recent Turner Duckworth soda can with cropped Diet Coke logo that we were discussing a couple of weeks ago.

Probably not accidental that the portion of the Winston logo that shows here, also happens to spell the word “win.” All of these cigarette packs seem to also come in an italicized version. I have no idea what, if anything, the italic version of this logo might indicate about the product. Other than suggesting Winston’s “winning” forward momentum.

Photos above are from Cigarettepedia. Photo on right is from Roswell62’s Flickr Photostream.

(Some earlier Winston typography, after the fold...)

Banks Beer Cigarette Pack Radio

One of these Things is Not Like the Others

This collection of cigarette pack radios includes a changling. Although the all of the radios above appears to be flip-top crush-proof cigarette boxes, “Banks” is actually a beer brand. (via: AntiqueRadios.com forums)

(Banks Beer bottles, etc., after the fold..)

Winston Cigarette Pack Radio

In 2009 we did a round up of package shaped transistor radios, which incuded a Marlboro Cigarettes radio. Here now is another vintage, cigaratte-pack-shaped, transistor radio. This time the brand is Winton. (via: Hakes.)

Cigarette radios, generally came packaged in a slightly larger “crush proof box” ... a fake pack of cigarettes containing a fake pack of cigarettes.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design