Originally developed as a functional pattern (as opposed to a decorative pattern) camouflage might seem an odd choice for product packaging since the pattern is meant to conceal.
Usually product packages are designed to attract attention so it’s striking when a package is designed to disappear into the background. Of course, the environment of store shelves is quite different from outdoor environments. So what blends into the background in the desert sands might actually be quite conspicuous at the grocery store. And vice versa.
Probably the point of using camo in this context has more to do with masculine connotations of hunting and military service than in concealment.
Miller Brewing had this to says about it’s limited edition camouflage packaging:
“Miller High Life is again honoring its century-old connection with the outdoors by introducing limited-edition, camouflaged packaging and cans of Miller High Life and Miller High Life Light.”
Clown time continues with some clown-related jars from Etsy: a handmade clown cookie jar(yours, for $64.00) and “12 Vintage Clown Cupcake Toppers in Vintage Jar” (sold).
My early childhood was spent in Sarasota, Florida, home of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College.
While clowns have been culturally waning for some time now, in those days, there was a show called “Circus Boy” on television (starring a young Micky Dolenz who grew up to become the Monkee‘s drummer) and there were lots of circus-themed packages at the grocery store. Not yet scary, clowns were still considered a good way to market children’s cereals.
“Shrine” (I’ve also seen this painting titled as “Bar”) 2006, 68x40 oil and mixed media on canvas
Dan Witz(mentioned in yesterday’s post) was one of several roommates that I shared a low-ceilinged, South Street Seaport loft with in the late 1970s.
I like his paintings of liquor bottles. The one above from 2006 seems to have two different titles: “Bar” and “Shrine.” His later liquor bottle paintings from 2010 seem to have combined these two titles into “Bar Shrine.”
I can find nothing online to suggest that it’s intentional, but the painting above looks like a skull to me. A subliminal vanitas symbol for a splendid array of liquor choices? (Death-as-bartender: “Name your poison!”)
Bar Shrine #2 Triptych, 2010, 56" x 84" oil and digital media on canvas
(One more “Bar Shrine” painting, after the fold...)
Ron English is the artist who created the zipper/banana album cover mash-up that we wrote about last January.
More recently he’s been doing some cereal box package design (i.e.: art) which he’s been shopdropping into supermarkets. These “popaganda” food repacks are subversive in the same dumb sort of way that Wacky Packages were: creating momentary consumer confusion and adding a satiric, negative spin to trademarked food brands.
Some commentators have taken the cereal series as nutritional agitprop in opposition of childhood obesity. I’m not sure that English’s agenda is so politically correct, but I could be wrong.
The fun part of shopdropping, however, is when consumers puzzle over the aberrant branding messages and, in some cases, blithely purchase them.
Part of the reason I prefer not think that English’s messaging is sincerely literal is the “Sugar Diabetic Bear” below, which in my (diabetic) view is amusing, but not entirly accurate. Yes, Type 2 diabetes can be brought on by obesity, but what about Type 1 diabetes? Eating sugar certainly didn’t cause my diabetes. (See: Diabetes Myths)
(One more thing about Ron English and diabetes, after the fold...)
1. Bottles with beach glass on the inside like the “Beach Glass Mix in an Old Milk Bottle” on the left from Rocknotes’ Etsy store. ($18.95)
2. Bottles with beach glass on the outside like the 2006 “Beach Glass 40 of Olde E” on the right by Mike Leavitt with beach glass glued to an Olde English 800 malt liquor bottle. (The label is painted on.)
Upper left: Sterling silver “Spray Can Nozzle” pendant from Solitary Man ($255); upper right: Nozzle Necklace w/ Krylon logo cut out of a can by Jaymeer, 1997 (see also: Silver Nozzle); lower left: Hand-made clogged nozzle necklace by Steven Jacobs ($15); lower right: Sterling silver “Tag’n Run” necklaces—with and without diamond from Red Sofa ($65)
Some packaging jewelry of a very specific type: necklaces made from spray paint can nozzles.
On left: “liquidated” Coca Cola logo by Zevs; center: a recently discontinued Coke can; on right: Zoo’s package design for Rubén Álvarez yogurt.
The first time I saw the seasonal Coca Cola can above was from a distance of about 3 yards (2.75 m). I was in the back of the supermarket by the meat cases when I noticed some cans with what appeared to be dripping white frosting (or melting glacial ice?) on display in a Coca Cola end cap.
I left my shopping cart where it was and crossed over for a closer look. Not drips at all, but just the negative space behind some polar bears on a silver ridge.
Maybe I’m predisposed to seeing dripping graphics everywhere, but, even if this optical illusion is unintentional, a dripping white package does seem in keeping with Coca Cola’s frosty, cold gestalt. And, to my eyes, the white ink comes to the foreground and the silver metal of the can is the more natural background.
None of this matters much in the face of another negative controversy. The package design was intended to be part of Coke’s “cause marketing” effort to protect the polar bear, but this message is being overshadowed by the problem of diabetic consumer confusion.
“I purchased three six-packs because I thought they were diet,” Gail O’Donnell of Danvers, Massachusetts, told ABC News.
“I drank one and wondered why it tasted so good. I didn’t look at the can. … I am a diabetic and can only drink diet sodas. They need to make it so it is not confused.”
Coca Cola has therefore discontinued production of the white can, switching back to last year’s red version. So diabetics (like me) won’t get confused and drink regular, caloric Coke by mistake, screwing up their blood sugar.
Come to think of it, the red can looks a little like dripping blood.
These Nabisco boxes caught my eye at the supermarket for a few reasons...
a. They seem to be trompe l’oeil renditions of wrapped tray packaging—as if we were seeing the inner packs through a layer of Cellophane.
b. As such, they also suggest orthographic packaging, where the contents of a box are projected onto the side panels. I don’t really know how these packets are arranged within, but it appears they are not accurately projected on all sides.
c. Since the package design relies on illustrations of the inner packs to communicate its contents, there is an odd repetition of information when the carton contains only one type of packet. This repetition strikes me as almost Warholian. One box looks like a stack of three. Each box, a microcosm of a stacked supermarket display. The effect is more conventional (less repetitive) when the box contains a variety.
The similarity of Nike’s and Newport’s logo has been well noted. Not a problem between the two companies when shoes and cigarettes are clearly separate industries. But when they get mashed up together, as with Ari Foreman’s 2008 “Ari Menthol” shoes, and are packaged in an oversized flip-top cigarette shoe box...
The Newport symbol, first used in 1969, is called their “spinnaker” logo. Think: sailboats, wind, respiration. (See also: square-rigged sail logo of Banks Beer)
The Nike symbol (their “swoosh” logo) was designed in 1971 by Carolyn Davidson. Think: curvy checkmark, fluid motion, sports.
Yesterday we looked at four makers of (adult-sized) cardboard shoes. Today we consider another ephemeral shoemaker, Catherine McEver (a.k.a. Rubblearium), whose handmade baby shoes were made from a variety of improbable materials.
Pictured above are shoes made out of emory cloth, cigarette pack foil, a sewing pattern, metal screen, sand paper and carbon paper.
... creations I made for a little art book called “All My Little Shoes,” an experiment in materials from gold mesh to meat.
McEver recommends viewing these photos whilst listening to the Everley Brothers singing “Put My Little Shoes Away” which I am enabling you to do here...
We’ve touched on the shoebox-as-shoe concept in he past, but shoes made out of cardboard may be a broader trend in its own right.
What should we call the practitioners of this craft? Cardboard shoemakers? Cardboard cobblers? Cardboard cordwainers? Whatever name we give it, I have 4 examples...
“One of our strengths lies in understanding and implementing experiential design — that is, how people actually use and interact with a package. Man One Design asked us to apply that expertise to provide a vision for paint delivery systems that suit the needs of street artists,” said Scott Jost, Berlin Packaging Vice President of Innovation and Design. “These ideas open a dialogue that can help pave the way for equipping graffiti artists with better tools.”
“Street art is becoming an increasingly popular vehicle for brands to connect with younger consumers, but artists are limited by the capabilities of the conventional spray can. We asked Studio One Eleven to take an exploratory journey with us to think differently about the spray can and suggest ways to improve can performance,” said Scott Power, Managing Principal, Man One Design. “Our goal with the ‘Paint the Future’ showcase is to inspire and facilitate packaging innovation by asking a professional artist and heavy utilizer of spray paint like Man One what he wants and needs from a spray can to create his artwork. This is a path to discover new and meaningful value that translates into strategic opportunities for paint manufacturers.”
3. Above: Three large sizes of the ale with the three-ring logo and three Xs.
4. An animated gif of a rotating carton of Ballantine XXX Ale. (on left, via)
5. An embossed tin sign with Ballantine Ale bottle “faux” bursting through background on right. (See also: History of the Graphic Burst)
6. We recently made rueful mention of “American exceptionalism.” Below: the beer version of that idea—a vintage ad that takes a patriotic pride in the endless hunt for “something better.”
...this hunt by energetic America for something better doesn’t stop with the big things... Among the many “better things,” and one not to be overlooked, is a moderate beverage, an ale in fact, that has been discovered and approved by many. So many that, in the land where the question “Is it better?” is on so many tongues, it has become America’s largest selling ale.
Texas-based llustrator, Eric Barclay, has an knack for finding a latent anthropomorphic character, hidden in the shape of most any package. Hence, two sizes of Coffee-mate become “Mr. Shackleton” and “Mr. Hudson” (above). Barclay confirms that his companionable characters are based on two famous explorers:
Mr. Shackleton is named after Earnest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. Mr. Hudson, the walrus, is named after Henry Hudson who encountered walruses on his explorations of Canada...
As far as the characters go, Shackleton is a herring magnate and Mr. Hudson is his driver and “heavy.” Mr. Hudson knows a lot of people at the horse track.
Other painted packages by Barclay include a plastic squeeze bottle of French’s Mustard, whose shape embodied a circus lion...
(Another container’s inner feline character revealed, after the fold...)
Last weekend we went to the second “Sneak Peek” for Freshkills Park. Naturally, there was some package-related stuff there, which I’m planning to feature in a few days. In the meantime, I’ve been wanting to post this film by Gordon Matta-Clark for a while now...
Fresh Kill 1972, 12:56 min, color, sound, 16 mm film
This film records the complete process of the destruction of Matta-Clark's truck (which he called "Herman Meydag") by a bulldozer in a rubbish dump. Part of 98.5, a compilation of films by Ed Baynard, George Schneemar and Charles Simons, this piece was shown in Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany.
Besides being an interesting conceptual art film in its own right, Fresh Kill provides an indelible “before” picture of the Staten Island landfill in the 1970s, before its ambitious makeover into parkland.
For a contrasting “after” picture, consider the photos below from last weekend’s “Sneak Peek.”
Today I’m learning more about the two photos he took that were each used as the cover photo for the Beatles’ “Yesterday and Today” LP.
I knew that both photos were sometimes there simultaneously, one on top of the other.
I first learned about the “butcher” cover in 1969 when was in 9th or 10th grade. Visiting Clarissa and her fraternal twin sister, Clara, I noticed that their copy of the Yesterday and Today album looked different from the one I had. The title font was the same (“Siegfried” by Dieter Steffmann) but the photo was different.
I was amazed to hear that, by peeling off the photo of the Beatles with the prop trunk, Clarissa had revealed the photo of the Beatles with the prop doll parts and raw meat, printed underneath.
She told me that it was some kind of censorship thing—that people had been offended by the raw meat in conjunction with the doll parts on the original cover.
I remember going straight home and peeling up a corner of the photo on my copy of the record and being pretty bummed out that I did not find any hidden raw meat.
Reaction was immediate, as Capitol received complaints from some dealers. The record was immediately recalled under orders from Capitol parent company EMI chairman Sir Joseph Lockwood ...
Capitol initially ordered plant managers to destroy the covers, and the Jacksonville plant delivered most of its copies to a landfill. However, faced with so many jackets already printed, Capitol decided instead to paste a much more conventional cover over the old ones. The new cover, featuring a picture of a less-than-content band posed around an open steamer trunk, had to be trimmed on the open end by about 3 mm (1/8 inch) because the new sheet, known as a “slick”, was not placed exactly “square” on top of the original cover. Tens of thousands of these so-called “Trunk” covers were sent out. As word of this manoeuvre became known to the public, owners of the altered cover attempted, usually unsuccessfully, to peel off the pasted-over cover, hoping to reveal the original image hidden beneath. Eventually, the soaring value and desirability of unpasted-over Butcher covers spurred the development of intricate and complex techniques for peeling the Trunk cover off in such a way that only faint horizontal glue lines remained on the original cover...
What surprises me now, is to learn the extent to which a whole cottage industry with special terminology has sprung up around this minor branding fiasco and the concealed album covers.
Copies that have never had the white cover pasted onto them, known as “first state” covers, are very rare and command the highest prices. Copies with the pasted-on cover intact above the butcher image are known as “second state” or “pasteovers”; today, pasteover covers that have remained unpeeled are also becoming increasingly rare and valuable. Covers that have had the Trunk cover removed to reveal the underlying butcher image are known as “third state” covers; these are now the most common (and least valuable, although their value varies depending on how well the cover is removed) as people continue to peel second state covers. The most valuable and highly prized First and Second State Butcher Covers are those that were never opened and remain still sealed in their original shrink wrap. Since the first documented collector’s sale of a mono Butcher cover LP in 1974, which fetched US $457.00, the value of first state mono versions has consistently appreciated by around 100% per year.
In 1987, former president of Capitol Records, Alan Livingston released for sale twenty-four “first state” butcher covers from his private collection. When the original cover was scrapped in June 1966, Livingston took a case of already-sealed “Butcher” albums from the warehouse before they were to be pasted over with the new covers, and kept them in a closet at his home. These albums were first offered for sale at a Beatles convention at the Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving weekend 1987 by Livingston’s son. These still-sealed pristine items, which included nineteen mono and five stereo versions, are the very rarest “pedigree” specimen “Butcher Covers” in existence. These so-called “Livingston Butchers” today command premium prices among collectors, the five stereo versions being the most rare and valuable of these. In April 2006, Heritage Auction Galleries sold one of the sealed mono “Livingston Butchers” at auction in Dallas for about $39,000.
There are also websites specifically devoted to devotees of this record cover — thebutchercover.com, for example.
(More photos from Robert Whitaker’s “butcher” session, after the fold...)
“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.”
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.”
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.
“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.
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