box vox

Ron English: Popaganda Shopdropping

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...)

Coca Cola’s Dripping Negative Space

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.”

Coke and Diet Coke Cans Should Be Polar Opposites, Buyers Say

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.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Wrench Shaped Tin Box

WrenchMints come in a “Wrench Shaped Tin Box” designed and patented by company founder, Eddy Rubin.

It first struck me as an oddly oblique concept for a mints package to be wrench shaped, but once I saw their tag-line —“When your breath is broken ... fix it!” — I could appreciate the craftsmanship of its inner logic.

(Rubin’s design patent and one more thing, after the fold...)

Uncapped Landfill Bottle #2

Some vintage medial waste found on the beach at Dead Horse Bay:

1. An injectable medicine vial (shaped just like my insulin bottles, only a litle bigger) with a script “L” on the bottom, identifying its source as Eli Lilly—(again, the same company that manufactures my insulin today). But, who knows what injectable drug this bottle once contained?

2. Part of a huge 20cc glass syringe with Luer-Lok branding. Luer-Lok is Becton, Dickinson’s trademarked name for cofounder, Fairleigh S. Dickinson’s patented hypodermic syringe connection system. No sign of the needle or the plunger.

The contents now washing out of this eroding landfill preceeded the AIDS epidemic by about three decades. So no worries there. Although, as one person familiar with the area put it, “Don’t get too comfortable handling it. The 1950’s were the worst for chemical dumping in our country’s history. The garbage from the 1850’s [on the other hand] is deep in the middle under the airport.”

Not that you can’t find more recent medical waste on a New York City beach. Just last April, Debby (my partner at Beach Packaging Design) found a relatively fresh vial of blood on South Beach. (photo on right)

This more contempory bit of medical waste still had its label showing the source to have been Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.

As suggested by its name, “Franklin Lakes” has lakes and is not adjacent to an ocean. This blood vial, therefore, did not float all the way to Lower New York Bay from one of Franklin Lake’s lakes. Not without some illegal human intervention.

But I digress. Here’s what my 20cc Luer-Lok syringe probably looked like when it was still intact...

(See also: Diabetic Packaging, Early Insulin Packaging and Color-Coded Bloodstream)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

2 Recent Syringe Packs: Syreen & Cimzia

Following this week’s injectable theme... here are two recent syringe/packaging designs worth noting.

1. Syreen
The photo above shows is Cambridge Consultants’ “Syreen” concept: a new, supposedly more sustainable syringe design. From their press release:

Cambridge Consultants unveils innovative concept for high-quality prefilled syringe, cutting volume of a typical pack in half...

...its novel pre-filled syringe concept ‘Syreen.’  A revolutionary ‘green’ syringe design...

Instead of glass, Syreen syringes are made with COP (cyclic olefin polymer) plastic, which has enabled Cambridge Consultants to shed the need for secondary packaging altogether, a first in this medical device arena.  The makeup of the Syreen allows syringes to clip together, nesting in a pack while the COP design doubles as the outer shell of the packaging itself.  The Syreen therefore eliminates the need for wasteful fillers such as cardboard and styrofoam...

“We found that typical glass syringes use many materials from all over the world and that shipping costs are egregious due to inefficiencies in packaging...”

This surprised me to read because I was under the impression that glass syringes (which the Syreen is claiming to improve upon) were already a thing of the past. A time-line published on Core77 flatly states that in 1960 “The use of disposable plastic syringe becomes widespread, permanently replacing all-glass syringes.” But it turns out that’s not quite right. While it’s true that glass syringes have been largely displaced by plastic, for certain applications glass, even now, is deemed preferable.

Manufacturers need to eliminate any interaction between drugs and packaging materials...

Glass syringes have typically been used in the pre-filled syringes sector because of their high chemical resistance and low moisture permeability. The barrier properties of glass make it the ideal package for parenteral products and it has always been considered less reactive than plastic with parenteral products, having lower levels of leachables and extractables.

Are Pre-Filled Syringes the Future?
Asian Hospital & Healthcare Management Magazine

The idea that a prefilled syringe becomes a package in itself, however, makes a lot of sense in that it eliminates the need for vials. As a package, however, the Syreen, like any prefilled syringe is still a single-use, disposable item*. (Yes, recyclable, but only if all of the right recycling systems are in place to accept these materials where you live.)

2. Cimzia^®
The second syringe pack is OXO’s Cimzia^®, below.

(More about Cimzia^® Packaging, after the fold...)

Medtronic Makeover

We’ve covered diabetic supplies packaging and Medtronic branding before. Having recently noticed that the 10-pack cartons for Paradigm insulin pump “reservoirs” have undergone a package redesign, I thought a “before & after” might be in order. Small “before” photo, on left; large “after” photo, at top of page)

First thing I noticed—and it’s a strike against the earlier package—was that it was very hard to match up the fronts with the backs, mainly because, with the old carton, it was difficult to say for certain which side was the front and which side was the back. Both cartons appear to use the same die-line, but things have been switched around. (Where the tear-off strip used to be at the bottom, it is now at the top.)

The new carton uses blue rather than purple as a second ink color. They went with a photo of the reservoir/syringe rather than the previous diagrammatic illustration. All the technical info, address, UPC, etc. is now confined to one side which is unambiguously the back. No more lifestyle photo, which I’m fine with. (I had earlier questioned the purpose of ‘lifestyle’ photography on their device packaging since it’s not as if insulin pumps or their supplies are point of-purchase consumer products.)

One mysterious element that I didn’t, at first, understand: the 1-2-3 trash can symbol.  Initially I assumed that the numbers, 1 and 2 were each contained in a symbol representing the Sof-Set blister packaging below. Sof-Set “Infusion Sets” are compatible with (and connect to) the reservoir syringes contained in the new carton, so it’s reasonable to imagine that there might be some reference to them on this package, but what could it mean? Throw away your empty infusion-set packs? In my 2008 post about diabetic supplies packaging I had lamented the amount of diabetic trash I was compelled to produce. But why two infusion-set packs? These things are used one-at-a-time, so throwing away two of them together makes no sense...

 

(Medtronic mystery, solved, 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

Brendan Coyle's Mortal Coil Pack

It may be a symptom of my own obsessive marginalia, but after attending the “Verfall: Decadence and Decay” show this summer (curated by Ginger Shulick) the piece that really stuck with me was artist/performance artist, Brendan Coyle’s polybagged vampire teeth (upper left) with an “Eternal Life” religious tract as the header card. According to Coyle, “It was kind of like a visual caption or accompanying piece” to his larger “Candy Corpse”—(a candy-colored crime scene with high-fructose body parts, licorice string viscera and packaging evidence of candy & cigarette consumption).

What I like so much about the ‘eternal life’ polybag, is the logic and simplicity of the combination. Summing up in one gesture all that is hopeful, yet creepy about immortality. (Brendan Coyle’s mortal/immortal-coil pack.) It also set me to thinking about the hackneyed graphics of religious tracts, in general, and I even found a nice Flickr Set of them: here —(including a Spanish version of the one Coyle used.

The “sugar power” sugar cube is a bit of “found” packaging that Coyle had incorporated into an earlier performance piece and suggestive of yet another good area of arcane packaging exploration: the sugar cube.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

IlliteRAT with Alpha-bits

IlliteRAT ©1976 David Wilder (starring my pet rat, Lucky)

Not the first time we’ve mentioned rats (or mice) here on box vox and, as previously disclosed, I myself, once had a pet rat. Given to me by another rodent-loving classmate at RISD, “Lucky” played a starring role in my friend, David Wilder’s video, illiteRAT. Hadn’t seen this tape in over 30 years, but I think its conceptual rigor still holds up.

And it was nice for me to see the little feller again, after all this time. (I don’t really remember what the cereal box looked like that Lucky’s Alpha-bits came in. Lets just say, for arguments sake, that it was the one on the left—photo from The Imaginary World—with the mouth-shaped, faux die cut window.)

In my last year at school, I lived in an office building in downtown Providence where I’d let Lucky scamper, dog-like, about the loft. It’s surprising how frisky a rat can be.

I recall eating a lot of ice-cream cones one Summer. (This was before I found out I was diabetic.) I got into a habit of methodically reducing the size of the ice-cream cone—keeping it in classic proportions—until I had formed a miniature, rat-size ice-cream cone. This, I would then present to Lucky and he’d grab it in his hands and eagerly finish it off. (Sort of fractal, now that I think of it...)

Sadly, my free-range policy of giving Lucky the run of the place, ultimately led to his demise. Turned out there were dusty old trays of rat poison under the radiators, that I didn’t know were there.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

S.A.P. CD Packaging

Finally coming in the home stretch of the “Songs About Packaging” project. Recording is now all done and packaging is almost done. I went with DIY packaging with re-purposed materials from my own personal recycling bin. Ties into the whole “Litter Rock” gestalt of the project and dovetails nicely with the limitations of my budget.

I expect to have enough of them assembled in time to distribute them for free at the landfill gig. (If you’re going to be in NY area on Saturday, Sept. 26th and would like to attend, follow this link for more info.)

CD label and side sticker are ink-jet printed on kraft paper. The white UPC is a separate label. I got my bona-fide UPC number via CD Baby. (Since I don’t expect to be putting out enough products to justify paying the $760 fee to GS1 for my own “company prefix number” any time soon.) I figure I might as well stick with these labor-intensive, DIY handmade covers for the foreseeable future. If S.A.P. ever threatens to go platinum or anything, I’ll re-evaluate at that time...

Lyric booklet is that kind of 8-page booklet that you can make from a single sheet of letter-sized paper. (Another ridiculously labor-intensive part of the project.)

(One more “product shot” after the fold...)

Msxi's Packaging Parables

Msxi is a London-based illustrator who sent us a link to her website. “Junk Food Benny” is her cautionary tale about snack food packaging and childhood obesity. (Maybe not just childhood obesity, in view of the admonishing Mum in panel #5.) Her story line seems particularly pertinent to proposals being considered here in the U.S. (Federal “Soda Tax” and NY State “Obesity Tax” for example.)

I have only the first 8 of 11 panels above. (Note: the scary anthro-packets in panel #3.) To find out how this story turns out, you will need to go to Msxi’s website. 

(Another of Msxi’s packaging-related illustrations, after the fold...)

Packaging & Moral Turpitude

While searching online for photos of Timberland packaging (to illustrate my interview with Buying In author, Rob Walker) I found this photo on the NYC EMS blog. Ostensibly a 2007 photo* of a “filthy” Brooklyn apartment in which police, looking for “an alleged gang member and convicted felon,” instead found an infant in a Timberland shoe box.

Cops removed a 4-day-old baby from a filthy Brooklyn apartment after finding the girl tucked into a Timberland shoe box, police said.

from The NY Daily News, September 7, 2007

This sort of story has a way of telegraphing what we are supposed to think about the people who would live in such a place. If your home is described as “filthy” or “squalid” by the news media, the public will tend to judge you according.

If no crime has been committed (and no child’s welfare has been endangered) then your tendency to live like the Collyer brothers is considered your own [psychological] problem. If you are a “hoarder” of this type, the media still regards you with horrid fascination, but Oprah will at least come and help you clean up. (For example: here.)

If something illegal is going on, however, then your messy surroundings will serve as confirmation of some deeper moral turpitude. Since 30% of our trash is discarded product PACKAGING, squalid scenes of moral turpitude (like the photo above) will invariably include some packaging. While some companies might happily pay for certain types of product placement on the nightly news, this story of a baby found in one of their shoe boxes is probably not the sort of product placement that Timberland would seek out. Although the Timberland shoe box in question does not appear to be in the kitchen, there are plenty of other recognizable packages to be spotted in the photo above: Pepsi, Oreo, JVC, Tower Records, Nabisco Wheat Thins, Coca Cola, and Loony Tunes. If it were a fictional context, then these companies might have some recourse to keep their brands out of the story line. (See: product displacement) Controlling their brand images in real life is more difficult. If you sell a lot of products, then some of your product packaging is bound to wind up on the floors of “filthy” apartments.

Personally, I am no neatnik. So it’s worrisome to me what might be written, if I ever gave the authorities cause to search my home/office. I have lots of empty packages all around. (...and a growing collection of empty blood glucose test-strip canisters.) How would I be portrayed by the media? Would my packaging hodge-podge be taken as a lovable, Oscar Madison sort of thing? Or would it seem like something more sinister?

Here on Staten Island, near Silver Lake Park where I jog most mornings, a woman was recently murdered and her apartment burned. (by her underage boyfriend, as it turns out) How did the Staten Island Advance describe her apartment?

“Ms. Adams, a diabetic, had medication bottles strewn throughout her modestly-furnished apartment...”

from The Staten Island Advance, November 24, 2008

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

*Possibly, the camera’s date was not set correctly when this Brooklyn apartment was photographed in 2007—(explaining the 2.17.2000 “date code” in the corner).

Paradigm Pump Packaging

I’ve recently upgraded my insulin pump[1] and related diabetic paraphernalia and, although I’m pretty jazzed about it, this being box vox, we must begin with a packaging critique. First of all, MiniMed/Medtronic’s brand name—“Paradigm”—is an embarrassment.

paradigm — pretentious and overused term for a way of thinking. Often used with the erroneous assumption that “paradigms” are mutually exclusive, and often assuming that one paradigm is inherently superior to all others.

from Bjarne Stroustrup’s C++ Glossary

My second issue: why are these medical devices being packaged in retail-style boxes? Insulin pumps are obtained through a doctor’s prescription and only then if your insurance company deems it a medical necessity.

It’s not really the sort of item that you pick up on a shelf of your local pharmacy, read the product features on the box and then decide whether or not you’d like to purchase it.

But, okay. Let’s talk about the brand promise. These 3 boxes (for insulin pump, 10 glucose sensors, and a wireless transmitter) are all parts of the same product-line/system. All three appear to be making a lifestyle promise about eating sweets. The glucose sensor box shows a young woman happily eating cake. The insulin pump box shows another woman eating something in a bowl with strawberries. And the transmitter box—(the one that I most identify with)—shows us a slim, grey-haired guy kicking back in an Eames-style chair, but also shows a smaller picture of the same guy grinning at an ice cream cone. Clearly eating sweets is big deal for us diabetics. MiniMed’s brand promise, therefore, is something along the lines of, “Diabetics: let them eat cake.”

(More about the boxes and what they contain, after the jump...)

20cL Whiskey Bottles

I like the look of these 20cL mini bottles of whisky from Glasgow-based Douglas Laing & Co. Ltd.

Maybe it’s a diabetic thing, but they caught my eye on account of their resemblance to the crimped vials that injectable medicines (like insulin) usually come in. Also, the labels are rather prescription-like. Not so far-fetched really, since whisky does, after all, have a history of being used for “medicinal purposes.”

But their web site explains that the labels are actually based on hand-marked, distillery sample bottles:

“Replicating the sample bottles sent to us from stock held at the Distilleries—these wee 20cl bottles appear to have been hand written by one of the team pulling the sample (full marks for legibility!)”

Douglas Laing & Co. Ltd.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Diabetic Jewelry

Back in March I wrote a post about diabetic packaging, and ever since then I’ve been saving up my test strip canisters, thinking I might be able to make them into something. Maybe a new “green” product of some sort.

Initially, what I had in mind was something more polyhedral, but I also wanted to use the lids as snap-on connectors—(more or less as they were designed to be used)—and that seemed to leave only two options: a linear strand or a closed loop. (No geodesic sputnik shapes there.) Then, as I was idly stringing together a four month accumulation, inspiration struck. Diabetic jewelry.

Now ordinarily, what’s meant by “diabetic jewelry” is a medic alert tag with a rod of Asclepius symbol on the front and engraved type on the back that labels the wearer as a diabetic. I already wear one of those. (see photo above, on left)

But my younger brother, Hal, is a successful jewelry designer, whose work over the years has adorned plenty of famous celebrities. Perhaps, I too have a knack for jewelry design... (see photo above, on right)

Besides being a super-chic necklace made entirely out of recycled diabetic packaging, the real beauty part of my new necklace design is that it’s also functional. Each of the containers is like a locket, in its own right. You could keep a lock of hair for every beloved member of your entire extended family—(going back several generations, I should think). Or, properly labeled, it might serve as pill caddy for a whole month. (Personally, I plan to use mine to store all those used blood glucose test strips.)

(a photo of the basic module after the jump...)

Diabetic Packaging

When I first became diabetic and learned that I would be giving myself insulin shots—(in 1976)—I envisioned a glass syringe like those used by doctors when I was a kid. I imagined a diabetic syringe to be a serious personal accessory that I would sterilize in boiling water or maybe in something like one of those units people used to sterilize contact lenses.

Little did I realize, the tide had already turned. To reduce the risk of infection, the industry had, by then, fully embraced disposable medical paraphernalia. Rather than receiving a syringe like the one pictured on the left, I was to begin using one disposable plastic syringe per day—packaged in poly-bag packs of ten, 10 poly-bags to a box.

(more photos and more to read after the jump)