box vox

Nabisco 12 Pack Cartons

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.

(A few more examples, after the fold...)

Geografia’s Polyhedral Planet

We went to Gift Fair last week (NYIGF) and one of the booths where I lingered the longest belonged to Geografia, a company that makes polyhedral paper globe kits, among other things.

When I saw the cube-shaped globe, above left, I said, “I bet that‘s a magic cube.” Sure enough the “Earth & Sky Twistable Globe” was a fully-functioning, folding and unfolding “magic cube” made from 8 smaller cubes—(the same sort of cube as our own Gumball Cube Pack).

In one state, the “Twistable Globe” shows a map of the world. Turned inside-out, it shows a map of the stars. (Really like the inside-outside / introvert-extrovert idea of this.)

Another intriguing reversible globe was their “Lands & Nations Flippable Globe” which was very similar to Jessica Comin’s “laranja mecánica” that we looked at recently. In her case, the cube could be turned inside-out to form a rhombic dodecahedron. The “Flippable Globe” is a cube that can be turned inside-out to form a regular dodecahedron. And its parts are tabbed, rather than permanently hinged together.

The projection of maps onto polyhedral shapes is something that Buckminster Fuller and others have also explored, but Geografia’s products manage to provide fascinating new polyhedral perspectives and (geo)graphic insights.

Here’s a video showing one of their “Sectional Globes” being assembled...

(We’ll be featuring more stuff from Gift Fair over the next week or two.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Shoe Box : Tissue Box

More orthographically-projected “shoe boxes” reminiscent of the ones we showed last December, but these boxes (designed by groovisions in 2006 for Oji Nepia) are meant to be both shoe box and tissue box. The idea being that once the shoes are removed the box may be saved to dispense tissues.

Nice business on the “soles” of these boxes where there appears to be evidence of something having been stepped in. Which is odd to see on the proxy box for your brand new shoes, but does create a clear spot on the treads for some legible product information.

(Via: Packaging of the World)

(Another box and second thoughts, after the fold...)

6-Pack Pistons

On left: Juan Pablo Vildosola’s RPM Energy Drink concept (via: Packaging of the World) On right: BeOriginal’s packaging for a 3-step engine revitalizer 3-pack.

Both of these packages are piston-like, but not being much of an automotive guy, I hadn’t realize that there were already beverage pack associations built into the language of old school car culture—namely, “six pack pistons.”

And motor oil—particularly outboard motor oil—has often been sold in six-packs...

Dig the pop tops illustration on the orthographically-projected top view. (via: Worthpoint)

Another vintage 6-pack carrier for motor oil. This pack has an odd polyhedral contradiction since it shows a large pyramid, but its words say “cylinder.” (via)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

More Orthographic Head Boxes

The Grain’s T2 Tea boxes: more orthographic head boxes, similar to the McSweeney’s Head Box we featured in February. (Via: Lovely Package)

These are promotional gifts rather than actual retail boxes:

“Using a selection of tea from T2 we created four individual tea boxes and personified them to reflect the names of the following popular flavours of tea: Gorgeous Geisha, English Breakfast, Chai and French Earl Grey. Each box holds a few tea bags and a small scroll showing images of recently completed work with an invitation to ‘sit down for 5 minutes with a cup of tea and learn more about us.”

The Grain

(See also: last Tuesday’s Cat Head Packaging)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Orthographic Beverage Cartons

Two recent 4-pack cartons, each featuring the same orthographic view of the bottles contained inside:

Vidago mineral water, designed by CB’a Design in Spain (via: Lovely Package) and Copenhagen beer designed by e-Types in Denmark (via: Packaging of the World)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Gumball Cube Pack

©2011 Randy Ludacer, Beach Packaging Design

Seeing projects like Sophie Valentine’s “Capitalism vs. Socialism” and Regina Rebele’s 2008 “Type-Cube” made me wonder if there was a practicable way that this type of “magic folding cube” could be designed as a box to actually contain something.

Ideally, I would have liked it best if the whole thing—all 8 boxes with tucks & glue flaps—could have been folded from a single die-cut shape. That doesn’t appear to be possible, although it was easy enough to get it down to just 4 pieces which must then be hinged together.

But what sort of product should such a package contain? Gumballs, I decided. Stupid, I guess, to envision such an elaborate package for such an inexpensive product, but demographically appropriate as a candy pack for kids. Like something that Topps might have considered doing in the 1970s. And as our video clearly shows, these gumballs really needed to be contained.

Anyway, this is just Gumball Cube-Pack Mach 1. There are some further structural improvements I have in mind to try next. (If you’re listening, Topps, please give us call. We’d love to hook you up.)

(Some still photos, after the fold...)

Muffets: Son of Shredded Wheat

In addition to the cereal cup shown at the end of last Thursday’s post, another food that Scott H. Perky (son of Shredded Wheat inventor, Henry D. Perky) invented was “Muffets: The Round Shredded Wheat.” (AKA: “The All-Year-Round Cereal”)

I was twelve when shredded wheat was born, and worked and played in father’s laboratory. I grew up under the influence of his enthusiasms, worked in every department of his factory, made some inventions of my own, and in 1920 invented Muffets. Now I am, myself, conservatively but with great hopes, introducing what I consider the first new departure since my father’s in the line of popular “cereals.”

Scott H. Perky
from a letter to the editor,
Time Magazine, Jan. 21, 1929

Just as Henry Perky’s Shredded Wheat Company was eventually bought out by Nabisco, so too was son, Scott Perky’s Muffets Brand bought out by Quaker Oats.

This 1930s hexagonal box (via Worthpoint) must be one of the earliest versions of the Quaker Oats Muffets box. A package design with a number interesting features:

a. It’s a close-packing hexagonal prism.

b. It has a faux die-cut window revealing a trompe l’oeil illustration of the product contained within.

c. The biscuits illustration also serves as an orthographic diagram of the package contents (albeit from just one angle).

d. At one end of the box there is a seal-of-approval type graphic burst, guaranteeing that “if you do not agree that these are the best whole wheat biscuits you have ever used we shall gladly remit the cost of this package.”

e. On the bottom panel (not pictured here) the ingredients are listed: “Whole Wheat, Irradiated Dry Yeast. Each Biscuit provides 50% of the Minimum Daily Requirement of Vitamin D”

In 1923, Harry Steenbock and James Cockwell discovered exposure to ultraviolet light increased the Vitamin D concentration in food. After discovering that irradiated rat food cured the rats of rickets, Steenbock sought a patent. Steenbock then assigned the patent to the newly established Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. WARF then licensed the technology to Quaker Oats for use in their breakfast cereals.

from Wikipedia’s entry on the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation

According to Wikipedia, “Irradiated food does not become radioactive, but in some cases there may be subtle chemical changes...”

At the other end of the box is a serving tip about how you can cut out the centers to use the biscuits as “patty shells.” Nowhere on the package do the words “breakfast” or “cereal” appear.

(Some later versions of Quaker Oats Muffets packaging, after the fold...)

X-Ray Vision and Cereal Boxes

Vita Crunch cereal boxes by Mark Oliver, Inc: brilliant use of product photography on packaging to clearly signify contents. (Can’t think of a more logical product differentiation scheme.)

Even the type treatment, with its strokes & drop shadows, though fairly common in the context of cereal box typography, here serves to heighten the illusion that each box is transparent. Giving consumers a trompe’l'oeil moment of X-ray vision. (See also: Packaging & What Lies Beneath)

Doesn’t seem as if these boxes were ever produced. Sadly.

(Via: PopSop)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Kirsten Justesen’s Sculpture #2

Kirsten Justesen, Sculpture # 2, Ed.7, 1968

Kirsten Justesen’s 1968 Sculpture #2:

“It started with the cardboard box in 1968, Skulptur II. Basically, a sculpture is a plinth with a form on top — and it’s often a naked woman up there. My Skulptur II is a cardboard box with a black-and-white photograph of me inside. So it’s identical with the basic sculpture: the cardboard box is a plinth you can walk round, and there’s a woman in it without any clothes on. And what is more, it’s the artist who has entered into her own work. It can be folded up and it’s easy to transport. It is nothing less than the ideal sculpture...”

Kirsten Justesen interviewed by Malene Vest Hansen

On the one hand, the photo on the box-top of Sculpture #2 functions as a less-than-convincing form of trompe-l’œil, as if one might be fooled into thinking that there’s actually a woman curled up in this box.

On the other hand, Justesen was curled up in this box at one point (or a box like this) in order to take the photo. As with any orthographically-projecting package, the photo on the top of the box speaks to us about the box’s contents, but here there is misdirection. The box is presumably empty and the orthographic projection is of the box’s former contents.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Flat Bulb Box

From 2008: Joonhyun Kim’s “Flat Bulb”

As the era of incandescent light seems to be waning, Joonhyun Kim offers one last idea for an object that has long served as a symbol for ideas:

“I designed bulbs which would be disappeared that I felt like last time to design.”

Using the orthographic projection technique, the box shows an actual size diagram of its contents, but only from one familiar-looking angle. In another context—(a thicker, less flat box)—this diagram might seem deceptive, but the flatness of the box, combined with the product name help gets the idea across in a flash.

(Photos of Joonhyun Kim with his prototype, after the fold...)

McSweeney’s Head Box

Recently spotted at Barnes & Nobel: Issue No. 36 of McSweeney’s Quarterly—a “head box” with illustrations by Matt Furie. (Note: Illustration on bottom of box shows that this is actually a severed head box.)

This package features the kind of orthographic graphic design we’ve discussed before, but usually it’s the contents of the box that are projected onto the side panels. Here, it’s more like a “serving suggestion” of what you might make of the box’s contents—(your head being the presumptive destination of the ideas contained).

But besides serving as a repository for literary contents, an orthographically projected head also makes a nice diagram to explain our human predisposition toward rectangular, Cartesian coordinates. With eyes facing forward, an ear on either side, it’s only natural we navigate the world in egocentric, rectangular directions: forward, backward, left, right, up, down.

In an earlier post about close-packing polyhedrons, I wondered why packaging so often seems to skew rectangular. Egocentric coordinates could be one explanation. Our skulls may be round, but our ideas are definitely square.

The video below shows what’s in the box.
(The sound track is: “Poodle in the Hen House”)

(See also: Skull Bottles and Our Family of Products)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

4 Reasons We are Happy to Serve You

On left: my photo of box: on right: photo of ceramic cup from Alison*H’s Flickr Photostream

1. Orthographic graphic design of carton for the “We Are Happy to Serve You” 10 oz. Ceramic Cup: a ceramic cup designed to look like a disposable paper cup. A product of Graham Hill’s ExceptionLab Inc. (Graham Hill also founded Treehugger.com).

2. Based on iconic “Anthora” cup designed by the late Leslie Buck for the Sherri Cup Company. From Mr. Buck’s NY Times obituary:

Since many of the city’s diners were owned by Greeks, Mr. Buck hit on the idea of a Classical cup in the colors of the Greek flag. Though he had no formal training in art, he executed the design himself. It was an instant success.

Mr. Buck made no royalties from the cup, but he did so well in sales commissions that it hardly mattered, his son said. On his retirement from Sherri in 1992, the company presented Mr. Buck with 10,000 specially made Anthoras, printed with a testimonial inscription.

Mr. Buck’s cup was blue, with a white meander ringing the top and bottom; down each side was a drawing of the Greek vase known as an amphora...

Leslie Buck, Designer of Iconic Coffee Cup, Dies at 87
Margalit Fox, NY Times, April 29, 2010

3. Only that’s not quite correct: the ancient ceramic pictured on the “Anthora” is really not an amphora, but a cylindrical lekythos.

A lekythos (plural lekythoi) is a type of Greek pottery used for storing oil (Greek λήκυθος), especially olive oil. It has a narrow body and one handle attached to the neck of the vessel. The lekythos was used for anointing dead bodies of unmarried men and many lekythoi are found in tombs.

Wikipedia entry on lekythoi

4. One of the earliest mentions of orthographic projection was by Ptolemy, a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Ancient Greek.

Ptolemy’s work is known only in fragments, but involved the orthogonal projection of the celestial sphere on three mutually perpendicular planes

J. B. Calvert, “M. Vitruvius Pollio and the Analemma”

Which brings us back around to the lekythos (photo below, left via: eBay) and the diagram (below, right) showing a method of 3D digitization of an Ancient Greek lekythos, employing orthographic projection. (From: “3D Pottery content-based retrieval based on pose normalisation and segmentation” by Anestis Koutsoudisa, George Pavlidis, Vassiliki Liamib, Despoina Tsiafakis and Christodoulos Chamzasa.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Packaging & What Lies Beneath

While looking into the orthographically-projecting “Dish Doctor” box, I happened to see the Marc Newson designed “Black Box” for Dom Pérignon (via: PopSop) which reminded me that, in addition to the narrowly defined orthographic projection, there are other, less geometrically exacting ways that the surface of a package can reveal its contents.

Newson’s “Black Box” is essentially a black polycarbonate “clamshell” package with a green strap, but since the package itself has a label, it’s hard to distinguish it from an actual bottle at first glance.

The H&M shirt box design by Linn Gustafsson uses whimsical illustration of a striped shirt—but without the extra front & side views of the “Dish Doctor” box. Here, the box in its entirety is meant to represent the shirt contained. (i.e.: no background.)

The photo below (from today’s NY Times) show some of Rick Genest’s skeletal tattoos, which achieve a similar reveal-what-lies-beneath effect. Seeing that he’s a smoker set me to thinking about his cigarette brand...

Upper photo by Nicola Formichetti; lower photos of Robert Brownjohn’s Bachelor Cigarettes packaging

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Dish Doctor Box

Another nice box featuring orthographic graphic design: The Marc Newson “Dish Doctor” dish rack carton, designed by Melina Kok. Cool, blue-print style illustrations provide an X-ray-like view of the package contents... (but is one of the panels flopped?)

Manufactured by Magis Design.

Photos from The Powerhouse Museum

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Orthographic Packaging for Herman Miller Blocks

Relating to our earlier post about packages that feature orthographic projection of their contents: these Herman Miller blocks by House Industries certainly do that, but here the direction of projection is flipped.

The carton—(based on the original Herman Miller furniture box “that was used to deliver American modernism”)—orthographically projects its panels inward, onto the sides of the blocks contained within.

What you see is still what you get, but the very nature of the product—the design of the blocks—is dictated by its packaging. (Rather than the other way around)

The package/product design also makes use of of House Industries’ Eames Century Modern fonts. (X-acto knife is just to show scale, I think.)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Shoe Box

Shoe-shaped shoebox: a student project by Ping Ping Tung in 2006 at Monash Uni.

Another box featuring orthographic projection of contents. The laces seem to heighten the package-as-proxy-for-product thing. (See also Baby Star Shoe Box and Shoe Box with Grommets)

(A similar orthographic-box concept, after the fold...)

Packaging & Orthographic Graphic Design

I used to think of orthographic projection strictly as drafting technique: those technical drawings, by which any 3-dimensional object could be described in 3–6 views.

In recent years, however, I’ve noticed it turning up as a packaging scheme (see: Mac G5 box, on right) and it does make a certain sense as a way of clearly indicating what’s in the box.

In packaging, as in mechanical drawing, 3 views are usually sufficient to describe most objects. In Art Lebedev’s Paliha-750 telephone carton, however, he has chosen to feature all six, “You can look at it from all sides, while it’s still inside the box.”

Having the outside of a box so closely correspond with the product it contains, makes the packaging function almost as a proxy. Holding the box, the consumer is, in effect, holding a trompe l’oeil product replica. Each panel serves as a diagram of what’s just below the surface. Almost as if the box was invisible and you were seeing right though it. In situations where an actual die window is not feasible, it’s a pretty neat trick.

Above, Marc Brownlow’s automotive light bulb pack:

Packaging system for a specialty aftermarket automotive company. The package uses orthographic “x-ray” views of the bulbs in lieu of clear “windows” to minimize cost.

Another light bulb packaging project, this one by Oliver Meier, also uses orthographic projection. (via: Packaging of The World)

David Graas’s “Not a Box” package clearly shows an orthographic projection of a hanging light with a round shade, but the joke here is that the cube-shaped box is itself the shade and the light is emitted through the misleading lines of the diagram.

The Heliotropium bottle by CPDS is a similar bait and switch. The box shows orthographic projections of a traditional ornate perfume bottle, but inside the box, the bottle is actually box-shaped. (via: the Dieline)

Internationally it was decided to “hide” a bottle. A bottle is in a bottle. The new hides in the previous. The bottle is a box, the box is a bottle. On each side of the box the bottle’s image, the image of it’s each side is placed. The box is designed in such a way when it opens, the drawn bottle opens too. And inside… inside there is other bottle, the real one.

(Some other examples, we’ve featured before, after the fold...)

Martha Stewart Packaging

Having recently broached the subject of Martha Stewart, it’s only fair that we now honor the packaging work. Here are three interesting examples:

1. Cake-shaped cake mix boxes —or rather, slice-of-cake-shaped cake mix boxes. More meaningful than the celebrated “Perfect Slice of Summer” Kleenex boxes since, in this case, the shape actually signals something about its contents. Makes an appealing display and hopefully no one is so literal-minded as to imagine that the box contains a slice of cake!

On a more polyhedral note, there appear to be seven (rather than six) slice-shaped boxes on the cake dish above. Leading one to speculate whether this box’s angles are based on a heptagon rather than a hexagon. There are spaces between the boxes above, however, suggesting that arranged in a circle, they are not really meant to close-pack. It may be that the angles are more intuitive—or maybe these spaces are an open invitation to go ahead and pick one up. Still, as triangular prisms, they would certainly close-pack if alternated on a shelf. (See also: Trapezoidal Boxes)

2. The carton for this wine glass set has photos wrapping around each corner creating opportunities for larger, extended displays. Designed by Doyle Partners. (See also: The Incomplete Package: Part of a Larger Whole)

3. Nested mixing bowls carton by Brian Chojnowski (while at Doyle Partners). We like nested stuff and these are particularly nice illustrations. Also we like when packaging does this kind of orthographic projection thing—diagrammatically showing you what’s inside the box as if each side were a window. (another example: this Russian phone box)

Come to think of it, that’s something we should probably explore in some future post: orthographic graphic design.

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design