Based on an 1895 poem by Gelett Burgess, a “purple cow” generally meant something “out of the ordinary” or something you don’t see every day. As depicted in these vintage packages, each with its whimsical cow illustration, the concept was fine.
I’m not so accepting of the new over-arching definition of “purple cow” as something remarkably innovative, as set forth in Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. Because of this book, some people are now calling any ground-breaking, category disrupting product a “purple cow.”
For some reason, I find this new meaning a loathsome thing. To me, the name “purple cow” diminishes the hard work of innovation, making it sound like something merely capricous.
I doubt Steve Jobs would ever have given one of Apple’s products as insipid a name as “purple cow” and yet all over the place there are people now saying that the iPad and the iPhone are “purple cows.”
You need look no further than the scapbooking craft company The Purple Cows to understand the uncool connotations that this name carries.
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.
On left: a bottle of “Oxol” cleaner from a 1929 ad appearing in The Kingston Daily Freeman; on right: an Oxydol box for sale on eBay for $17.90
In the previous post we compared Oxydol’s early package design to Opal’s stunningly similar packaging. Same basic design, but different product categories — so no trademark infringement there.
Oxydol and Oxol, on the other hand, were both cleaning products. Their package design was not confusingly similar, but the manufacturers of these two products were nonetheless pitted against each other in the landmark trademark infringement case of PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. v. J. L. PRESCOTT CO.
In testimony about an ongoing Oxol radio promotion, Procter & Gamble set out to prove that Oxol had deliberately chosen a “doll” as a free product premium, in order for its “Oxol doll” to be mistaken for “Oxydol” and “sought to profit by the confusion that would result.”
“When you buy a bottle of Oxol, take the label off and send it to the Oxol trio in care of this Station, or address your letter to the J. L. Prescott Company, Passaic, New Jersey. ... In return, they will send you the gaily colored "Oxol" rag doll that children love. ... And don’t forget to send in an Oxol label for one of those little Oxol Rag Dolls.” The substance of this broadcast was repeated many times. Upon several occasions radio announcers referred directly to the “Oxol doll”. Instructions for completing the “Oxol doll” were sent to all who requested the doll from the Prescott Company.
It is obvious that when the tongue pronounces the words “Oxol doll”, or when the mind operates to put these two words together, a connection in thought between Procter & Gamble’s product and Prescott’s product is inescapable. Such a connection must have occurred to the Prescott Company. Why then was such advertising made use of? The answer is obvious. Ground for mistake in the public mind as to Oxydol and Oxol was well laid and the resulting confusion may not be described as a coincidence.
Confusion as to which company was offering the doll in return for the label immediately came to pass and this was admitted by one of Prescott’s officers. Many housewives sent Oxydol labels to Procter & Gamble and demanded the Oxol doll. An examination of the letters in evidence seems to indicate that the persons writing them were ordinary members of the purchasing public. One housewife wrote, “Am sending the clip off of the Oxydol box. Would you please send us one of your rag dolls...”. Another wrote, “Enclosed is a clipping from Oxydol. Kindly send me a rag doll, as promised over Radio.”
PROCTER & GAMBLE CO. v. J. L. PRESCOTT CO., 1931 via: Leagle.com
Assuming that the correct product label was sent, what the Oxol customer ultimately received via return mail was this:
Above: the “Oxol Doll” and the envelope that it came in (via: eBay)
Looks more like a paper doll than the “rag doll” they advertised, but “truth in advertising” is perhaps not so stringent when it comes to free promotional items.
“I wanted to take something we all crave and give it a luxury lift. This tasty, chic collection gives a high-end, glam aesthetic to our favorite breakfast treats.”
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...)
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.
“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.”
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.”
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.
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.
While technocentric consumer culture continues its swoon over QR code packaging and the branding dialogue that it supposedly opens, there may be another trend worth noting: writing on packages.
Earlier this Summer, I noticed this huge speech bubble on the back of a box of Special K and I thought, “What on earth is that for?”
Reading the back of the cereal box, I learned that the big blank area was part of their “What will you gain when you lose?” campaign — (i.e.: when you lose weight). Consumers are invited to answer that question by uploading a picture of themselves with what they were hoping to gain—their “goal”—written on their box of Special K.
The gallery page of photos on the Special K website discloses that “some of the images are of paid participants.” I could be wrong, but I’m guessing that the women seeking to gain “Sass” and “Pep” may be in that category. (See also: Pep Brands Packaging)
Of course with any interactive marketing push of this type, some consumers may push back, as illustrated by The Restless Mouse’s message in the lower right hand corner. Not the sort of affirmation Special K was seeking, but a more meaningful show of strength, perhaps, than the word “strength” compliantly written on a cereal box muscle.
Another example of the writing-on-packages trend is the Budweiser Light “Write-On Label”—here the campaign doesn’t require online consumer feedback, although they do allude to “social networking”...
(More about “Write-On Labels, etc., after the fold...)
For carbonated or “sparkling” beverages, it’s often the bubbles that are featured on the label. Usually these bubbles are represented by solid or outlined circles. Two exceptions:
1. Hanson’s sparkling water uses astroids rather than circles. This shape is more often associated with bling-type sparkles, but, here, seems to represent sparkling bubbles at the moment of popping. And by “popping” I mean: emerging from beverage and releasing its gas.
2. The Saint Tropez bottle in the upper left uses foil blocked square bubbles to create a dissipating typography.
Celebrated industrial designer, Donald Deskey is well-known for package design of iconic brands below. Perhaps less well-known, is his structural design of the “Odo-Ro-No” Cream Deodorant jar for Northam Warren Corporation.
Deskey packaging from the exhibit, “Creative Conscious: The Unconstrained Mind of Donald Deskey” (Photo via: Gilmore Branding)
Based on advertising images, Deskey’s art deco jar was in use during the 1940s. Haven’t been able to find any photos online of an actual surviving jar of this type.
The embossed lid was apparently discontinued sometime in the 1950s in favor of a plain flat version. (as with the pink one above)
Don’t know whether Deskey had anything to do with Odorono’s graphic design.
Third bottle up is barnacle-covered with vertical, corduroy-like ridges. This bottle turns out to have once contained a Marcel Rochas men’s fragrance called, Moustache. Launched in 1948–49, the product is still available, but comes in a different shaped bottle with a sans-serif logotype. (During the 1950s the “Moustache” logotype was, itself, mustachioed.)
Sometimes these bottles were sold in boxed sets...
Sometimes these bottles included atomizer bulbs...
In addition to a “citrusy opening” note, the Moustache scent is said to also include “the urinous aroma of animalic notes that recalls horses’ sweat.” (Which is fitting, considering that I found my bottle in Dead Horse Bay—final resting place for so many 19th Century work horses.)
Moustache was clearly intended as a mens product, but like Irish Spring and riding horses, some women like it too...
After the citrusy opening, the characteristic faintly floral and hay-ish powdery heart slowly gives way to the funk of the base notes with their sweaty, urinous and pungent leather impression which lingers quietly, intimately for a long time. Despite it being, marketed as a masculine scent, women who find citrusy or "hazy" suede compositions to their taste should definitely give it a try.
This eight sided jar has embossed letters on each panel which (if you start with the upper case “B”) spell out the brand “Barbasol.” Guessing that (prior to containing sand and seaweed) this jar must have once held shaving cream, I checked their website’s history section which confirms:
Over the years, Barbasol has been sold in a variety of packaging types and sizes. The Giant Jar was originally sold for 75¢.
As the photo on right shows, this jar originally came in a red, white and blue folding carton. That box apparently did not make it to Dead Horse Bay’s “bottle beach.” Nor did the jar’s cap. There are, however, a surviving examples to be found online...
Yesterday, Paul Heidenreich from Australian firm, The Grain Creative Consultants, emailed me their design refresh for Whiskas cat food, on right. Whiskas is a brand that I wasn’t familiar with, but the iconic cat-head shape of their logo reminded me of another cat food carton that I’ve been saving a picture of: Elmwood’s “Purely” cat food box for Pets at Home, with the cat-head shaped die cut window.
Which led me to notice other cat head shaped cat food packs...
These Whiskas pet treat containers were (I think) designed by Nick Brown.
Meow Mix and Purina Friskies, each employ cat head shapes in their cat treat containers. (Note the cat-head “M” in the pictorial Meow Mix logo. Anyone know who designed this feline logotype?)
Eric Hart’s canned cat food project, “Snookums” also features cat heads, although in his case they are sans-ears.
Sophie Valentine’s project for Louis Gagnon’s “Design Graphique Introduction” course at Canada’s UQAM. The project is “3D Typographic Expression” and her solution is shown above.
Socialism and capitalism are two realities that clearly oppose. However, Winston Churchill did not consider one better than the other. He said: “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” To demonstrate this paradox, socialism is represented by eight small cubes attached to each other. While capitalism is represented by a cube equal to the size of eight.
A. The white “socialist” cube appears to be one of those hinged folding cube puzzles — sometimes called “magic cubes” — often used as an advertising promotion. I might be wrong. It may be hinged a little differently, but it would be ironic for “socialism” to be represented by an promotional object.
B. The Winston Churchill quote above seems to parallel the contrast that Chevron CEO, John Watson attempted (in his testimony to congress yesterday about oil company tax breaks) when he tried to suggest that the American people would rather share in Chevron’s prosperity than to have Chevron share in their sacrifice. (See also: Joe, The Plumber)
In addition to inventing round shredded wheat, Scott H. Perky also patented an audacious font concept in 1909. Citing the inefficiencies of reading only from left to right, Perky proposed a symmetrical font that would allow books to be typeset in lines of alternating direction...
The invention consists in certain means of printing alternate lines, whereby the reading can be done from left to right and from right to left in a continuous manner, and the skipping from end of one line to the opposite end of the next is avoided.
It is hardly necessary to allude to the strain upon the eyes and brain, which results from much reading. To students, researchers and others whose lives are cast among books, any device which promises to ... lessen fatigue of the optical tract, and consequent headache and brain fag, will appear of unusual importance. In ordinary reading ... the brain is exerted through the eyes in movements from left to right with alternate senseless skippings from right to left ...
In carrying out this invention it is designed to use a font of type, whereof each... letter, number or other character... is of symmetrical form... and is thus adapted to present the same appearance whether read backward or forward...
In reading print of this character... difficulty will at first be found owing to the unaccustomed appearance of the symmetrical characters, but in a limited amount of time, the mind becomes familiar with them and this trouble will disappear. And in the continuous hold of the eye and mind on the text, as the reading proceeds, without skipping or losing place or connection, will be found much compensation.
Note: the highlighted phrase “brain fag” is no typo:
The term “brain fag” was used in the US as far back as 1852, describing an overworked brain, in 1877 to describe mental exhaustion in professionals similar to neurasthenia, and later in 1919 to describe mental fatigue in the elderly. The term ‘fag’ is believed to have been derived from ‘fatigue’. This American usage declined by the 1950s.
In 1930, Grape-Nuts ran the ad (below, right) comparing their new package to a new dress. Signaling a shift from muscular, anthropomorphic boxes endlessly insisting “There’s a Reason” (for eating Grape-Nuts, that is) to a less dour (less manly?) sales pitch... (via)
Probably the millions of people who enjoy Grape-Nuts would like to know why the package has been changed...
Well, the chief reason is that we wanted to make the package brighter, gayer, more suggestive of the fresh deliciousness of Grape-Nuts...
Maybe your grocer hasn’t received the new packages as yet. It takes time to distribute over the whole country, you know. But whether you buy Grape-Nuts to-day in the old package or the new package—the food itself is the same delicious food... and the new package has the same generous quantity as the old.
Maybe not the first company to ever equate packaging with clothing, but if packages are dresses, then Grape-Nuts now must have a closet full of them...
The evolution of Grape-Nuts boxes from the 1950s through the 1960s shows a shift of target demographic from men to women. Culminating in the 1960s television ads which featured adult women being mistaken for their teenage daughters due to the figure-enhancing effect of Grape-Nuts for breakfast. (The Billboard above with the tape measure around a slim-waisted Grape-Nuts box is part of that “Fills you up, not out” campaign.)
Interestingly, the demographic pendulum seems to be swinging back the other way now...
“We need to bring it back to life in a relevant way,” says Kelley Peters, the “insights” director who charts Grape Nuts psychographics for Ralcorp’s $5 million resuscitation attempt. Her target: men 45 years old and up. “Men aspire to it,” she says. “It’s strong and stern, the father figure of cereals.” Her marketing chief, Jennifer Marchant, points out: “It tends to break your teeth sometimes.”
More drip/droplet packaging. Following up on an earlier post about this trend, I’m seeing more examples...
1. Magic marker brand, Krink is doing the Absolut Vodka thing, on left—thereby making the connection between packaging drips and graffiti absolutely explicit. (via: PopSop)
2. The single golden drip featured on Moruba’s label design for Karey Olive Oil (center) is more an illustration of package contents and about as far from expressionistic graffiti style as you can get. Have to admire the astute typographic insight that enabled the designer to see the discreet teardrop that was always latent in that sideways “y.” (via: the dieline)
3. Mystery packs: I don’t know where I found the blue-yellow-red bath set bottles, on right. I have lost track of my source. (If anyone knows, please tell me; I don’t like making them anonymous.) The dripping paper collar loops that cover the caps and tuck-in are interesting. The connotations here (for dripping primary colors) seem to be more painterly—less “street art.”
(A video of the Krink/Absolut bottle, after the fold...)
On left: packaging for Ed Roth licensed products from House Industries; on right: Rat Fink in a can of 1 Shot paint from Jalopy Journal
I was terrible at building models as a kid and was always a little disappointed that the plastic parts weren’t already colored since I couldn’t hope to paint them as nicely as the picture on the box. Still, when I was a kid in the sixties I remember asking for and receiving a Revelle Rat Fink model. I think it was one of the hot rod series, although I was really mainly into the rat...
Anyway, it seems I was in good company seeing as how House Industries co-founder, Andy Cruz was also into R.F.
“...Around this time, Cruz’s obsession with the Southern California hot-rod culture epitomized by Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the car builder and illustrator famed for his grotesque Rat Fink caricatures, and was spending all his extra money on Rat Fink models, iron-ons, decals and other ephemera. “It hit me one day,” he says. “Why not have my hobby work for me?” In 1996, Cruz’s revelation led to a licensed collaboration with Roth that yielded his Rat Fink font, a translation of Roth’s hand-lettered type into the digital realm.”
I’ve gotten plenty of use out of those Rat Fink fonts, but it’s interesting to learn the back story behind their getting into this area in such big way.
The most important part of inspiration is being true to one’s sources, so we jumped at the opportunity to work with hot rodding legend Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. Ed was a pop artist, accomplished letterer and a consummate self-promoter, which are all cues we took when conceptualizing our first foray into licensing. By combining our maniacal penchant for authenticity and our appreciation for Ed’s impact on the masses, we reintroduced his genius with eight fonts, 32 pieces of artwork and an authentic Revell-style model box.
Following our “1 Shot” paint thread, brings us to Lance Freitag’s “1 Shot Paint / Limited Edition Package”
“This project was for my typography 4 class... I decided to do a special package for the pinstriping culture. I used 1 Shot paint as my company, they play a very large roll in the culture. I rebranded 1 shot, I didn’t want to use their existing logo.”
Debated with myself whether it would be just too obnoxious to put a “[sic]” after “culture” since it’s gernerally kulture with a “K” in this context...
Interesting, that Freitag’s package contains beer & cigarettes, rather than paint. Another attempt to combine smoking & drinking under the banner a single popular brand? Seems like a long shot to envision a paint company getting into alcohol & tobacco, but no crazier than Marlboro Beer, I suppose.
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