box vox

Fresh Kill

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.

(via Freshkills Park blog)

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.”

Photo by Raj Kottamasu

(Another photo, after the fold...)

3 Rocket Shaped Bottles

A subset of vehicular packaging: rocket shaped bottles with fins. (In each of these three recent examples, the brand includes the letter “Z” for some reason.)

1. Zimbi Juice Drinks (on left) are described as “Aerodynamic Nutrition in Earth’s first flying bottle.” Their rocket shaped bottles, are recyclable, but are aslo intended to be reused as toys:

Zimbi flying bottles really fly! The bottles are aerodynamically designed to fly when thrown empty; Once you have discovered the bottle’s secret, you can throw the bottle over 100 feet.

IMPORTANT: Only throw the bottles empty. Throwing any bottle that is full of liquid can be dangerous.

2. Zun Energy Drink’s rocket shaped bottle (center) was launched in 2009. Here, the rocket serves as a metaphor for the “brain-blasting Energy®” the consumer derives from drinking the beverage.

3. LazyTown Go Water (on right) is Nordic Water’s TV tie-in brand of children’s bottle water that comes in an “easy to hold, rocket-shaped bottle.”

(Additional photos of all three brands, after the fold...)

Freehand Pinstriping

Among the T shirt designs sold by House Industries are shirts that read “Freehand Pinstriping”—based on a retired, hand-lettered clipboard by Angelo Cruz. (father of House Industries co-founder, Andy Cruz)

These shirts (with their self-referential, freehand-pinstriped lettering) also come packaged in a cross-category paint can.

Between comments like “hey dude that’s bad, can you teach me?” and “why don’t you just use tape like everybody else does,” Angelo Cruz has a tough time actually getting to the shiny stretches of new automotive sheet metal to which he applies a thin stripe of 1 Shot with a ferrule full of squirrel hair.

House Industries

As we’ve been grappling with the whole “Kustom Kulture” pinstriping gestalt this week it’s become evident that the freehand component is key.

(Some videos of pinstripers at work, after the fold...)

1 Shot Mascot

1 Shot is another company with an official anthropomorphic packaging mascot. Their anthro-pack is a cross-eyed paint can, named Louie, who holds a paintbrush in one hand and... I think that’s an airbrush in the other hand.

It was Chris Caccamise’s “Action Paint Can” that first prompted me to look into “1 Shot” paints. Turns out they’re the go-to brand for serious practitioners in the art of Kustom Kulture pin-striping.

(And another thing, after the fold...)

Volkswagen Box

1960s “Get a Box” campaign by Doyle Dane Bernbach compared the Volkswagen bus to a corrugated carton (in poster above) and to a shoebox (in the TV commercial below).

(Print ad follows, after the jump...)

Tylenol Children’s Elixir

Another vehicular pack, this one from 1955—(the year I was born.)

McNeil [Laboratories] first sold acetaminophen in 1955 as a pain and fever reliever for children, calling it Tylenol Children’s Elixir. Appropriately for an antipyretic, it was sold in a package that looked like a red fire truck.

“A Festival of Analgesics” Chemical Heritage Foundation, 2001

And it also came in a package that looked like an orange school bus. (Or was that a yellow school bus?)

(See also: Medicine Cabinet Candy)

Randy Ludacer
Beach Packaging Design

Cans, bottles, cars & trucks

A small vehicular roundup, as per: Package as Metaphor (Part 5)...

On left: car tins—(not cartons)—Swatch’s “limited edition” car-shaped watch packaging by Oregon-based Perez Design. On right: a vintage truck-shaped bottle from Lins Antiques.

(A few other packaging rides, after the speed bump...)

Can Cars: 2 types

On left: this photo of Stephen Hooper’s “Canvertible” car is from Sweet n' Sour’s Flickr Photostream; On right: Sandy Sanderson’s “Buggy”

Following the threads of vehicular packaging (and other beverage can vehicles)... Here are two types of aluminum can car:

1. The Canvertible by NJ-based art car guy, Stephen Hooper (AKA: Hoop). His Canvertible is a Fiat 850 decorated with aluminum cans, and although he has a penchant for gold and silver spray paint, some of the original beverage branding does show through in spots.

Mr. Hooper, who goes by the name Hoop, is an artist who uses cars as canvas, making what he considers a public art form. He refuses to give his age, but when a garbage collector who stopped to gawk at his works guessed 45, he allowed that it was not a bad estimate. He has created dozens of car-based artworks over the last 15 years, sometimes putting the same vehicle through several incarnations.

The consistent threads in his works are imagination, recyclable materials and contact cement. Beyond that, every creation is one of a kind, and usually relates to more traditional artwork he is doing at the time...

...Although he used to work in studios in Manhattan, on 14th Street and Prince Street, Mr. Hooper returned a few years ago to the Clifton house he grew up in when his mother had a stroke and needed care.

His vehicles, unusual in any setting, seem all the more surprising on his prototypical suburban New Jersey street.

Artist Takes the Ordinary For an Extraordinary Spin
By Roberta Zeff
The New York Times, Sunday, October 22, 2000

2. Buggy is a model of a beach buggy made by New Zealand-based Sandy Sanderson from 30 Waikato Beer cans. For Sanderson, the beverage branding is a key feature of his “can cars.”

When I was 40 years old I started to play the electric bass and joined a local band for more than 12 years. This led me to change from model aeroplanes to designing and building electric stringed instruments. It had been my intention to retire from teaching and carry on full time as a luthier.

Unfortunately, I had an accident on the bike that shattered my left wrist. This required reconstructive surgery, 4 plates, 8 screws, and a bone graft off the hip, to fix it. The great news is that I can still ride the bike and do stuff like that. The not so great news is that I have lost the sensitivity, fine control, and strength that was there previously. No more working with woodworking power tools! No more sensitive bass riffs!

While I was off work recovering from the accident I picked up the drawing instruments and started taking a serious look at the Coruba and Cola cans that I had held back from the recycler. I have seen pictures of some very fine model aircraft made from drinks cans but they had the plain aluminum from the inside of the cans on the outside of the model. This defeats the purpose of using the drinks can as far as I am concerned. You want everyone who looks to be able to see instantly what your basic resource was. Celebrate the fact, don't hide it!

from Sanderson’s Can Car website

(Photos of each artist and more of their work, after the fold...)

Package as Metaphor (Part 5)

Top: a 1959 Coca-Cola ad from RoadsidePictures Flickr Photostream; 2nd row, left: Barnum’s Animals Crackers from The Imaginary World; to the right: an ad for “Zoo Mac” animal-shaped egg noodles from Tracie*s Retro Flickr Photostream; bottom left photos: Fuzzy Wuzzy Bath Soap from eBay; to the right: circus train “Animal Crackers” photos from The Imaginary World

5. Package as Vehicle

The package is a little vehicle that the product rides around in. This idea might not seem like such a fundamental packaging metaphor at first glance. But to the degree that packaging is all about transporting products to distant & far flung consumers, it makes perfect sense.

Surprising how much vintage “circus wagon” packaging there was. (I remember the Barnum’s Animal Crackers boxes, but the others are new to me.) Not all the vehicle-packs I found were as vintage as these “circus wagons.”

Cars, trucks, buses, vans, rockets and a plane and a flying saucer, follow, after the speed bump...

Vehicular Spam Can

2005 photo of the promotional SPAM vehicle in St Paul, Minnesota from Waterbottle’s Flickr Photostream

Another faux SPAM can—this one of the vehicular packaging type. (Or should I say, anthropomorphic, vehicular packaging type?

(See how this truck could become your very own, after the fold...)