Bonfire of the Vanities

I noticed a shot of Karim Rashid recently and it got me wondering how much he might have in common on the subject of design with another sartorial exhibitionist in white, Tom Wolfe. Seems not much.

Tom Wolfe was recently interviewed at Yale by Peter Eisenmann, on the 25th anniversary of his assault on modern architecture, From Bauhuas To Our House, He spent a good deal of time slamming modernism in design. In this case architecture, but I suspect he would have the same criticism of the simplicity inherent in Rashid’s product design work as well.

He is apparently as critical of the practitioners as he is of the modernist movement itself. He went on to say, “This charming aristocracy of taste began gradually to infiltrate all of the arts and praise things that the masses don’t comprehend or find ugly,”

A Yale reporter, Isaac Arnsdorf, maintained that “Wolfe, who described himself as a ’social secretary’ who observes and records cultural trends, framed modernism as an attempt to banish the bourgeois ornateness of classical architecture.”

Karim Rashid has a very different take on the role and function of design, modern or otherwise. He says on his website,  

“My real desire is to see people live in the modus of our time, to participate in the contemporary world, and to release themselves from nostalgia, antiquated traditions, old rituals, kitsch and the meaningless. We should be conscious and attune with this world in this moment. If human nature is to live in the past – to change the world is to change human nature.”

Wouldn’t you just love to get these two guys together? Wonder how we could arrange it? Just having them walk on stage together, and see them side by side, would be worth the price of admission. Looks to me like the only design opinion these two guys share is the color of their suit.

At househunting.ca there is another interesting take on good taste, Karim Rashid, and Tom Wolfe, written by Kelvin Browne of the National Post.

Jim Cramer and Package Designing the future

Ben Stein wrote an interesting piece in the Sunday New York Times business section about the Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer death match that occurred recently on The Daily Show. The one where Stewart attacked Cramer for “failing to anticipate events and inform his audience about those events.”

Stein goes on to say “Humans can’t consistently pick the right stocks or call markets, foretell political or geopolitical events or successfully predict changes in interest rates or commodity prices.” Yet as we know, in all forms of media, there are spundits in government, the media, the financial services industry, and elsewhere that are filled with advice on all manner of future events. All of which is, at best, informed guesswork. 

Package design is different. We not only predict the future, we help create it! It struck me that our clients are always asking us to do nothing less, and we do it every day. The best of us use informed judgement, intuitive skill, experience, and talent to create a successful future for the brands we touch. 

The difference perhaps is that pundits run into trouble when the future they sell in the here and now doesn’t happen. Package designers run into trouble when the here and now they create for the future doesn’t sell.

Packaging Made From Rock

This headline, from The Gourmet Retailer, got my attention.

A paper alternative that even Fred Flintstone would love. Apparently The Penta Water Company is the first beverage company to use a new packaging label material made from limestone, no paper, no plastic. Here is a portion of what they have to say in the release.

“ThermoStone™ is made with a patented process that creates a bright white sheet that prints well, is machine-ready and is perfect for the natural products industry. By converting labels to this limestone-based product, Penta will enhance its commitment to the environment by utilizing a product that eliminates use of trees, bleach, oil and formaldehyde, and greatly reduces use of water during the manufacturing process. The labels require less energy to produce than those using PVC or plastic, resulting in lower carbon emissions and a smaller environmental footprint.”

I am still trying to do some homework on this, sounds too good to be true, but if it is half as good as it sounds it may offer an alternative for some applications.

Acknowledgments, Here are a couple links for more information.

The Penta Water Company

GreenerPackage.com

Earth First Packaging

Free iPhone package design app

Imagine the possibilities. An iPhone app for package design. 

Apple says there are now over 25,000 apps available for the iPhone, so I figure someone is working in a garage somewhere on the release of an iPhone Package Design app release 1.0. Here are some suggestions.

We will start with the Consumerizer, a tool that allows the iPhone to learn everything we need to know about the target consumer. It can optically scan consumer research reports, search the web for appropriate marketing and sales data, find updates in various online publications of the newest trend information, you get the picture.

Then we will add the Fontadjuster, you simply type in the brand name, and every time you shake the iPhone a new version of the brand logo, rendered in a different font, will appear on screen.

Then we cue up the Coloraster, a touch sensitive color wheel allowing instantaneous color adjustments.

Lastly we will use Juxtaposer, an app that actually already exists, to combine multiple photos on screen.

Press send and your done!

Something tells me we are not far away from some form of this. Adobe are you listening?

Mouse ready projects for a design infrastructure

Shovels are great, and there is a lot of money being thrown around lately to support useful, but traditional, infrastructure projects. What about helping to nurture and support a sustainable design infrastructure.

Aren’t there projects that we as a design community could lobby the Federal Government to support that would help the struggling design economy, create a national design infrastructure, and support the increased emphasis on sustainability? The answer obviously is yes.

One place to start could be to help the AIGA with their initiative to rebuild the horrendous condition of our voting system infrastructure. They have a great program called Design for Democracy, that among other things has made specific suggestions on ballot design and helps implement the election reforms mandated by the Help America Vote Act. Wouldn’t it be great to have federal support of this through AIGA’s Election Design Fellows program. Jenny Greeve was recently hired by the state of Washington as an Election Design Fellow. Shouldn’t every state have at least one individual overseeing the design process for what is arguably our most important responsibility as a citizen.

A second project could be federal support for the work of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition. This is an industry group that is working hard to develop an infrastructure in the package community that supports sustainable design. Shown above are some of the winners featured in their sustainable package design library. 

Their stated mission, “is to advocate and communicate a positive, robust environmental vision for packaging and to support innovative, functional packaging materials and systems that promote economic and environmental health through supply chain collaboration.” Sounds like a national packaging infrastructure project to me!

How about putting money behind their Sustainable Metrics Project  or support the industry wide implementation of their Compass project, an online software application that allows packaging professionals to compare the environmental impacts of their package designs using a life cycle approach. The SPC has recently released the public version of this tool. 

We have CAFE standards that regulate auto emissions, how about implementing a similar industry-wide standard for consumer product package design?

Or lastly, how about support for the U.S. National Design Policy Initiative, which has a series of proposals including the appointment of an Assistant Secretary of Design and Innovation within the Department of Commerce, or the establishment of national grants for basic design research. 

All of these initiatives could benefit the design infrastructure of our country, improve our economy’s competitiveness, and put design to work creating sustainable solutions for our clients.

Objectified, the design movie

There is an interesting review today by Allan Chochinov of a new documentary film, called Objectified, in the Core 77 blog. He attended the first showing in Austin over the weekend.

On the Objectified web site the film is decribed as,

“a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. 

Through vérité footage and in-depth conversations, the film documents the creative processes of some of the world’s most influential product designers, and looks at how the things they make impact our lives. What can we learn about who we are, and who we want to be, from the objects with which we surround ourselves?”

The film includes interviews with such notables as Palo Antonelli of MOMA New York, Chris Bangle of BMW, Karim Rashid of – you guessed it – Karim Rashid, Rob Walker of The New York Times, and a number of other world wide designers.

There is another interesting review of the film in The Times of London, quoted above, where the author not only discusses the film but makes some observations about the current economic climate and its influence on the design profession. 

The screening schedule shows that it will be shown in a number of places in the next few months and should be worth a look.

Positively 19th Century, Positively 21st Century, and Positively Marvelous

I will keep this short. This work speaks more than eloquently for itself.

For those who have followed the brief history of this blog you will have begun to learn at least two things. The first is about what we are, the second is about what we are not.  

First, we have an abiding interest in, and are spending a significant amount of time investigating, the roots of American package design. With the post yesterday, this has gotten us as far as the second decade of the 20th century. We have noted for instance the use of pattern, detail, and typographic complexity during the later part of the 19th century.

Second, although very few things interest us more, this blog is not about finding the newest beautiful package. There are many people doing that well, like thedieline.com or lovelypackage.com.

But if you are interested in the historic roots of package design and their influence on our contemporary work, its wonderful when occasionally those two interests collide, and they do with the work of Louise Fili. This work above for Jean-Georges Vongerichten is just one of many examples where the influences of historic package design is clear, in this case the very strong influence of 19th century design motifs, yet there is no mistaking the fact that the work is marvelously modern.

Go to her new web site, I’m breathless with admiration.

Package Design, a leading or trailing indicator, 1910-1920

The second decade of the 20^th century was a time of transition, unrest and reform in all forms of life in America. The decade began with the economy recovering from the San Francisco earthquake and the stock market panic of 1907, obviously a major influence was World War I, and the decade ended with national labor unrest in 1919.

The decade also featured a number of interesting developments in Washington. In 1913 the 16^th Constitutional amendment passed creating income taxes and the Federal Reserve System was begun. The decade ended in 1919, with the passage of the 18^th amendment outlawing alcohol and the 19^th amendment giving women the vote.   

In architecture, the vertical power of the Woolworth building completed by Cass Gilbert in 1913 was contrasted by the horizontal of Frank Lloyd Wright’s first Taliesin in Wisconsin. While New York experienced the completion of some monumental public buildings like Grand Central Station and The Main Public Library, Sears was beginning to sell modest homes by catalogue for under $1,000. In Europe, Walter Gropius and others founded the Bauhaus, in 1919.

In the theater the decade contrasted Charlie Chaplin debuting as the little tramp in 1914, and the early work of Eugene O’Neill.  

Science featured the 1916 release of Einstein’s general theory of relativity,

In commerce, the Titanic sank in 1912, the Whitman’s Sampler packaging became the first to use cellophane, and the first moving assembly line was developed for the production of the Ford Model T. Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum and the Morton’s Salt girl were both initiated in 1914. While in 1917 US Rubber developed the first Keds sneaker, and inventor Clarence Birdseye developed a rapid freezing method for preserving food.

In popular culture, the Erector Set, and Tinker Toys were introduced, while Lincoln Logs were created by John Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright, inspired by a trip to Tokyo where The Imperial Hotel, designed by his father, was being built using a new technique of interlocking beams.

In fine arts, three fundamental concepts concerning art in America were seriously reconsidered between 1910 and 1920.  1. What ‘art’ is, 2. Who makes decisions about standards, and 3. How art is shared with the viewing public. This can be seen by the wide diversity of artists like Georgia O’Keefe, Alfred Stieglitz, and Mary Cassatt, or the vast variety of artistic styles being developed, from realism, primitivism, symbolism, fauvism, dadaism, futurism, and cubism.

Perhaps the most important single event early in the decade was the 1913 Armory Show in New York. This was an exhibition of over 300 European and American artists, with radical modern works including Duchamp’s Nude Descending the Staircase and Matisse’s Luxury. Some have called it one of the most influential events in the history of American art, and the power of this show would shape all visual arts for many years.  

Package design was also at a significant crossroads. Although the overt modernist influences of the Armory Show would not show up on the store shelves in this decade, there were clear changes from the heavily decorative packaging of the previous decade. The image in this post shows three themes beginning to play a significant role, the first is greater typographic freedom, the second is the incorporation of a variety of different imagery, and the last is a general trend towards simplification.

Lets start with typography. The first decade of the 20th century was dominated by remnants of the gilded age, with complex textural fonts, art nouveau inspire typographic flourishes, and limited color. Typographically the designers were heavily influenced by complex rendered letterforms with rich organic complexity throughout the package.

In the second decade of the 20^th century things got a bit more flexible and in some ways cleaner and more straightforward. Designers started to experiment more freely with combining serif and sans serif letterforms. In fact the Campbell’s, Whitman’s, Coca Cola, and Kellogg’s packages all have a brand identity rendered in a script font (presumably because this was thought to be more unique) combined with secondary product descriptors in sans serif, or at least more simplified typographic approaches. This combination of script identities with simpler secondary copy seems to be a new trend and specific to this decade.

The Half and Half package is a perfect example of the design conflicts taking place at this time, a combination of the very complex, gilded age, Buckingham identity in the lower right, with the very simplified, sans serif, Lucky Strike brand mark. Two brand identity elements from very different visual heritages. As far as my research can tell, this was the first time such an obvious juxtaposition of styles was used by a designer.

Now secondly the use of imagery was beginning to loosen up significantly. You will notice that this collage contains an actual photograph on the Ty Cobb chocolates, a rendered gold medallion on Campbell’s, a stitched sampler pattern on Whitman’s, a graphic arrow on Wrigley’s, product illustration on Tinkertoy, and a simple nouveaux inspired floral element on Kellogg’s. In each case this was an attempt to support the purely typographic with a graphic element that supported or visually described the product, as well as acted as a unique and memorable part of the brand identity.

In this decade we are beginning to see the evolution of distinct product identities. We also are beginning to see elements of the design that will remain key communication vehicles for decades to come. The split red & white Campbell’s soup can, the sampler artwork set on a cream background, the Coca Cola script letterform, the Wrigley’s arrow device, the Lucky Strike target.

The last trend is simplification. You would rarely see anything we might now call “air” in the designs of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Backgrounds were typically filled with texture, type was multi-layered and complex, and package layouts busy and geometric. In this new decade we would occasionally see designers use flat areas of color, straight lines, or typography that was not filled with rules, outlines and drop shadows.

Perhaps without even knowing the ramifications of their decisions, and certainly without yet fully embracing the modernism that was soon to come, or that was increasingly evident in many other areas of the graphic arts, package designers of this decade were beginning to lay the fundamental groundwork and precedent for the establishment of a brand identity using package design as the vehicle.

We started by describing this decade as a time of transition, unrest and reform. Its fair to say that there was also a significant transition in the basic visual tools of package designers as they began to recognize the importance of unique typography, an ownable representation of the product, and the use of a consistent visual architecture.  

Ken turns 48

Look at that poor guy on the left, he sure looks whipped. 

How would you feel if you had been going out with a beautiful older woman since the early sixties, and she still wouldn’t settle down.

Barbie has been getting a lot of press for turning 50 this year, but little did I realize she has been going out with a younger man for all these years. The couple had a falling out in 2004, and apparently have been doing their own thing, and suddenly got back together this Valentine’s Day, after five years.

As you can see from the photo on the right, Ken has been hitting the gym and according to Mattel “has revamped his life — mind, body and soul,” Hollywood stylist and Mattel consultant Phillip Bloch said in a statement. “Everyone knows how difficult it is to change, especially when you’ve lived your life a certain way for more than four decades.” He continued, “People just get confused when a man is more sensitive, he’s more in touch with his spiritual side, he’s been writing poetry  .  .  . he’s been backpacking through Tibet.””

Just before they got back together Mattel publicist Lauren Dougherty was playing it coy and said Barbie “appreciates the new look Ken is sporting. He really looks great. But we’ll have to stay tuned to see whether these two will get back together.”

At the Valentine’s Day press conference unveiling the new Ken, Bloch said the company was going for a “worldly, European thing,” and “definitely wanted to be looking hot.”

After repeated attempts, I was unable to get Barbie or Ken to comment personally for this piece. I could add my own thoughts about the silliness of all of this given the times we live in, but I think the comments of Ms. Dougherty and Mr. Bloch speak for themselves.

All that Jazz

I was listening to Wynton Marsalis on the Sirius XM radio program called In The Swing Seat. He was comparing and contrasting the playing styles of two jazz greats on the piano, Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson. I don’t pretend to be an expert in jazz history, so it was a wonderful exercise in listening to the differences in their styles and learning about where these influences may have originated.

This program started me wondering what the album art for these artists looked like. Some initial exploration found interesting differences that in some ways support my feeling about their musical styles. 

I think of Erroll Garner as a an artist who bridged two eras and two approaches. He was a master of merging stride with a more modern style. An amazing artist with a unique style, and one firmly rooted in the early part of the 20th century. Although he was born in 1925, only 4 years after Garner, I think of Oscar Peterson as a classy, smooth technician of a more contemporary style. Both amazing artists but with different perspectives on the jazz piano.

The album art work shown here all dates from the 1950s. The Garner covers, like his music, bridges the graphics from two eras. From an earlier time on the left, to a more contemporary photographic approach common in the mid-century on the right. The Peterson covers have a classic 1950s color collage and sketch style that was very progressive for its time.

Several of these images come from an amazing Swedish jazz web site birkajazz.com. In their Birka Jazz Archive, they have great images of hundreds of older jazz albums and give detailed credits for the designers, artists and photographers.

This archive is not only a treat for fans of jazz history, but is an amazing reference for the history and trends of all graphic design through the last half of the 20^th century. I encourage you to take a look.