UNBOX Packaging for Design
The editoring and writing of this magazine is in charge of UDEM’s student Cecilia Enríquez, and as of March 2014, this is it’s first publication. The magazine is edited in both printed and online versions. The legal data of the magazine are the following: I.S.S.N.: 1133-8442 e-I.S.S.N.:2171-7566 Legal Disposal: SE-99-2014.
INDEX
#02 iNTRODUction
01 #08 02 #14 03 #04
TACTILE EYES IN ALL DIMENSIONS SUBSTANCE INTO THE IMMATERIAL
04 #22 05 #18
UNBOXING DESIRE
A COMPLETE LOOK AT PACKAGING
#26 REFERENCES
INTRO DUCT ION
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T
his is a monthly magazine dedicated entirely to the world of packaging, from the bases of packaging to what’s new to it, and tips for new designers that want to learn the ways of the package. This publication is printed in both English and Italian for better understanding.
TACTILE EYES
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ackaging is surpassing itself, experiencing a metamorphosis that is making its original focus a thing of the past: where once it was a mere device at the beck and call of the goods it contained, it now influences how we perceive the reality around us.
Before we reach the product, we have to make our way through its packaging: if we want to enjoy our food, we should also get pleasure from how it is wrapped; if we want to use some technology, we have to violate its vandal-proof casing, and if we want to get our hands on a new accessory, gift or gadget, we first have to love, then destroy, its packaging. In short, for our dreams to come true, we have to make active use of all our senses, in particular our sense of touch. So we handle packaging to interact with it. And that’s why increasingly advanced printing technologies, the fervid creativity of designers and producers and the sheer audacity of manufacturers who are always prepared to run the risk of launching new ideas enable containers to become sophisticated laboratories
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for experimenting with an augmented reality whose components are paper, rubber, complex plastics and new and unusual materials. Optical effects, reliefs and sensitive surfaces: this augmented realty is something we can touch not only with our hands, but also with our eyes. 3D surfaces spring out of the object at us to make our imagination take to the wing (as in the case of the AdorÊ chocolate box), project us into the virtual space of an electronic game (as on the cover of the CD Watch the Throne) or occupy a middle ground between nature and artifice, hinting at the presence of something hyperrealistic in our everyday lives (the balsawood label used by the Alternative range of biological wines). Today’s technologies allow it and the market wants it: packaging with textured tactile surfaces is the new frontier of product communications. These days, the promise of an experience is the value most appreciated by adrenaline-driven consumers in search of something new and exciting.
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And as is always the case in such circumstances, our species (Homo Consumens) adapts, so his eyes, too, become tactile in order to extend his viewing pleasure.
BY sonia pedrazzini
IN ALL DI MEN SIONS
09
Paper in packaging: from surfaces to metaphors The great thing about paper is that it can change format in a split second. You only have to fold it over to half its surface or project the sheet in to the third dimension. Make a couple of cuts or punches and the conversion into other dimensions become child’s play: you can reduce a whole spool into confetti or create thousands of tiny boxes.
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he packaging industry is probably the one that has proved more capable than any other of interpreting the flexibility of this material’s dimensions, making use of minimal techniques like folding, or more complex ones like printing. In an increasingly vivacious field like jewelry, paper illustrates all its physical and narrative potential: Suubi packaging speaks, almost literally, about a social and cultural redemption. Although the box is small and simple, every side has been transformed into a label that tells the story of the jewelry made “with hope and courage� by women in Uganda.
At the other extreme is paper pulp, the kind used to make cardboard eggs, that enshrines the jewellery designed by Markus Diebel. Once again, paper is invading a field, branching out from its traditionally restricted area of labelling to encompass the whole content. And it does so in a manner that is technologically evolved, refined and coherent, as its soft outlines adapt to follow the fluid lines of the product, while a text on the rear explains the reasons.
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Paper pulp’s malleable properties clearly open doors to a potentially limitless expansion for packaging in physical terms. Yet this is surprisingly countered by packaging’s parallel expansion into other more theoretical and non-material dimensions. While from a physical standpoint Greenbottles are solid, functional containers that provide flexible packaging for liquid consumables, such as wine or milk, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that their humorous simulation of real bottles (made of glass or plastic) encapsulates their design’s unstated aim: environmental sustainability can make use of archetypal or familiar shapes to launch reusable containers into other dimensions and bridge the gap between them and people’s everyday lives and perceptions. In a nutshell, using paper as a support for ideas, and not just for information, paves the way towards other levels – of ideas, theories and often also emotions. In the case of the labels for the Minima Moralia collection of wines, the photographic image expands the perception of the support to the point that it makes the label itself become a larger metaphor of the
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human spirit, complete with its light and dark sides and the right degree of ambiguity of an image that is only apparently three- dimensional. The gradual slide from one dimension to another may also be the consequence of a thing’s ordinary material properties. Height, width and depth are conventions that our eyes perceive and transmit to our brains, which use them to interpret reality, or to believe they do. When faced with the cutlery packaging designed by Gigodesign, for example, we find ourselves hesitating over expressions such as width and height, because the inversion of roles and the illusion are not optical in this case, but real. Form and illusion are vital tools used in the packaging industry to generate objects with a very short working life, which have to use the brief interval when they interface with users to transport the latters’ minds onto a different plane. It may be to a sustainable world on a different scale, as in the case of the big sacks used for raw materials that have now been transformed into shoppers by Lucy Salamanca; or it may be an
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obscure, indefinable world of taste and of olfactory perceptions, as in the case of the impenetrable P&S vanilla packaging. The other dimension of packaging is reached by using shapes, colours and finishes whose applications we all thought had been long exhausted, but we now have to acknowledge that a whole new world comes about every time they are mixed and matched anew. It is just the idea of somewhere else that we thought we already knew about or of a completely unknown universe: but that’s all it takes to expand every dimension of packaging beyond all recognition.
BY maria gallo
SUBSTAN CE INTO THE IMMATERIAL
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THE RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES OF PACKAGING SERVICES Our civilisation today is based on the importance of things immaterial, a logical development on a process that goes further than the gradual dematerialisation of objects (as they transmute into virtual reality) to take in the increasing economic and social significance of services. Not only is the sector of the traditional services expanding with every passing day – you only have to think of the growth of finance, banking, insurance, tourism, public transport etc. – but new varietals are also springing up all the time, such as personal services, domestic services, alternative forms of distribution, health and fitness planning and activities and so on.
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he importance of the immaterial component of our society redoubles if we also consider the significant impact exerted by services on the lifecycles of all goods, which are not just physical objects any more, but a blend of product and service. The automobile sales industry is a good example: where would it be nowadays without the support of leasing and after-sales service contracts? The same also applies to customer fidelity programmes and product launch operations in the area of distribution: these days, every product comes together with an increasingly substantial package of immaterial services, which often now accounts for the lion’s share of its cost and also of its added value (the alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages industry is a good example).
Providing a service is already a creative project in its own right, so it’s no coincidence that there has been a proliferation of activity in the area of service design in recent years. But this is a project that needs another project to protect it, so that maximum benefit can accrue. A service is something we do not see, hear or
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touch. We can test it, but only by using it. So it needs to be given a shape capable of expressing its connotations, its features and its values. This is achieved using a kind of packaging whose shape is not influenced by its contents, so can interpret them with complete freedom, on the one hand, although those same contents on the other hand oblige the designer to come up with a brief that expresses a high degree of integration between the service and how it is communicated, so as to avoid falling into the predictable trap of tiresome “boxing�.
BY remo m. micacci
UNBOXING DESIRE
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Giving substance to miniaturised electronic products Over the years, hi-tech has surrounded itself with a world of its own, complete with legends and rituals, one of which is unboxing, which has become a real cult for techie fans. The ritual of opening the box that contains a newly-bought product takes the theory well known to anyone who works with packaging to its extreme consequences. What that theory states is a new version of the familiar old proverb that absence makes the heart grow longer: “distance drives desire�. In some cases, the box even gives you a chance to touch an immaterial product like software, even though the act of touching may only be metaphorical.
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i-tech packaging often fulfils more than the traditional functions of containing the product and communicating about it, as it also forges the physical link between man and technology, between the consumer and the brand.
Evidence of this abounds in the increasing attention paid to the design and graphics for such products’ packages, which now comply so faithfully with the product’s spirit, the style of the brand and the codes of the market as to be instantly recognisable. Different as the products themselves and their packages may be, an Apple computer’s simple white box, the unblemished black of the ones used for several smartphones (the Blackberry and the Samsung Galaxy are just a couple of examples), the evanescent streaky nuances of the Windows Vista operating system and the frigid packaging that contains every Bang & Olufsen telephone are rather more brand icons and vehicles for disseminating messages than they are examples of functional packaging. In addition to these, though, the hi-tech community also has an irrepressible component in its DNA that leaves space
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for small manufacturers and market leaders alike to experiment. This is where art, a sense of humour and the provocative visual culture of recent generations become the raw materials for covering all sorts of products (earphones, TVs, mobile phones, netbooks etc.) with new visual languages. Bypassing the conventional brand style,designers dialogue directly with consumers and often manage to transform their technological dreams into reality, at least for that short space of time that separates the act of buying the product from the ritual of opening the box.
BY MARIA GALLO
A COMPLETE LOOK AT PACKAGING
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ackaging is a complex business that involves designers, machinery manufacturers, suppliers of support materials, end customers, channels of distribution and so on. The industry is firmly established in Italy, where the variety and complexity of the industry’s value chain mean that it has a significant innovative capacity, as the pressure to compete and the quest to optimise packages involves all stakeholders in a virtuous circle of ideas and solutions, often with quite ingenious results. In this issue we are publishing a selection of recent examples that have made a lasting mark for the strength of their designs and the optimisation of their processing.
The information and images published in this article describe products shortlisted for the first edition of the Packology Award, at the Packology trade fair in Rimini, and are reproduced courtesy of UCIMA (the Italian Automatic Packaging Machinery Manufacturers’ Union) and ADI, the Italian Association for Industrial Design.
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#1
ISABELLA
/Brand & label design
#02 PERFECT BODY #03 VESTO SLIM F1T3 #04 MYSAC #05 BALLANTINO’S /Box and flow pack for whisky 70 cl.’s bottle
/Packaging
/Labeling System
/Corporate identity and bands for garbage bags.
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#06 MED’S MEDICAL #07 SOLUTIONS FILIPPO BERIO #08 FREEBOX #09 LAMICAN OY / Paper cup 250ml.
/Branding, corporate identity & packaging
/PET bottle for olive oil
/Packaging
#10
MANORESI /Label design
by PAOLO GAMBULI
REFERENCES
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All the articles printed in this magazine can be found online in ARTLAB Magazine, and are available in the links below:
Tactile Eyes
In All Dimensions
Substance to the Immaterial
Unboxing Desire
A Complete Look at Packaging
Editor Cecilia Alejandra Enríquez ceciliaenri.27@gmail.com Av. Alfonso Reyes #104, 66250 San Pedro Garza Garcia, NL, México Tel. + 52 8335 3066 Printed Av. Ignacio Morones Prieto 4500 Pte., Jesus M. Garza, 66238 San Pedro Garza Garcia, NL, México +52 81 8215 1000