Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
Visual Research Development book 2020
GRAPHIC DESIGN ON PACKAGING How it became important and why
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by Camilla Grønvold Langholen
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging 2
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
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Introduction
15
Artificial Outcome
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Museum of Brnads
32
Workshop 2
05
The First Industrial Revolution
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Chicken Dinner Chocolate bar
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Workshop 1
33
Workshop 3
06
Folding Cartons
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Chicken Dinner Design
26
Interview
34
Moodboard
07
New innovations for printing
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Chicken Dinner Design - Result
35
New design - Name
08
Labelling
36
New design - Colour
13
Design Styles
37
New design - Typography
38
New design - Illustration
41
New design - Labelling
43
New design - Result
44
New design - Point of sale
50
Photography
52
Poster
55
Animation
60
Sources
NOT A PART OF THIS DOCUMENT PLEASE REQUEST THE FULL DEVELOPMENT BOOK
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
Introduction It’s important to have a wide visually vocabulary, which is given by learning about history. The design of the packaging has a important role in the success or failure of a product. It’s a silent communicator and will drag your attention without your knowledge. While the packaging itself serves its purpose of protecting the product, the packaging design gives life and identity to the product, making it a sale promotion. It also needs to provide the
right information about the product to the costumers. Packaging is everywhere and everyone gets touch by it, but how did graphic design become so important for packaging? This research will cover some of the important happenings in the history in graphic design on packaging, leading up till present time, focusing on consumer products such as food and beverages. A proposal will be made for an artificial outcome provided by this research. This document is seperated into 4 parts: history of graphic design on packaging, interviewing, proposal and creating an artificial outcome.
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Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging 4
PART 1
History of graphic design on packaging A historical review of graphic design on packaging from the first industrial revolution to present time presenting why and how graphic design became so important for packaging.
1760 - 1840
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
The First Industrial Revolution
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Packaging design didn’t actually become a area for graphic designers until the first industrial revolution, witch was the time between 1760 - 1840. Before this, packaging was purely food preservation and designing on it didn’t come to peoples thought as it would be expensive. The advertising of manufactured goods were mainly done by using posters. The first industrial revolution created a sudden demand for better products because of the mass migration to larger cities and introduced some of the biggest changes in packaging in the history. It started in England, where
new technology made it possible to mass-produce goods witch used to be handmade in small fabrics. The packaging changed from being shipped in bulk loads to general stores to packaging for individuals. Consumers wanted attractive, individual packaging that they could purchase at new high street stores like Marks & Spencer. This was when the advertising industry really boomed. Branding became a fundamental of marketing, and packaging was important to grab the attention of costumers. Iconic logos were born around this time like Coca Cola (1886) and Pepsi Cola (1898).
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
1879
Folding Cartons In 1879, a printer in Brooklyn named Robert Gair, accidentally invented the concept of the folding carton. It was a machine mishap that led to the bag being cut. This was the first semi-flexible packaging. At that point National Biscuit Company (NABISCO) sold their biscuits in unpackaged barrels, but wanted a better and attractive way to package their products. In 1896, they started using Gair’s folding cartons as the first company to use their product. This is a memorable part of packaging design history as it marks the time where brands was starting to give a though about the design of the packaging and not only the material. Under is a picture where folded cartons starting to evolve (Fig 1) and a few years later where it’s more popular amongst producers (Fig 2). (Fig 1) Museum of Brands display, London, 1880-1900
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(Fig 2) - Mueseum of Brands, London, display 1900-1910
1900’s
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
New innovations for printing
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People had to wait until their food was wrapped and weighed since they were usually sold in loose. During the great depression from 1929 - 1939, there was a new change of self service, witch gave packaging the role of a silent-salesman. The growth economy, cheap materials and clean packaging allowed stores to display products on the shelf. This made the costumers to choose the product themselves and turned product packaging into a competition as the fabrics wanted the costumers attention so they would buy their products. At this period most packaging only used typography to create a visual identity due to limitations of letterpress printing. Some used illustrations, but they could only be painted by hand. In 1930’s the invention of more reliable flexography printing made illustrations of food more realistic. This type of printing then became a standard for printing on packaging materials. During the early part of 1900’s, the technique was used extensively in food packaging in the United States. Aloris Senefelder of Bavaria invented in 1798 a printer technique called “lithography”. Upon this discovery, colour lithographs called chromolithographs were used in the last half of 1800’s. Chromolithography is a method for making multi-colour prints and includes all lithographs. Designers of chromolithography prints drew all the elements, both text and image, as one piece. They created colourful posters to decorate, not only, walls of cities, but also household products. The limits of letterpress printing were no longer a problem and let designers be creative and invent fanciful ornaments and lettering styles at will. They developed ideas for packaged goods using iconic images, bright colours and embellished lettering.
A chromolithographic reproduction of a drawing by Miss O. Johnston T. G. HILL, 2011, ‘THE ESSENTIALS OF ILLUSTRATION’, Reader in Vegetable Physiology in the University of London, University College.
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
1966
Labelling As packaging design evolved and became a competition amongst fabrics, labelling also became important for both merchants and buyers. Merchants who made quality products could make their product more identifiable. This helped the buyers know the difference of a good and poor quality producers. Already in 1906 came ‘Federal Food and Drugs Act’ (the 1906 Act), a set of laws that protecting consumers of false and misleading labelling. The buyer should be able to take confident and informed food choices based on diet, allergies, personal taste or cost. However, these laws did not require an accurate statement of ingredients, a correct statement of weight or measure. Therefore, it didn’t protect the consumers as they tend to experience fraud due to the lack of labelling. Slack fill and deceptive packaging were a general problem which the 1906 Act were inadequate to protect the consumers from. Slack fill is intentionally filling only a portion of the capacity of a container, tricking the consumer into believing the container contains of more product. Deceptive packaging is shaping containers in a way that consumers are deceived as to their true capacity.
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Although there were changes made to the 1906 Act and there was a revision in 1938, the major changes in labelling came with ‘The Fair Packaging and Labelling Act of 1966’ (the 1966 Act). Senator Phillip A. Hart of the ‘Senate Judiciary Committee’ in America had cleared: “The consumer has a right to be able to find out what he is buying, how much he is buying, what it is costing on a per unit basis”1. After years of developing the law, the Act took effect from July, 1 1967 and required the products sold on a retail basis to consumers in interstate commerce to informatively label their products with honesty. It required the products to state weight, contents, quantity, and maker of the product. In 1950, Marks & Spencer’s introduced expiration date in their storeroom, which made their way into the shelves in 1970.
Since then, changes has been made to meet peoples need and requirements. After the 1966 Act took effect a request of faster check-out in grocery shops were needed as the shops grew bigger and then became supermar
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
“The consumer has a right to be able to find out what he is buying, how much he is buying, what it is costing on a per unit basis� Senator Phillip A. Hart
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Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
From left: Bull’s Eye, KarTrak and a UPC barcode.
kets. After years of developing, from Bull’s eye code to KarTrak, the UPC barcode were born and first scanned at Marsh’s Supermarket in 1974. This is the barcode we still use today. This meant the products needed barcode as well as EAN-number. In 1990, serving size and terms such as ‘low fat’ and ‘light’ were standardized. Later, nutrition facts has been adjusted slightly to make consumers take healthy choices for themselves and their kids to 10
fight obesity and other growing health problems. Note that there is different laws to alcohol and tobacco in different countries.
FUN FACT! The first item to ever be scanned at Marsh’s Supermarked was a ten pack of Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit chewing gum - which was later stolen.
Fig 1: ‘Old container’
1966 - today Mi�a’s
Mi�a’s
Corporate Endorsement
Product description
Honest labelling has made people happy since 1966
Ingredients
Food packaging
Mockup
Brand/Product name Flavor
Strawberry
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
corporate endorsement, product description, brand/product name, flavor, product features, product images/illustrations, special advantage mark, GDA label, net weight, promotial statement, nutrition facts, ingredients, how to use/cook, barcode, manufaturer/distributor, expiration date.
Ingredients
How to prepare:
How to use/cook
1. Do this 2. Then this 3. Lastly do this
Product images/ illustrations Product Features
Promotial Statement
A heal�hy choice!
Camilla Langholen Sogstikollen 26, 1446 Drøbak +47 41 63 25 62
Manufacturer/ Distributor
Fig 2: ‘New container’
Mockup
Mockup Food packaging
Product description Brand/Product name
Honest labelling has made people happy since 1966
corporate endorsement, product description, brand/product name, flavor, product features, product images/illustrations, special advantage mark, GDA label, net weight, promotial statement, nutrition facts, ingredients, how to use/cook, barcode, manufaturer/distributor, expiration date.
A healthy choice!
How to prepare: 1. Do this 2. Then this 3. Lastly do this
Product images/ illustrations
Ingredients/allergy advice
How to use/cook
Storage:
Store in cool, dry place. To maintain the quality after opening store in an airlight container and use within two months, and by the best before date.
200g
Calories
112
6%
Sugars
2,5g
0,3g
Fat
Saturates
Soduim
3%
<1%
<1%
8%
Trace
of an adult’s Guidline Daily Amount
Special GDA label advantage mark
0,2g
Camilla Langholen Sogstikollen 26, 1446 Drøbak +47 41 63 25 62
Manufacturer/ Distributor
Storage information Barcode
Each potion contains
Net weight
Promotial Statement Nutrition facts
Ingredients this product may contain nuts
Strawberry
Flavor Product Features
Mi�a’s
Mi�a’s
Corporate Endorsement
15 August 2020
Expiration date
Briefly example of the labelling and design pre 1966 Act (Fig 1) and modern times based on this research (Fig 2) 11
Present time It’s important to know that design doesn’t get better over time, it reflects the culture and the period of time which it was created. We met with the demands as the industries, as well as shops, had grown bigger and we developed new technology to make the procedure easier. We are no longer limited to expenses or printing, but what limits us today is the loads of information that need to be stated on a small amount of space. As Senator Hart said “The old-fashioned butcher was often accused of weighing his thumb. We want to be sure that today’s consumer isn’t still buying that thumb, but in a fancy package” regarding the 1966 Act, the container needs to be equivalent to its content. Today, packaging consist of the graphics, product description and the aesthetically graphics. It’s still serve it’s main purpose, to communicate with the consumer, but compete with more products and needs to follow more laws. It’s a big part of the marketing where it communicates the brand’s message and values and the design of the package enables the consumer to identify themselves with those values. The brands need to create the emotional connection with the consumers, telling them what they need, and they will want to connect with the brand when it provides something that the consumer wants, desires, or needs. The colours, illustrations/images, typography and/or text has the power to influence your choices, and with its aesthetics can affect your emotions or bring your memories to life.
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
“The old-fashioned butcher was often accused of weighing his thumb. We want to be sure that today’s consumer isn’t still buying that thumb, but in a fancy package” Senator Phillip A. Hart
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1820 - today
Design Styles Victorian 1820 - 1900
Art Nouveau 1890 - 1920
Futurism 1900 - 1930
Heroic Realism 1910 - 1940
Art Deco 1920 - 1940
Swiss Design 1940 - 1980
Psychedelia 1960 - 1970
Punk 1975 - 1980
Grunge 2000 - 2010
The design style of a certain era is always arguable as design often gets influenced by each other independent of what year it is. As mention earlier, design reflects the culture and the period of time which it was created. On the left is a brief timeline of some of the most important styles from 1820 - today2. Note that these images may be a recreation. Never less, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s certain graphic design has been evolving. 3
Flat Design 2000 - today
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging 14
PART 2
Proposal Proposal of an artificial outcome based on this research and researching different products
FUN FACT!
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
Ritz crackers were designed to cure depression - designed to cheer people up during the Great Depression as its original slogan implied it was “a bite of the good life”.
Artificial Outcome To take this research into action, I will find a product which stopped being produced in the 1950/60’s and recreate it to fit into modern packaging design. As mention, the 1966 Act came with major changes in the labelling and therefore will give the opportunity to use this research to it’s fully potential. It’s important to mention that the purpose is not to re-brand, only to follow up with modern laws and design. The product will also be a consumable product such as food or beverages as this research is mainly focusing on these matters. It can’t still be in production under another company or name. On the left is a picture of ‘Ritz crackers’ from it’s introduction in 1934 to present time and is graphically a good example on how a brand follows up on modern style. Ritz crackers from 1934 to present time, displayed in the Museum of Brands, London.
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Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
As stated before, the product that’s being recreated to this artificial outcome need to be an product of either food or beverage, which was discontinued in the early 60’s. Because of this, the product would never been adjusted in respond to ‘The Fair Packaging and Labelling Act of 1966’, which makes a great difference. There was reasonable to ask around if anyone knew about any product that could match the description. Someone might have anything from their childhood that used to have value for them. No one of the people asked had any answers as they only remembered the things that still exist. Although, my tutor Chris Venables asked some unknown sources and came with some discontinued products. Unfortunately, these product failed to fit the needs of the requirements for making the full out of this research. • Lifesavers Soda: A flop in the 1980’s, consumers had the impression they would drink liquid candy. • Orbitz Drink: A flop in 1997, discontinued due to bad sales. • Coca Cola Blak: Not only is this product discontinued in 2008, but as Coca Cola still exist as a brand, they already give the answer of how ‘their bottle would look like today compaired to the 60’s’ and that isn’t be beneficial for me. • Funky Fries: A flop in 2002/2003. This is too late.
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Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
Chicken Dinner point of sale box
Chicken dinner chocolate bar 17
After searching around the internet, I came across an article titled ‘The Best Discontinued Snack Foods From the Decade You Were Born’4 posted on The Daily Mail, Dan Myers wrote an nostalgic article about discontinued food from decades ranging from the 1920’s to 2000’s. These products either didn’t sell or got bought up by larger companies (eg Nestle, Hershey, Heide or Curtiss). This
article mention an oddly named chocolate bar called “Chicken Dinner” Chicken Dinner, one of about 30.000 candy bars which came out in the 1920’s, was introduced in 1923 in America by ‘Sperry Candy Company of Milwaukee’ had a quite re
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
“An expensive, highgrade candy, put up in a handy”
Fig 1, 1924 Chicken Dinner ad
History 18
markable success. Although it’s name was “Chicken Dinner”, it didn’t contain any chicken. An ad in 1924 described Chicken Dinner as “An expensive, high-grade candy”(Fig 1). It was filled with nuts and coated in chocolate. The main target group for this candy bar was children. The popularity of Chicken Dinner came from it’s marketing. While other candy bars got their names from wholesome ingredients, such as ‘Milky Way’ which came out the
same year, Chicken Dinner went the counter-intuitive way and embraced the product’s oddness with marketing that touted the bar as “Distinctly Different”.
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging 19
The bar was released 6 years before the Great Depression struck, it’s has been incorrectly linked to the Rebublican Party’s 1928 campaign pledge to provide “A chicken in every pot” - perhaps the most misassigned quotation in American political history.5 Chicken Dinner seemed to promise value for cash- strapped Americans. Broekel describes it’s appeal in “The Great American Candy Bar book”6 “Chicken Dinner was one of the early nut-roll bars and first came out in early 1920s. The first Chicken Dinner wrappers pictured a whole roasted chicken sitting on a dinner plate. In the years following World War I, the economy made many familys feel fortunate if they had one good meal a day on the dinner table. A whole roasted chicken on a candy bar wrapper symbolized something substantial in terms of food value.” What made Chicken Dinner so successful was the heavy marketing. Sperry helped sales using billboards, magazine adds and, most notably, a fleet of trucks decorated to look like chickens. These trucks canvassed the U.S after Sperry dropped the price of the bar from 10
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cents to 5 cents. It’s safe to say Chicken Dinner was ahead of it’s time regarding advertising due to it’s originality. After spending 40 years in the shelves, the product got discontinued in 1962 due to Pearson’s buying Sperry. It took many hours to finally find a suitable product. Chicken Dinner fitted the needed requirements perfectly as it became discontinued in 1962 - this was the most important requirements, but hard to find. Chicken Dinner chocolate bar would need some serious redesign - perhaps even re-branding to be recreated. It never had to be adjusted due to the 1966 Act, therefore it needs to follow new laws and requirements to be a legal product.
Chicken Dinner
By recreating the design of the packaging, it becomes easier to work with the new design. By collecting and looking at every pictures existing of this chocolate bar - the design can be built by putting the parts together. Due to the lack of pictures, the design might not be fully correct. This is important to remember, but the packaging has been designed as correct ass possible based on the photos.
Design
Fig 3
Chicken Dinner
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
Fig 2
NET WT. 1-1/8 OZ. CONTAINS; MILK CHOCOLATE, CORN SYRUP, SWEETENED COND. SKIM MILK, SUGAR, PEANUTS, BUTTER FAT, COCONUT OIL, SALT FLOUR OF OATMEAL, ARTIFICIAL FLAVORING, EGG ALBUMEN, LECITHIN, TARTARIC ACID, BICARBONATE OF SODA.
Fig 1
Fig 4
As being a bar, the container has two sides. One side is already identified to have a logo, which makes it reasonable that the other side has information about its content. These pictures of a version of the design shows the content on its side, supported by another product (Denver Sandwich, fig 1) from the same producer which also has its content on its side. Lastly, an unidentified version of the design (Fig 4) shows it’s content with a readable text. As this design seems quite off, this product might be a copy of the original (this was an issue before the 1966 Act) so there’s reason to believe this isn’t correct, although for this reason - this will be the ingredients as there is no other pictures.
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NET WT. 1-1/8 OZ. CONTAINS; MILK CHOCOLATE, CORN SYRUP, SWEETENED COND. SKIM MILK, SUGAR, PEANUTS, BUTTER FAT, COCONUT OIL, SALT FLOUR OF OATMEAL, ARTIFICIAL FLAVORING, EGG ALBUMEN, LECITHIN, TARTARIC ACID, BICARBONATE OF SODA.
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
Chicken Dinner
These pictures shows the front of the design. The colours is eyedropped and might not be correct to the real version due to the screen.
At this picture of the chocolate used in an ad from an unknown time shows that the bar had another logo on the side. 22
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
Chicken Dinner
Design - Result This is the result of doing research on how the packaging used to look like, based on a limited access to pictures. It might not be fully correct, but for now - this is the most accurate available. The colours are eyedropped and the shapes are just recreated as accurate as possible. The logo “Chicken Dinner” is written by hand so it would be as accurate as possible because finding a font for it will ruin it when the original font isn’t stated. Lastly, the name of the company “Sperry’s” and “Milwaukee” is also handwritten for the same reason.
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Endnotes
Visual Research | Graphic Design on Packaging
1 Eric C. Wall (2002), ‘A Comprehensive Look at the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 and the FDA Regulation of Deceptive Labeling and Packaging Practices: 1906 to Today’, Harvard Law School. 2 Padraig Cahill, (2016) ‘Graphic Design History Timeline’, Online Design Teacher, May 31, 2016. 3 Pinterest inspiration folder. 4 Dan Myers, ‘The Best Discontinued Snack Foods From the Decade You Were Born’, Jun 18, 2019, The Daily Mail,. 5 National Archives Catalog, ‘A Chicken in Every Pot’ political ad and rebuttal article in New York Times, October 30, 1928. 6 Susan Honeyman (2010) ‘Consuming Agency in Fairy Tales, Childlore, and Folkliterature’ Watcharatorn Pensasitorn, (2015), ‘The Use of Images in Graphic Design on Packaging of Food and Beverages’, Journal of Economics, Business and Management, Vol. 3, No. 12, December 2015, Available at: http://www.joebm.com/papers/351-B015.pdf (Accessed 21. November 2019) Phillip B. Meggs, ‘Graphic Design In The 20th Century’, Encyclopædia Britannica, Available at: https://www.britannica.com/art/graphic-design/The-digital-revolution (Accessed 21.November 2019)
Padraig Cahill, (2016) ‘Graphic Design History Timeline’, Online Design Teacher, May 31, 2016, Available at: https://www.onlinedesignteacher.com/2016/05/graphic-design-timeline.html (Accessed 04. March 2020) Museum of Brands, 2019, London.
Michelle Meadows, (2006), ‘A Century of Ensuring Safe Foods and Cosmetics’, U.S Food & Drug, Available at : https://www.fda.gov/files/A-Century-of-Ensuring-Safe-Foods-and-Cosmetics.pdf (Accessed 21.November 2019) Viktoria Alervall & Juan Sdiq Saeid, (2013), ‘Perspectives on the Elements of Packaging Design’, Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Available at: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/ diva2:830523/FULLTEXT01.pdf (Accessed 21. November 2019) ‘A short history & future of packaging & labelling’, Steller Packing, Available at: https://www. stellerpacking.co.uk/short-history-future-packaging-labelling/ (Accessed 25.November 2019) ‘Early Barcodes – A Brief History of How Barcodes Changed Our Lives’, Electronic Imaging, Available at: https://barcode-labels.com/early-barcodes-brief-history-how-barcodes-changedour-lives/ (Accessed 25.November 2019)
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‘Who inventet barcode? (History of Barcodes)’, Rosistem, Available at: https://www.barcode.ro/ tutorials/barcodes/history.html (Accessed 25. November 2019)
Rose Eveleth, (2014), ‘“Sell By” And “Best By” Dates on Food Are Basically Made Up—But Hard to Get Rid Of ’, SMITHSONIAN.COM, March 28, 2014, Avaiable at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smartnews/sell-and-best-dates-food-are-basically-made-hard-get-rid-180950304/ (Accessed 25.November 2019)
A chromolithographic reproduction of a drawing by Miss O. Johnston T. G. HILL, 2011, ‘THE ESSENTIALS OF ILLUSTRATION’, Reader in Vegetable Physiology in the University of London, University College. Dan Myers, ‘The Best Discontinued Snack Foods From the Decade You Were Born’, Jun 18, 2019, The Daily Mail, Available at: https://www.thedailymeal.com/eat/best-discontinued-snack-foodsdecade-you-were-born-gallery (Accessed 10.February 2020) National Archives Catalog, ‘A Chicken in Every Pot’ political ad and rebuttal article in New York Times, October 30, 1928, Available at: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/187095 (Accessed 10.February 2020) Susan Honeyman (2010) ‘Consuming Agency in Fairy Tales, Childlore, and Folkliterature(Online)’ New York, Routlegde, Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xlQZQOACowwC&pg=PA154&dq=chicken+dinner+candy+bar&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=chicken%20dinner%20 candy%20bar&f=false (Accessed 10.February 2020) Pinterst image folder, Available at: https://no.pinterest.com/camillalanghole/graphic-design-styler/ (Accessed 04.March 2020)
