The always excellent Watsonian — who also brought you the Super 8 packaging — have posted these beautiful examples of vintage Kodak film packaging. Every time I see something like this the first thing that pops into my head is “Why doesn’t more commercial packaging look like this anymore?”. I then tell myself “If more commercial packaging looked like this you wouldn’t find it as interesting.” I think that point could be argued but you can’t argue that strictly from a design standpoint, these are just plain better than this crap.
I guess the next question though is whether some kid in 30 years will think the more recent example is better, but I seriously doubt it. I really feel like more attention was paid to the quality of design before the age of computers, I guess the practitioners were just more skilled given the level of training required. Now it’s “have Photoshop will travel”, which obviously cuts both ways. What do you think?
I’ve noticed these high end chocolate companies springing up left and right over the past few years. The paper-made thing seems to be the prevailing aesthetic of retail chocolate branding; employing one-color screened ink on kraft paper along with things like wax seals and cardboard hang-tags to give off that organic, handmade vibe I guess. It’s usually done to good effect but it’s nice to see a fresh take every once in a while.
When I first saw San Francisco-based Tcho Chocolate I was struck by the name (no, I didn’t trade my studio for a chocolate factory down by the pier) and then by the design. I regrettably couldn’t find many decent pictures of the actual packaging, but suffice it to say you need to hold it in your hand to really appreciate the finer points. The letterpress and gold leaf inlay are a very nice touch that I don’t think is really captured properly in the above shots.
The video above goes over the concepts that informed the TCHO branding. I particularly like the central idea of chocolate as currency; design firm Edenspiekerman’s implementation of that concept is well executed. The result is a striking design which vaguely conjures the notion of European currency whithout making you forget you’re supposed to eat it. I don’t really enjoy chocolate on it’s own but they still had me wanting some just from the packaging.
Swiss pharma company Geigy (now Novartis) cranked out tons of drugs and tons of great designs to sell them during their time. The images above are from the book “Corporate Diversity : Swiss Graphic Design and Advertising by Geigy 1940 – 1970″ (amazon) which chronicles their best work during that period. There are more images and info over at Things To Look At and Grain Edit.
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04/26/10 - 
