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Branding & Package Design

Package Design, Race Cars & Robert Sidney Dickens

A 1942 self-promotional piece by package designer, Robert Sidney Dickens (Dickens, Inc) via: Chicago Design Archive

Robert Sidney Dickens Week

Day 4: a couple of people have asked me, “Why am I so interested in Robert Sidney Dickens?” Or put another way, “What’s driving my interest?”

They say that “the heart wants what the heart wants” and maybe curiosity is similarly ineffable. But it might also be true that I identify a little bit with Sid Dickens. Although, really I should just be envious.

Sid Dickens is having the time of his life right now overseeing the construction of his elegant new studio/office/home on Chicago’s near north side. It will boast such attractions as a large laboratory supermarket, a sauna bath and a sunken Japanese garden. But life wasn’t always so pleasurable.

As a youngster of 19, without benefit of either college or art school, he set out for the big city from Indiana without much more than an air brush acquired in lieu of salary from an itinerant barn painter. He landed a job painting movie posters for a big theater chain (“they were tamer then”). Sacked by the Depression on Christmas Eve, 1932, he “free lanced” for the next several months (“that’s a genteel way of saying ‘starved’ “). Finally he acquired two dissimilar clients — Sears, Roebuck and fan dancer Sally Rand — and things began to look up. He found his calling with a commission to design 50 ethical pharmaceutical packages for Walgreen Drug Co. He charged $5 per. Needless to say, the blue-chip roster of Dickens clients today — Armour, Coca-Cola, Morrell, Hamm’s, Quaker Oats and many others — pay a bit more for his services.

Profiles in Packaging
Modern Packaging, 1964

Like Dickens and his wife, Ruth, our focus on package design was sort of happenstance. We acquired a manufacturing client and decided to specialize in package design. We, too, have a “home office.”

The comparison is merely aspirational, of course. Dickens’ firm grew to employ as many as 23 staffers. BEACH, on the other hand, remains small, serving small startups and mid-size manufacturers. Unlike Dickens, our home office does not include a “large laboratory supermarket.” (Although, we do have a small, in-house photo-studio.)

The Dickens Racing Team

Still, the Dickens Design Group remained a family-owned business (until “shutting down” in 1989.) And this was a pretty interesting family.

1951 Elkhart race with Bob Lee Dickens driving the family’s MG TC (car #4) — also: Sid Dickens designed the Blatz beer logo!

For one thing, the whole family drove race cars: Sid Dickens, Ruth Dickens and their son, Robert Lee (“Bob”) Dickens.

Bob Dickens, his dad and mom all became interested in sports cars when they lived in Chicago. “In 1949 my father Sid bought a 1948 MG TC as a birthday gift for my mom, Ruth. It was black but he had it painted her favorite color, a chartreuse green. Dad and I were amongst the six founding members of the original Elkhart Lake road course… Our whole family raced the ‘TC there. My dad drove it off a corner, which now sports a National Historic Registry sign titled ‘Dickens Ditch.'”

They Started in MGs: Profiles of Sports Car Racers of the 1950s
Carl Goodwin, 2011

Behind the wheel, Sid was the terror of the track in his MG-TC, back in the ’50’s. Later, he and Bob both drove the small Italian “bombs,” painted “Dickens Red,” actually an off-terra cotta color, still seen today in the offices and some of Sid’s clothing. Old sports car fans remember fondly the appearance of the Dickens Racing Team, with Ruth, Sid, and Bob all in Dickens Red driving suits. “Just another part of design,” says Sid.

Sid Dickens by Design
Chicago’s Packaging Ace
Omnibus, 1965

Sid Dickens also designed at least one of the programs for the racetrack that he helped to found. The “official program” for the 1951 Elkhart Lake road race (shown above) includes a stylish “Dickens” signature.

Dickens’ son, Robert Lee Dickens is featured on the cover of the 1952 program the following year. (It seems likely that this program was also designed by a Dickens.)

Self-Promotion

Sid Dickens was a tireless self-promoter. The Dickens family “racing team” (in matching “Dickens Red” racing suits) is just one example of how he always managed to provide an interesting angle for reporters writing about his firm. We have many other examples, after the fold… [Read more…]

Sid Dickens: 2 downward-pointing arrows

For day 3 of our Robert-Sidney-Dickens–Week, we bring you 2 package logos that he designed, both with downward-pointing arrows. In each case, he used the arrow to highlight a tagline or product feature below. And in each case, someone later decided to simplify the trademark and remove the arrow.

The Milnot brand was new to us, but I’ve found newspaper ads dating back to 1957 showing the Milnot milk can with the arrow bisecting the brand name. So I figure Dickens must have designed this version of the logo around 1957.

The TaB logo, we know Dickens designed in 1963.

Downward-pointing arrows: pointless on packaging?

Plenty of designers have used arrows to direct visual attention. But Dickens made the unusual choice of using downward-pointing arrows. Twice. Some might argue that this a negative direction — a “downer” for the brand. But (to those people) I would just point out to the positive virtues of a brand being “down to earth.”

downward-pointing arrows

Meanwhile, what are the messages that these downward-pointing arrows actually point to?

Milnot started out by highlighting the product’s use: “use as cream or milk.” TaB, on the other hand, made Coca-Cola’s brand equity a selling point: “FROM THE SAME COMPANY THAT BOTTLES COCA-COLA.”

We point out a few other things about each brand, after the fold… [Read more…]

Packaged (past tense): Onyums

In honor of Robert Sidney Dickens Week (here on box vox) I’ve been looking for some good examples of packaging designed by the Dickens Design Group.

Onyums

I found the black & white photo of the General Mills “Onyums” box in Walter Herdeg‘s book, Graphis Packaging 3 (1977).

I found the adjacent color photo at Tick Tock Toys — Dan Goodsell’s online archive of vintage commercial ephemera. Goodsell had also posted another photo of the same box (below) on his Flickr site.

Chicago-based food photographer,  Allen Snook took the photo that appears on the box of the onion-ring-resembling product. The pink and purple coloration of the image initially stuck me as an unusual choice. On closer inspection, however, I decided that the yellow ink in those areas must simply have faded over time and that purple and pink onion rings did not appear on the original box.  Although I haven’t been able to find any other color images of the packaging to really confirm this.

I like the abstract composition of Snook’s photograph — Onyums above and below. And, of course, we appreciate the way the photographer left an empty dark area for the product trademark.

According to Graphis Packaging 3, Dickens, himself, served as “art director” for the project. Also cool: the chunky, 60s/70s style typography of the logo with its oniony spiral “O.”

More about the product, after the fold… [Read more…]

Crime and Packaging: 2 logos

Crime and PackagingOn left: logo for Pax-Fax, Inc. (designed 1950); on right: logo for Packaging Corporation of America (designed 1962–1963)

Robert Sidney Dickens

Robert Sidney Dickens founded the Dickens Design Group in 1931. An early specialist in package design, Dickens’ Chicago-based firm designed these two logos for packaging-related companies. He was also the guy who later designed the original “TaB” logo for Coca Cola.

Lately I’ve been researching Dickens and his work and have found a lot of interesting stuff. (At least: it’s interesting to me.)  I found too much to include it all in one post, so I’ll be doling it out in bits and pieces.

Let’s call this “Robert Sidney Dickens Week” with the understanding that it may take me a month or more to actually roll it all out. Please bear with me.

Crime and Packaging

Barbara Baer Capitman included both of the logos above in her 1976 survey of American Trademark Designs. (She also included 18 other logos by Dickens Design Group.)

The packaging part of these 2 logos will be obvious, but “Where’s the crime?” you ask.

Asked and answered, after the fold… [Read more…]

Do more with “dust flaps” (4 ways)

If you’re naturally detail-oriented like me, then you zero in on clever ways of putting arcane packaging details like “dust flaps” to better use.

Dust Flaps

What are “dust flaps”? They’re those flaps attached to either side at the opening of a folding carton. They make the box a bit stronger and they’re supposed to keep dust and other foreign particles out. (Although, if the contents of your box are particularly particulate, then you could also say that they keep the particles in.)

Closing a box, these are the smaller flaps that you fold in before you tuck in the tuck flap. Opening a box, these flaps are the last thing you’ll see before the box is fully open.

Here are 4 ways of getting more mileage from those unassuming dust flaps. [Read more…]

Packaged (past tense): Can of Worms

Can of Worms

A metaphor for something you should never start: a can of worms. In this case, however, “Worms” was “a cherry blended soda.”

LADCo (the Larry and Duane Company) launched this product in 1974.

Who exactly were Larry and Duane? I’ve spent way too much time recently, trying to answer that question.

Through a forum discussion of the product on inthe70s.com, I learned that they both worked for Pepsi-Cola in Wisconsin.

“Duane” was Duane G. Paulson who worked at Pepsi in New Richmond, WI. Larry worked at Pepsi in the town of Frederic, but Larry’s last name eludes us.

Worms soda was the brainchild of my uncle, Duane then working as a Pepsi distributor in New Richmond WI. He hatched the idea for the name while seeing a young boy fishing while driving his routes. Worms became a regional hit in Northern WI and MN and represented a manifestation of Duane’s unorthodox ways and thinking, always ready to mix things up a bit.

Jon – March 23, 2008

My father, Duane Paulsen, and my mother Verna Paulsen created “Can full of worms” soda in the seventies when I was a small boy.

J Paulsen, May 27, 2012

The franchise was created in 1974 by LADCo (the Larry and Duane Company). Jon’s Uncle Duane and my dad Larry were both working at Pepsi then — Duane in New Richmond and Larry in Frederic. The marketing designs for the cans, the t-shirts, etc was completed at my dad’s kitchen table. The franchise was sold to a group in Oregon in the early ’80’s.

Craig – June 21, 2008

Naming and Design

Craig’s description above suggests that Larry might have designed or supervised the design of the packaging. But who created the illustration of the goofy kid’s face with the red wooden sign? Someone sitting at that kitchen table?

On one side of the can they wrote “I like WORMS” and on the other side they wrote “Best WORMS You Ever Tasted.”

Can of Worms

Because of these dual messages on the red signs, there’s some confusion about the brand name.

[Read more…]

Golden Boy Brand (fish sauce)

Golden Boy Brand fish sauce (Droste effect packaging)Golden Boy Brand fish sauce label: hi-res photo is from Jenna Osborne’s Forging Health in a Sick World (One Dish at a Time)

Earlier this year, Debby and I stopped in at Spice Rack, an Indian grocery store on Staten Island. While we were there, Debby noticed a Droste effect package that we’d never seen before.

Packaging within Packaging

A rack of fish sauce bottles. On each label a baby boy holds a bottle of fish sauce with a picture of himself holding the same bottle. Neither the illustration nor the resolution of the printing allow for infinite regression. Still, Golden Boy’s label gives us a little taste of infinity. I count two, maybe three iterations of packaging within packaging.

I’ve been collecting examples of this particular packaging phenomenon since 2008 so I asked her to take a phone picture. (Her photo is the one on the right.)

Tang Heab Seng Fish Sauce Factory Co., Ltd. manufactures the brand. The entire Golden Boy Brand product line is shown below.

While they’ve given their labels a consistent brand identity, their containers are not so consistent. Instead they use hodgepodge of mismatched stock bottles. The company may have fiscally sound and practical reasons for choosing each of these bottles, but the overall effect reminds me a little bit of Peter Cuba’s fictitious Budweiser brand extensions.

But there’s something else, uh fishy about this particular assortment of bottles…

[Read more…]

Cady Noland’s 1989 “Clip-On Man”

Cady Noland's Clip-On ManCADY NOLAND, CLIP-ON MAN, 1989, silkscreen on aluminum with aluminum tubing (via: Gagosian)

Clip-On Man

I saw this photo of Cady Noland‘s 1989 sculpture “Clip-On Man” today, for the first time. It was in 2012 when we last researched her artwork — the 1989 installation of stacked Budweiser beer six-packs, entitled: This Piece Has No Title Yet.

I’d seen other artworks by Noland with appropriated photos silk-screened onto panels, but this photo seemed different. She had sometimes incorporated news photos of Lee Harvey Oswald or Patricia Hearst. This guy, appears to have gone out on the town with a six pack of beers looped onto his belt. We see him holding the second-to-the-last can in his hand. He’s wearing a wild-looking tie and a somewhat demonic smile.

… but the real highlight was Cady Noland’s Clip On Man, conceived in collaboration with curator and critic Bob Nickas. Noland has attracted attention lately with sculptural combines that bring together “road-warrior” detritus — car parts, empty Budweiser cans, beat-up license plates — with subtly menacing artifacts suggesting bureaucratic institutions that have spun out of control; night sticks, handcuffs and hospital paraphernalia are all part of her repertoire.

In Clip On Man, a silkscreen image on aluminum of a besotted inbred, with the remainder of a six-pack of beer hanging off his belt, is mounted on a flimsy structure of metal railing and chain.

from a review in Art Issues of a 1989 group show
Benedetto, McCaslin, Mosset, Noland, Parrino, Staehle
Daniel Newburg Gallery, New York

But where did Noland find the photo? And who is this “besotted inbred” ?

Clip-On Man

Asked and answered, after the fold.

[Read more…]

Box Interiors #5: the inner life of packaging

Top left: Michel Valois of Ches Valois used 2-sided printing to give the boxes for Hedda produits cosmétiques naturels a bright orange interior; on right: Ritual  founder Katerina Markov Schneider chose a bright yellow for the interior of her vitamin’s shipping cartons; lower left: Manual Creative gave the corrugated carton for the Soma water filtration system a bright blue interior; on right: The Fount gave the box for Nature’s Beauty aloe vera a bright green interior.

The inner life of packaging

For the fifth and final day of “Box Interiors Week,” we bring you 4 boxes with different colors printed inside. We used to invest all of our effort on the outside of the package rather than the inside. Since products typically needed to compete for attention on the shelf. Why pay for 2-sided printing if the inside color is hidden? Why should we pay any attention to the inner life of packaging? Because it creates a better impression when you open the box.

[Read more…]

Box Interiors #4: Agnes Cupcakes vs Lauras Bakery

Day 4 of “Box Interiors Week”

Following the thread of colored box interiors, today we pivot from contemporary sculpture to commercial packaging.

I think that the three boxes on the right demonstrate the concept nicely.

At first I assumed that a brand named “Agnes Cupcakes” would have been founded by a woman named Agnes. That was naive, perhaps.

I searched, but could turn up no such “Agnes.”

And then, to my surprise, I discovered “Lauras Bakery” — another Danish take-out shop with a very similar logo, whose take-out cartons also had color interiors.

I don’t speak Danish, but I saw at least one website referring to the two brands as sisters. Were Agnes and Laura sisters1 competing in the same industry? Or were they more like sister brands?

We answer these questions and others, after the fold…

[Read more…]

Box Interiors #3: Pieroth’s “0,175 qm”

For day 3 of “Box Interiors Week,” we bring you Kirsten Pieroth‘s “0,175 qm.” She exhibited this sculpture in a 2011 group show in Milan, entitled Segalega.

My first thought was to pair her sculpture with Hreinn Friðfinnsson’s 1992-2014 “Source” lined with black paper.

Where Friðfinnsson lined the inside of his box/sculpture with black paper, Pieroth painted the inside of her box/sculpture white. Where he only changes the color of the interior base and sides of his boxes, Pieroth includes the inside upper flaps of her box in the transformation. Jose Dávila also treated the inside upper flaps as part of the interior in his gold-plated boxes.

But, on second thought, I think I’ve found a better angle.

Looking at the box she’d painted, I assumed (at first) that it was a consumer-product shipping carton. I searched for the German brand name printed on the box, however, and discovered that it was nothing of the sort.

Realizing now, what type of box this is, I decided to approach it differently. Comparing it to Friðfinnsson’s box with the black interior didn’t seem so interesting.

More about the original box and the (possible) insight it offers, after the fold…

[Read more…]

Box Interiors #2: Dávila’s gold-leafed cardboard boxes

Jose Dávila's gold-leafed cardboard boxes

gold-leafed cardboard boxes

Like Hreinn Friðfinnsson in our previous post, Jose Dávila employed a similar idea in his group of Un Mundo Raro (“Strange World”) sculptures.

Like Friðfinnsson, Dávila took ordinary corrugated cardboard boxes and gave them a surprising interior. But instead of fluorescent color paper, he lined his boxes with gold leaf. And where Friðfinnsson used plain, unsullied shipping cartons, Dávila boxes reveal a previous life of heavy use.

Ostensibly, these sculptures are part of Dávila’s “Judd Series.”

During the 60s, American artist Donald Judd started his celebrated series of wall-mounted sculptures expanding from the ceiling to the floor, reflecting about the use of space. … made of materials that the artist considered to be ‘humble’. [Subscribing] to Judd’s methods,  … Dávila takes this consideration to a new level with the reproduction of the work using materials that turn out to be even more ‘humble’. When using found cardboard boxes — considered to be remnants or waste; the artist makes a comment on Minimalism, resuming Judd’s interest to inquire on the origin and source of materials used to create an artwork.

One can easily see the connection to Judd’s work in Dávila’s wall mounted sculpture, Untitled (2007) on the right. I would argue, however, that his gold-leafed cardboard boxes stand up very well on their own.

The contrast between the beat up cardboard boxes and their golden interiors is striking. How strange for such ‘humble’ boxes to be given a patina of precious metal. On the inside, no less!

More Un Mundo Raro, after the fold.

[Read more…]

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