BEACH

Branding & Package Design

“Non-Developable” Milk Cartons (3 kinds)

1. The non-developable ruled surface named “milk carton”

(Day 2 of “Polyhedral Milk carton Week”)

Just learned something new! Someone has actually named a certain mathematically-defined hyperbolic surface: “milk carton.”

I found out about this on the French website, mathcurve.com, an online ENCYCLOPÉDIE DES FORMES MATHÉMATIQUES REMARQUABLES.

Looking more deeply into this somewhat hyperbolic milk carton, however, I think that it was really named berlingot and then the website translated the word into English.

Berlingot surfaceIf you look up the definition of “berlingot” you find that it has two meanings. It can mean either a tetrahedral-shaped twisted hard candy, or a tetrahedral-shaped (Tetra-Pak) carton. And (in the real world) one of these definitions can sometimes contain the other.

The MathCurve Website also tells us that another possible name (not French) for the berlingot surface could be “humbug.” (Since “humbug” is another name for this kind of tetrahedral candy.)

2 more “milk cartons” after the fold…

[Read more…]

Polyhedral Milk Carton Torus

left: Gerard Westendorp’s torus made from 8 “crumpled” milk cartons; right: Ruth Asawa’s 1986 sculpture, “Aurora”

Gerard Westendorp’s Milk Carton Torus

This month I found the left hand photo above by Gerard Westendorp with the instructive caption, “Crumple 8 milk cartons into a torus.”

There must something mathematically fundamental about milk cartons. Since Dutch physicist, Westendorp is not the only mathematically-inclined artist using milk cartons in this way. (See also: A simpler approach to auxetic package design)

I like that he calls his cartons “crumpled” rather than “creased” or “folded.”

As if he merely crushed them and they naturally assumed this torus-shaped form. Of course, that may just be a translation thing.

Which, I suspect, is how Victor Alexandrov came to use the word “crush” in the title of his seminal paper, “How one can crush a milk carton in such a way as to enlarge its volume.” (Note: The milk cartons that Alexandrov crushes-to-enlarge are the tetrahedral Tetra-Pak type)

And yet, there are naturally occurring geometric patterns that can emerge from mere “crushing.” (See: Shell buckling toilet paper roll.)

Aside from his milk carton torus, Westendorp also folded a milk carton into a sine wave shape. (above right)

In addition he has designed a number of hinged polyhedra. One of which appears to be related to his finalist entry for the 2008 Pro-Carton “Young Designers Award.”

Ruth Asawa’s milk carton sculptures

Ruth Asawa‘s 1984 paper maquette (on the right) tell us that her 1986 sculpture, Aurora, had more to do with origami than milk cartons. Seen alongside of Westendorp’s milk carton torus, however, it’s clear that she could have constructed it with milk cartons.

Which is less farfetched than it may sound, considering that Asawa did indeed use milk cartons to make sculptures. (Especially with children.)

(more about Ruth Asawa, after the fold…) [Read more…]

A “Cutting Edge” Christmas

“cutting edge” (literally)

You might think that a 1955 Reynolds Wrap ad would be “old school” rather than “cutting edge.” But take a closer look at the vintage packaging at the bottom of the ad and you’ll see that box is touting its new “cutting edge.”

Modern Packaging magazine wrote in 1962 that Reynolds Aluminum “… is credited with introducing the metal cutting edge on foil-wrap containers.”

To be clear, boxes with integral cutting blades had been around since at least the mid 1920s. So while Reynolds may have introduced a new “cutting edge” in 1955, it wasn’t necessarily a cutting-edge cutting edge.

Reynolds Wrap in New Package

Reynolds Wrap (aluminum foil) is now on retail food store shelves in a new carton with serrated metal cutting edge which makes it much easier to tear off proper length of foil as it is unrolled. Shipping cases for Reynolds Wrap have been redesigned, too, for easier opening and identification.

National Association of Retail Grocers of the United States Bulletin, 1955

The adverting agency known as Buchanan & Co., Inc. filed the copyright registration for this ad’s headline—”Make Christmas All It’s Cut Out To Be.” This document also tells us that the ad was published in the December 1955 issue of McCalls.

“cutting edge” (figuratively)

We wouldn’t be showing you this ad, however, if were just a matter of Reynolds Metals suggesting some off-label “Christmas craft” uses for their aluminum foil.

Reynolds printed a series of ads on aluminum foil and this is one of those ads. We’ve written before about their printing technique. They used opaque white ink in some areas and let the foil background show through in others. “Cutting-edge” —in the figurative sense— for advertising in the 1950s. (See: Printing Ads on Aluminum Foil)

With ads like this, they created a reverse trompe-l’œil effect by printing a picture of aluminum foil on real aluminum foil. You do see real reflections, but you also see a printed depiction of crinkly foil.

In 2017 I bought a couple of these printed-on-aluminum-foil ads. First, I bought a 4-page trade ad (published in a 1954 issue of Printer’s Ink.) And then, I bought the first full color consumer ad ever printed on aluminum foil (published in the April 1955 issue of Better Homes & Gardens.)

Is there anyone on your Christmas list who digs “cutting edge” artifacts? If so, the Christmas ad above is (still) for sale from Ads by Dee for $9.00.

Note: We did a whole Reynolds Wrap Week of posts at the end of 2016. See also: Reynolds Wrap Reindeer and The Revolutionary “Alumidor” pack from that series.

Baker’s Dozen Egg Cartons become a real thing

Now Available: Baker’s Dozen Egg Cartons (for real)

It was only a concept when I first started talking (squawking?) about our Baker’s Dozen Egg Carton in June of 2012. The project garnered quite bit of interest and attention from egg producers and the general public.

The Huffington Post, for example, featured our carton in a 2012 article entitled, Creative Food Packaging Concepts We Wish Were Real.

“We love the Baker’s Dozen Egg Carton … because it’s always better to have more eggs.”

Naturally, we wanted to grant their “wish” for the Baker Dozen Egg Carton to become real. But with limited magical powers we weren’t sure how to go about it. Clearly, there was a market for this egg carton. We were getting emails and phone calls about it all the time. But BEACH is a design firm. Our clients were the manufacturers. Not us!

But then, in January of 2015, we got a call in from Chad Wegener of Willow Valley Farms in Nebraska. Chad was calling to see if he could purchase some cartons. And I had to tell him what I’d told so many others: that the product did not yet exist.

The thing is, I had found a source for molded pulp egg cartons, but had not taken the next step. If he really wanted Baker’s Dozen Egg Cartons, I suggested to Chad, why not partner with us?

Chad Wegener & John Carroll of Willow Valley Farms (Photo by Daniel Muller for Edge Magazine)

A Partnership of Partnerships

And so we formed Baker’s Dozen Egg Carton, LLC — a partnership between two partnerships: BEACH Branding & Package Design (of NYC) and Willow Valley Farms (of Nebraska).

Debby and I traveled to Nebraska to meet with our new partners at their farm on the outskirts of Omaha. We stayed in one of their “tiny houses” and they began to teach us about chickens & eggs from the farmer’s point of view. Rather than just the consumer’s. (Also: amazing to see Chad “walk” an entire herd of San Clemente Island Goats.)

Early on, a few large egg producers had expressed interest in our new 13-egg carton, but their egg-packing machinery was only designed to pack eggs in pairs. They could only handle “even” numbers like, 6, 12 or 18 eggs. To pack an “odd” number like 13 eggs, they would need to make a major retooling investment.

This meant that, for the time being, our cartons would only be practical for small egg-producers who would be packing their eggs by hand. (Farm-stands, farmer’s markets and the like.)

Subtle and Self-Effacing

It also meant that our branding for the carton itself needed to be subtle. I designed a new debossed (not embossed) top panel, so that our customers could smoothly cover it with their own labels, if they wished. Or else they could just rely on our carton to explain what it contained: 13 Farm Fresh Eggs.

Now that they exist, the new cartons can be purchased here: bakersdozeneggcartons.com

Photoshop 1911: Jane Reece and the Dickson sisters

Jane Reece portraits of Sarah and Mary DicksonJane Reece’s 1911 portraits of my relatives (Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Wright State University)

Jane Reece

I was “free associating” online, searching for whatever sprang to mind. I thought to search for my grandmother’s maiden name (Mary Dickson). And I found it included in a list of photographs in the Jane Reece Photographic Collection. Her older sister, Sarah’s name was also there.

This was my first introduction to Jane Reece. Although best known as a photographer in the “pictorial” style, Reece had also “made many commercial portraits of Dayton’s prominent families.” See: Wikipedia’s entry on Jane Reece (photographer).

Say what you will about me, my 9 and 16 year old ancestors were once prominent. And photogenic, I think.

Photoshopping, circa 1911

I contacted the Wright State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives about the glass plate negatives that Reece made of Mary and Sarah Dickson. Toni Vanden Bos (Archivist for the collection) helped me obtain high res scans of the images and permission to publish them here.

Look at these images close up, and you’ll see how much hand retouching Reece had done on these photos.

This detail of Reece’s portrait of my great aunt Sarah Dickson shows retouched highlights on face, blouse & background

Here at BEACH, I do most of the Photoshop work.  Sometimes I work in “channel” mode where highlights and shadows can be reversed like a negative. But it must have been tricky and painstaking work for Reece to retouch her negatives by hand.

Handwork on Negatives

Using a special pencil, as they did in those days (107 years ago) she added these fine scribbly lines to the negative in areas that would become the highlights in the final photographic print.

A close-up detail of Reece’s portrait of my grandmother, Mary Dickson shows retouching in the whites of her eyes

Seeing the way Reece used her pencil to lighten the whites of my grandmother’s eyes, reminded me of how often I had to do the same thing in my early Photoshop retouching jobs. But, like a dentist, I also used to have to whiten a lot of teeth.

Granted, when you look at this scribbly retouching up close, it looks sort of crude. But photography has always been a pointillist exercise in building images from particulate elements. These particles used to be silver; now they’re pixels. Reece’s clients were no more likely to notice these squiggles of retouching than to notice the grain of the film itself.

Above is the first page of a how-to article about exactly this type of “handwork on negatives” published in a 1911 issue of Photo-Miniature — the same year that Reece took the portraits of the Dickson sisters.

More about Jane Reece and my Dayton relatives, after the fold…. [Read more…]

Continental Can’s “Envir-o-can” (1974 – 1975)

Envir-o-can

Envir-o-can

I found this photo of a Budweiser can with a perforated opening on Worthpoint. The seller sold it on eBay last year with this description:

Truly bizarre can that likely held beer, as the gold foil pull top still stays on the top lid, but had been peeled back to expose the holes that would seem to be there to make the beer even more carbonated, as they are very small. I didn’t realize that Bud/Anheuser Busch put this into production, but this seems to be the case!

First time I’d ever seen it. Why had its inventor given the spout its colander-like pattern of holes? I doubted that their purpose was to “make the beer even more carbonated.” But what were those holes really for?

I soon learned that this was Continental Can‘s short-lived “Envir-o-can” closure. The point of this mid-1970s invention was to solve the problem of discarded ring-tabs.

I’m old enough to remember seeing lots of those discarded ring-tabs alongside Florida roads when I was in junior high school. There were also plenty of empty cans, of course, along the same roads. I guess the idea was that keeping the tabs attached to the cans would make picking it all up a bit more feasible.

Hence, the environmental brand name.

There’s more to tell about Envir-o-Can and its brief history, after the fold… [Read more…]

A “Misprint Can” or Deliberate Branding Mashup?

Pepsi Cola Soda / Busch Bavarian Beer

Misprint CanI bought this hybrid beer/soda can on ebay.

The seller wrote:

I got this can years ago from a man that worked at the Falstaff Beer factory in St. Louis MO in the 60s-70s.  The can is a misprint can, only known one of its unique design.

The can is made of tin, it has a Busch Bavarian label printed over the top of a Pepsi-Cola label, then it was topped with a Pabst pull tab lid.

The seller noted two overlapping printed labels (Busch and Pepsi), but there is also a third printed brand, which I didn’t immediately notice either.

The light brown and yellow plates turn out to be part of an A & W Root Beer label. I found examples of all three cans (printed as they were intended) on ebay.

At first, this can reminded me of other, more famous printing errors. The Inverted Jenny stamp. The 1955 double die penny. But those are famous accidents and while there are examples of upside-down and double-printed cans, this can was no assembly line accident. Someone made it deliberately.

And I have a theory about that. [Read more…]