I’m a sucker for creative packaging design. I think that’s the reason my mom sends these forwards to me. There is so much creativity when it comes to these that I’m simultaneously envious that I didn’t think of them and reverential for the designers who did. But maybe that’s how we’re supposed to feel. If, one day, my company is hired by a client to do packaging design, I’m excited to see what sort of creative ideas we can design together.
It isn’t the first time people have incorporated bar codes into the design of things. In fact, I believe I saw three different periodical covers last year that used this same technique. So the concept is far from original.
But Duane Reade—which, to New Yorkers, is synonymous with pharmacy—recently took this one step further by working their product bar codes into iconic metropolitan imagery. The Chinatown Delight—which I always thought was either a extra surprise at the end of a massage, or the revelation that she’s both my daughter and my sister (Don’t get my reference? Then forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown)—uses a subway train. The Honey Roasted Peanuts uses a NYC cityscape. The Blanched Roasted Peanuts uses the Statue of Liberty. So while the imagery and concept are New York at it’s tritest, the integration of both the bar code and symbolism into the main graphic elements on this packaging makes it pretty unique and beautiful.
On a recent trip to Arthur’s Steaks in Hoboken, I noticed something funny in their restroom. The soap, paper towel and toilet paper dispensers all had my name on them.
I really enjoy the product design work by I Love Dust. Take a look at the packaging for Breuckelen Distilling, a Brooklyn-based distillery, below.
When I travel to far-off lands, I’m bemused by the oddity, the other-worldliness of ordinary grocery market shelves, where indigenous patrons must think I’m insane. I remember quite distinctly a flock (troupe? herd?) of Swiss interns—colleagues at my first dot-com gig out of college—marveling over an entire aisle of white bread. Personally, I thought they were verrückt. However when I spent a vacation in Bërn, I clearly couldn’t find one loaf of wonder bread at the nearest Coop or Migros. Read more
