Well, its been seen before, many times, but FLow market seem to have pushed the boat out with this hardly designed minimalist version, packaging that makes a point about consumersism, hmm....haven't heard that one before... You can even buy them online! It's art, yeah. 
This is the title of the last book thought by Martine Camillieri, a trained french artist who is becoming a special case in the world of contemporary art. Her website shows great examples of how packagings can change their functions and use, simply looking at them with a different point of view, combining shapes or just colours to obtain new useful objects. She says: "I was creative director for large companies, but after twenty years, in 2000 I decided to give myself a second, more liberal and generous chance". The fact that she decided to dedicate to packaging as a second, new and forerunner chance, gives us all a new hope for the future of our work, maybe in the form of a bottle-truck...
Armin and Byrony over at Speak Up are working a new design book; Graphic Design, Referenced. Armin describes the project as:
It’s a 400-page book that contains the essential knowledge about graphic design that any graphic designer should know if stranded in a bar or dinner party full of graphic designers. From terms, to historic moments, to important work, to the most influential designers, this book is a cross somewhere between an encyclopedia, a Zagat survey, and Cliff’s Notes with more images than you can shake a stick at.
One of the interesting aspects of this project is that they are looking to the design community to nominate works for inclusion in their book. Right now they are looking for input on their packaging design section. Check it out, I am sure many of the packaging design enthusiasts reading The Dieline will have important perspectives on this topic.
In this winter time, a simple fruit make me think about packaging, bringing to my mind a great book (Good Design, 1963) about pack, thought and written by one of the greatest Italian designers: Bruno Munari.
Here below, a little extract about my little winter fruit!
This object is constituted of a series of modulated containers in the form of an orange section placed in a circle around a central vertical axis on which each section rests on its straight side, with all the curved sides turned towards the outside, giving the whole a global form, a kind of sphere.
All the sections are gathered together in a packaging that is well differentiated in material and colour. It is quite hard on the outside surface and covered with a soft inner lining of protection that lies between the outside and the ensemble of the containers. The original material is of the same type but is suitably different according to its use. To open the packaging is very simple and so it is no necessary to attach printed instruction for use. The lining layer is also to create a neutral zone between the outside surface and the containers, so that when breaking the surface at any point, without any need of calculating its exact thickness, it is possible to open the packing and take the containers out intact.
Each container itself is formed of a plastic film just large enough to hold the juice, but of course, easy to handle. A very weak adhesive holds the section together so that it is easy to take the object apart into its various equal sections.
As it is being used today, the packing is not made to return to the manufacturer but can be thrown away.
Something must be said here on the form of the sections. Each section has exactly the form of a dental plate of a human mouth so that once lifted from the packing it can be put between the teeth and using a slight pressure, break it and drink the juice.
Speaking of this, tangerines can be considered as a kind of minor side-production especially suitable for children because of their smaller section. However, today with the use of squeezing machines, everything is all mixed up and so adults eat children’s food and vice versa.
Besides the juice, the section usually contains a small seed from the same tree. This is a little gift that the production offers to the consumer just in case he should wish to have a personal production of these objects. Please note the economic unselfishness of such an idea, and at the same time the psychological bond that is born between the consumer and the production. No one, or very few, take it upon themselves to plant orange seeds, but the offer of this highly philanthropic concession, and the idea of being able to do so, frees the consumer from any frustration complex and establishes a relationship of reciprocal trust. This is indeed a cordial and gentlemanly gesture and certainly can’t be compared to those producers today that offer a cow anyone who buys an ounce of cheese.
An orange, therefore, is a perfect object, in which the absolute coherence of form, use, consumption is found. Even the color is exactly right. If it where blue, it would be wrong. It is a typical object of a real mass production on an international level in which the absence of any symbolic or expressive element bound to the fashion of styling or industrial aestetics or any reference to sophisticated figurativity, demonstrate a design consciousness that is extremely hard to find on the average level of designers.
The only decorative concession, if we can call it thus, can be considered to be the material research of the surface of the packaging treated as orange skin. Perhaps this is to call attention to the inside pulp of the section containers. Even so, a minimum of decoration, especially as justified as in this case, has to be admitted.
"Perhaps it's our affinity for the dramatic. Or maybe it's our penchant for the out-of-the-ordinary. Whatever the case, documenting our 100 year history in a book could never be a mundane undertaking. From storyboards to paper testing, camera angles to prototypes, every minute detail was concepted and re-imagined to bring our unique story to life.
Welcome to the enchanted universe of the Neiman Marcus Pop Up Book. This limited-edition memento follows a young girl's journey through Neiman Marcus from past to present. Our signature butterfly and an over-the-top Christmas make appearances, as well as our world-renowned art collection."
Take a look at the Neiman Marcus website to see this amazing book come to life, and take a look after the jump for more photos, as well a "real life" photo of the amazing pop-up above. What I love about this popup is that the shadow is actually printed and not real, it is truly stunning in person. How fun would it be to design a popup book?!
Structural Package Designs, by The Pepin Press, is a great resource for various structural elements in folding-carton package design. The great thing is that the book includes a CD with vector EPS files of all packaging examples in the book. I find it's useful for swiping tuck-locks, auto-lock bottoms and more complex folding techniques for when you want to build a 'working' comp without having to depend on the client getting you the packaging vendor's CAD dielines. If you've always said about dielines, "I don't do those", then this book is a good way to break into it. And you'll see it's really not that big a deal.
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