Box Vox
Where does one put company blogs?
I confess to having many sour feelings for capitalism—so I don’t ever link to company blogs, out of a kind of disgust. But I am trying to do better: I can’t let those feelings turn into yet another kind of misanthropy. Here I’ve found a splendid blog about packaging design that has been running since 2007, authored by Randy Ludacer.
It’s difficult to gauge the obscurity of a blog, but this one seems to have few comments and few incoming links, given its age. Perhaps it is quite prestigious in some circle out of sight—well deserved, if so. It is a trove of exquisite shapes and diagrams. The author has a true passion for the crafting of cans and boxes. The age of this blog has also paid off—many of its posts go several levels deep with an investigation.
Nearly every post has something good. A sampling to start with:
- Controller-Shaped Underwear Packaging. There are other strange mash-ups throughout the blog. Another good one is: Coca-Cola Urns. (And, actually, there are quite a lot of thought-provoking Coca-Cola posts on the blog!)
- Droste Effect Packaging, recursion in product packaging. I like the subtheme of the presence of higher math and geometry in packaging—such as the post on Tetra Pak or the one on The Jitterbug Atom.
- Dehydrated Water, sold by an otherwise legitimate food company.
- Pic’n’Save Stories—I like this idea of combining citations, memories and photographs to make a personal model of a thing. (I wonder how this kind of approach fits into h0p3’s Public Self-Modeling?)
FURTHERMORE: Randy has an album of Songs About Packaging? This is above and beyond, mate.
This 7 song CD is part of larger project, partly funded by COAHSI-(Council on the Arts & Humanities on Staten Island)-including a live performance at the former Staten Island landfill, now Freshkills Park.
My god—I think Charlie McAlister would get a kick out this! Freshkills Park!
