From: Randal <digitas-AT-panix.com>
Date: 24 Feb 2009 19:53:55 UTC   (03:53:55 PM in author's locale)
To: "The Graphics List" <graphics-AT-lists.graphicslist.org>

My response to orange juice packaging has recently made me
re-evaluate some of my thinking about design, and it seems I am not
alone:

www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/business/media/23adcol.html

I must admit that the first time I saw the new packaging was when I
reached to buy orange juice and thought that the store must be out of
the brand I usually buy. But in fact, they had just changed the
packaging. At a very visceral level, somewhere inside of me, I was
disappointed not to be able to get my "usual" orange juice.

It is of course silly, but it makes me think about:

1 The visceral importance of design for products that probably have
few real differences.

2. How many "cleaned up", modernist designs have I created when
perhaps a more "sexy", popular style might have been in fact more
appropriate and more successful.

3. What really are the elements that create the more "lush" feel on
the old packaging, and are they really any different than the ugly
sort of elements in normal, bad American product packaging.

I have a friend (also a designer) who grew up in Switzerland, and he
described that when he was a child and would get candy or gifts from
his American relatives he thought the packaging was so much more
fantastic and special than the standard, clean Swiss packaging he was
accustomed to. But now he is essentially in the business of supplying
that same Swiss aesthetic to Americans.

-- Randal

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