All This Crap Looks the Same

Having worked with wine now for about three years one of the subjects that I've generally become interested in is packaging.  In the wine industry so much relies on the packaging because of course there's very little you can do with a bottle of wine.  I've noticed however that as more and more organizations try to push the envelope with packaging, the more it all starts to look the same.  I recently was in a super market and I noticed that nearly all the wines in a certain price point had the exact same look and feel, from the typeface being used to the shape of the label to the feel of the paper.  This particular example isn't all that uncommon in the world of packaging, as certain types of products are all going to have some similarity to them given the limitations in which the product can be presented to a consumer.  What gives me the creeps though is how it seems that lately the entire spectrum of consumer goods is all starting to have the same look and feel.  Which is to say they don't look like much of anything....

First of all, when did every design agency decide that all of our products needed to look like they come from some 1950s TV show's image of the "future"?

I guess since every image of the future shows everyone wearing the same silver jogging suit and eating processed meals out of a box, we might as well just get it over with and start designing all our crap to look like that.  

I can't tell if this cologne is designed for a world in which humans or robots are the dominant force.  But if the products we design today aren't super-futuristic, they're sickeningly faux "retro".

They say if you're not moving forward then you're moving backwards, unless you work in the field of packaging and advertising in which the only key to success is recycling style every few decades or so. 

Chances are if it was ugly then, it'll still be ugly now.  Except now it will be ironically ugly.  But it doesn't matter if products are designed to reflect the style of tomorrow or of yesteryear, they are all designed for people in Sweden.

Scandinavian culture has given us lots of wonderful things, but I didn't really expect us to need to make buying groceries any more hip than it really needs to be.  

Or any more boring.  Seriously, this looks like what a depressed Norwegian hipster DJ would buy at the convenience store in the not so distant future of 2011.

They've even managed to make milk more boring.  Milk.  

Also, what's the deal with everything being color coded?  

It seems as if every designer expects the human race to eventually be reduced to grunting and pointing every time they want something.  And I guess they think we all want pastels.  These products look more like they're designed for children and yet they're supposed to appeal to modern, sophisticated adults?  

I guess you could make the argument that some adults just want everything to be simple.  But sometimes it looks like we're making everything so simple that it looks like stuff we could make at home.

I mean seriously, part of the appeal of buying special things is the idea of it being special, one-of-a-kind, out of the ordinary.  This stuff below looks like someone with a little too much time on their hands at home started putting their junk in plastic baggies.  

I guess you could call this "minimalism", but to me it just looks lazy and boring.  To be fair, there are true pioneers in packaging that take the minimalist route, like Apple, but this is just weird.

Still, I'd rather take some of these extra minimalist products over some of these items that just put a bunch of crap all over the place.  

I think I'd like my coffee to have just enough copy on there to get me through one cup in the morning.  This much crap all over the product is supposed to seem "whimsical" or "thought provoking", but to me it just comes off as "seizure inducing".  And speaking of crap being all over the products nowadays, what's the deal with every item having an entire novel's worth of copy on there?

I'd hate to think that someone shelled out all that tuition for "art school" and now designs products using the basics of Microsoft word.  Still, these products with lots of copy on them could conceivably be deemed better than these products that put the labels on there in copy that makes us seem like we're infants.  

 

If I'm the type of consumer who is willing to shell out $14 for a wheel of cheese I'd like to be given a little more credit that I know what I'm picking out and that I don't need it spelled out for me in big block letters like the eye chart at the Orthodontist's.  

As you can see, all of these products are different.  Or are they strangely the same?  While each employed a different aspect of the modern design movement they all have the same ugly, horrible, boring core that makes them simply loathesome to behold.  The truly sad thing is that in some individual cases this type of design is kind of cool and can be totally unique.  In an isolated incident I could totally see myself purchasing any one of these products and thinking they were cute, cool or funny.  However, if you take all of these together and look at how the entire culture has jumped on this same bandwagon, it just seems tired and forced rather than how it was originally intended.  

Are there exceptions to the rule?  Of course!  There are tons of really original companies out there who designed their products to be cool and artsy and fun and unique, and achieve this goal by the strength of their character not because they followed the mold of the modern, faux retro-uber minimalist-scandinavian-simplicity wagon.  

Here's a list of companies I like that I think have gotten this concept right for the modern era.

Ravenswood Winery in Sonoma County -- probably the most recognizable image in the wine world that comes with a whole identity and feel for the brand built right in.

Clover Stornetta Dairy -- Their pun-tastic billboards are a California staple.  Imagine pitching something like this in a modern ad agency today.

Rogue Brewery in Oregon -- This is packaging that doubles as art, is irreverent, and of course "Rogue".

Bonny Doon Vineyards in Santa Cruz -- These packages are so clever and funny, and they ooze the personality and wit of the owner, Randall Graham.  

Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA. -- These folks know how to do retro in a classically modern way.

Francis Ford Coppola Winery -- A Hollywood director should know something about style.  

Anyways, I don't pretend to know the first thing about marketing, style, packaging or advertising.  I only know what I like and what I can perceive in the general culture.  I just think that this sort of thing goes towards what my favorite blogger BikeSnobNYC refers to as the general "woosyfication" of our world.  If you don't think that's true, then can you please tell me what this is supposed to be....