Despite the multitude of attractive and well-designed packages that fill our stores, the layman is apt to think of packaging as a matter of packing and parcels, brown paper, boxes, string and perhaps sealing wax. This is as it should be, for when a thing is well designed it should not attract attention to the labour of its design; it should simply appear to be right; it is when something looks wrong that it calls attention to its faulty making.

The layman too is largely right in his view of packaging; he has at least seized upon a first essential of the good package; with few exceptions the first job of the package is to protect the article to be wrapped, and it is one of the tasks of the designer to see that this important requirement is met. A package is essentially a cotainer, but it is more than this. A package has two purposes; to contain and to sell. But before I tell you more about the purposes of the package, I want to say something about its origins.

Beginnings

The history of packaging, using the word in the modern sense, is largely the story of branded goods and their containers; and its development covers a period of very little more than half a century. But its origins are rooted in the story of the container itself, which goes back to the dawn of civilzation.

The branded product is at best a bare 160 years old, if we except such passing, but perhaps significant phenomena as the Roman ointment which bore the maker's name engraved on the lead cover which closed the pot. Certainly before the days of mass production and mass distribution, when every town and the agricultural district surrounding it formed a more or less isolated community—self contained and self supporting—there seemed more point in branding cattle than in branding goods.

The beginnings of modern packaging can be found in the eighteenth century; though glass bottles were replacing the old leather and earthenware bottle for wine as early as 1640. It was in the eighteen century that we see a few patent remedies being marketed packed in glass phials or paper envelopes such as those for Dr. John Harper's Female Pills, and Dr. James' Fever Powder. More important still was the introduction from Germany to England of the tinplate industry at Pontypool in 1730. In this century when Nicholas Appert was quietly working on the problems of canning, beer was sold in bottles and such famous firms as Crosse and Blackwell, Yardleys and A. & F. Pears were laying foundations of great businesses in which the package and container played a vital part.

The nineteeth century saw many important developments and technical improvements came thick and fast. In 1810 Auguste de Heine and Peter Durand had taken out British patents for the use of iron and tin containers for preserving foods, and in the following year a process based on that of the pioneer Appert was developed in England by John Hall, the founder of the famous Dartford iron works. There were many difficulties to overcome, many failures, but at last the firm was able to send tins of preserved foods to high authorities of the Navy and Army for trial.

The approval of the authorities was not long in coming, and within six years Donkin and Hall, and others were regularly supplying the Admiralty with canned foods.

Concurrently with the early development of canning came the beginning of the cardboard containers. Their first wide use was for pill boxes, and among the pioneers of this packaging development was a certain John Bradbury Robinson, a retail chemist who sold out his chemist's business in 1839, bought a pill box factory and founded the now flourishing box making and printing firm of Robinsons of Chesterfield, one of the largest box making concerns in Britain today. In 1846 the Robinsons opened a square box department, and the development of the rigid cardboard box went forward rapidly. Nevertheless these boxes remained almost exclusively confined to the chemist trade, and fancy and decorated boxes so widely used for chocolates and confectionery were not introduced until the latter part of the century. By the late 60's Cadbury's were marketing croquette chocolates in circular rigid boxes, and in square boxes bearing still life illustrations of fruit. The pictures, pasted on the lids, were purchased in sheets from continental printers, and the favourite subjects were children, landscapes, animals and reproductions of famous paintings. This period also saw the birth of the “chocolate box girl.” Richard Cadbury made a notable contribution to package history when, in the late 60's he decided to use his own designs and thus distinguish his boxes from those of his competitors. He used his own children as models, and also made use of Swiss and English flowers, and of Swiss scenes painted during his holidays.

Designed by Roy Courtice, L.S.I.A., for Milton.

I will not weary you with a list of the many developments in packaging machinery which were introduced in the last century; it was a time of great technical advances in many fields—the first mechanical bottle making page 27 machine, the first paper bag machine, the first carton and vacuum can. In merchandising, too, there were great developments; British industry had become conscious of the power of advertising, and by the end of the century the chain store, in the shape of Boots and Liptons, had entered the lists of retail trade. Yet a real many things and a great deal of food was still sold loose to the retailer, and all kinds of packaged products were by no means acceptable to British conservatism. Our forbears feared that ptomaine poisoning lurked in every tin. Food lay about in bulk at shop doors and on shop floors, and was visited by many who were not customers. The grocer displayed his wares on open shelves at the mercy of dust and flies, and gave them to the customer in bags which often had to be separated by the simple but unhygienic method of blowing into them.

America Comes In

A few progressive manufacturers put their new products in tins or cartons, advertised them by poster as “The Best,” and made fortunes almost as a matter of course. It was largely the influence of America which changed all this, which speeded up the tempo, and which finally compelled our British manufacturers to take the subject of package design more seriously. It was America that sent over new cereals to compete with porridge oats, dental cream to oust our tooth-powders from our markets, sent us free samples to whet our appetites, sent chewing gum and razor blades, tinned soup, canned fruits and motor oil. Not that all these products were new to us; but the thoroughness with which they were sold brought the lesson home. Every quality and aspect of the product was shown to us to be better than those of its competitor. And even the bottle, tin or box, in which the product was packed was treated as a selling force. If the customer found your bottle, tin or box easier to open than that of your competitor, this in itself was a selling point, and selling points were by this time becoming important.

Designed by Milner Gray, R.D.I., F.S.I.A., for Rolex S.A., Geneve.

Later Developments

The story of the first half of our own century is again one of great technical development, speeded up by the special requirements of the Services of the two major wars, and the impact of the new techniques in store layout and merchandising. New materials have placed new weapons in the hands of the salesman and have posed fresh problems to the designer.

In Britain there has been a re-orientation of class distribution; upper and middle class families have become much smaller, while the purchasing power of the working class has increased. Contemporary life in urban communities does not include large larders as in Victorian times. Domestic help is at a premium, and the women of all classes, more often than not, are engaged all day in working for a living. With the growth of the big store the personal touch between shopkeeper and customer is vanishing. Packed goods are easy to buy, easy to handle, and easy to store.

Designed by Douglas Scott and Ronald Ingles, M.M.S.I.A., for Andrew Mills, Ltd.

A Team Job

An exhibition which I have recently been in part responsible for staging at the Royal Academy in London, under the title of “Design at Work” begins the story of the design process with this introduction: “Everything made by man is first designed; some things are well designed, some not. A thing that is well designed Works Well, Looks Well, Lasts Well and from the manufacturer's point of view Sells Well.” This exhibition explained that designing for all largescale production is not a one man job; it is a team effort calling for collaboration between the manufacturer, the designer, research workers, production and sales managers, and finally an essential member of the team whose views are of paramount importance to successful and continuous manufacture—the consumer.

Public Taste

If one designs for the taste of the market, then there is surely a justification for bad design, for crude illustration to match crude taste. Sometimes one hears that public taste is always bad. Let me say at once that I do not believe it; nor has my experience lent colour to this view. In most cases where the public has been given the chance, it has voted in favour of better designed goods. It is possible to be both good and popular. But the designer must draw strength and inspiration from his own time, share its viewpoint, and like the same forms it likes. You cannot make a hundred thousand copies of a design no-one wants, no matter how much it may please you.

The Purpose of Packaging

I propose a division of the aim of packaging into three prime functions: to protect, to identify, and to advertise its contents. To protect the contents the package must be made of the right sort of materials, made in the right sort of way, and of course, made as economically as possible. It must be easy to handle in the manufacturer's warehouse, in transit, on the dealer's shelves, and in the hands of the consumer; it must be simple to open and easy, if need be, to re-seal.

Designed by Norbet Dutton, F.S.I.A., Ronald Ingles, M.S.I.A., Ronald Armstrong for Hornimans, Ltd.

Protection

Great strides have been made in the last few years in the scientific protection and preservation of goods by packaging them. The war taught us many lessons in technical packaging, the result of scientific research into the proofing against rust, mould, mildew, vermin, weevils and termites. Techniques have been developed for testing containers to ensure that they will stand up to the physical conditions they will encounter in transit from the factory to the consumer. A new science of technical packaging which is solely concerned with the protection and preservation of packaged goods has grown up over the last few years.

An example of this is the cocoon process by which a synthetic film is sprayed over aeroplane engines and so on, thus preserving them indefinitely against the deterioration consequent upon storage over long periods of time, or in exposed conditions. For metal parts we now have what is called the strip-coat, again a synthetic covering which seals the article against air, yet which can be peeled off by slitting up with a pen-knife. Many such processes, or derivatives, of such processes are finding commercial application in Britain today.

New Materials

Linked with protection is the subject of right materials. I cannot attempt to list here the vast range of materials available in the service of packaging, but some of the more recent developments are worth a mention. In the field of plastics, especially in the thermo-plastic group, many new packaging materials are now becoming available—for example, the introduction of polystyrene, polythene, polyvinyl, and polyvinylidene-chloride. Some of these plastics will find their applications in the packaging of foodstuffs, and will prove powerful rivals to the transparent cellulose films which we have known for so long. Polystyrene, at present scarce and expensive, will undoubtedly come into the packaging picture as an attractive transparent container in the luxury cosmetic field; somewhat similar effects can be obtained at a cheaper cost with cellulose acetate, of which considerable quantities are being used for the manufacture of cylindrical, spiral-wound and rectangular containers. Yet another newcomer in the transparent wrapping group is rubber hydro-chloride. All these different materials have special characteristics which make one or the other the most suitable for each particular need. Some are resistant to water, others to grease; some are suited to the rapidly expanding frozen food market in which many wrappings have so far failed to afford the protection required. If to these we add the potentialities of extruded aluminium containers, improved reproductive processes — especially in regard to printing on metals, and the greatly improved techniques now adopted for packing in wood and fibreboard, it will be seen that the designer of today may actually be embarrassed by a plethora of materials and methods.

To Identify the Contents

To identify the contents of a package would seem to be the simplest thing in the world, and to a large extent it is the common sense of packaging, involving an assessment of all the circumstances under which the package will have to be recognized for what is in it, as regards the article's quality, style, type and so on. There is a further subdivision of this heading. There are some things worth remembering in establishing identifying marks, names or symbols for your products: one of these is that words have shape as well as sounds, and some shapes stay

Designed by Jesse Collins, F.S.I.A., for Martins, Piccadilly, 1945.

page 29 more easily in the mind's eye than others. It is easier for instance to visualize and recall, as well as to pronounce the word VIM, than for instance a word like polyvinvylidenechloride.

Advertisement

The function of your package is to advertise the contents. As an advertising medium it ranks high, for its appeal is made at the point of sale, when with purse in hand your potential customer hovers between the purchase of your product, or that of your hated rival. Nor does it cease to serve you after purchase, for it is carried through the street, in tram or train or bus boldly advertising to all and sundry that someone has had the temerity to try the stuff: and this is not all, it becomes perhaps a familiar adjunct to the breakfast table, until at long last the dustman carries it away to whatever limbo is reserved for packages which have successfully served their makers. Some may even attain a near eternal life, as what we call re-use containers, on the housewife's shelves.

The Role of the Designer

In this vast field of operations covering materials, function, and propaganda, what then is the role of the package designer? In these days of specialization it is more evident that he cannot be an expert in all these functions, but he holds a key position in this scheme. His position, and what he has to do in relation to packaging is very much the same as the position of the designer in another sphere, that of the architect in relation to building. The designer of buildings will know a lot about social conditions, as well as about bricks and mortar, steel and concrete. The more he knows of these things, and of the whole business of building, the better equipped he is for his job, but he is not expected to know as much of social conditions as the socialist, nor as much about concrete as the Research Department of the Cement and Concrete Association. Like the architect the industrial designer will visualize his client's problems as a whole, and prepare his plans for a solution in the light of all the evidence available, co-ordinating the work of the experts, and assessing the value of rival materials and methods. He must be able to advise his clients on the relative merits of glass, or metal, or pulp, or earthenware containers for their products, and how these in turn shall be decorated, printed, or labelled, and finally packed and identified for transport and economic stowing on lorry, train, or ship. Like the architect who turns to the structural or sanitary engineer for his specialized knowledge he will be in touch with specialists for advice on the most recent advances in such fields as plastics, paper, and boards, coatings for metal cans, new synthetic films and so on.

Designed by Jesse Collins, F.S.I.A., for Rothman & Co., London.

Designed by Consultants, Ltd., for John Evelyn herbal remedies. The bottle on the cover designed by Milner Gray, R.D.I., F.S.I.A., for the Mid-Sussex Canning Preserve Co., Ltd.

The designer's function is to interpret the manufacturer's brief in terms of materials, form, colour, lettering, and typography, and he can only give effective service if he is adequately briefed. The general approach to the design problem remains the same whether one is designing a carton, a bottle, an electric fire or a washing machine. First a full discussion with the manufacturer so as to collect a statement of the problem. At this stage the designer is hardly interested in what the object will look like when finished; he wants to know the answers to a number of questions. What sort of market the product aims at? What sort of shop will sell it? Is it a high or low priced luxury article, or a utility article for mass consumption? How does it compare in price and appearance with competitive makes? Will it be sold with other ranges, or complementary articles? What processes and mate- page 30 rials seem to the manufacturer to fit in best with his schedule? Are there any particular colours, letter-forms or other design elements associated with his present products? How far should the new pack relate to these? What is the character of the business and its marketing policy? The character of a design may grow out of the fact that the business is old established, or set in a particular locality, or associated with some historic landmark.

All this is pure fact finding; but it will be on the basis of these facts that the design will evolve in an orderly way; and if the facts are accurate, and the designer interprets them correctly, and if he possesses that virtue of invention which enables him to see old things in a new way, a successful design will result.

To manufacturers I would say give the designer every facility you can. He may want to visit your factory, talk to your sales or production people; he will want to see the shops in which your goods are sold; he will want to know all he can learn about you and your problem. Tell him everything you can with all your cards on the table; it will help him and it will pay you.

Summary

Finally, to sum up, I would repeat that design is not something which can be added when the job is practically done. The character of the package must grow from the product which it contains, the distinctive background of the maker and the requirements of the market at which it is aimed. But all these factors will in turn be governed by the individual outlook of the particular designer engaged on its design. The presentation of any manufacturer's products to the public must depend upon the most precise terms of reference which market research can supply, upon an accurate assessment of the competition to be faced, and of the dressing of competitive lines. There must also be complete confidence, and the closest collaboration between the designer, the manufacturer, and his sales and packing staffs, and the various package suppliers concerned. Like all industrial design, packaging is a team job, and cannot progress divorced from the techniques of research, production, and distribution. But in the end it is the character which the designer imparts to the package which will be the deciding factor in its failure or success as a good sales agent. If he is worth his fee the designer is first and foremost an artist, one who is sensitive to the atmosphere of the product, and to the mood of the consumer in buying the product; and his vital contribution is, of course, the aesthetic character which he brings to his work, whether he is designing a pavilion or a package.