Home

Classic packaging offers design inspiration

03.10.11

When grocery product designers are looking for new ideas, sometimes they turn to the past. That's what brings them to the world's most extensive collection of food packages, the NewProductWorks Collection in Ann Arbor, MI.

You never know when a 1981 jar of Terry's Creamy Peanut Butter might spark a brain wave, or whether an idea that flopped in the past -- spray salad dressing, anyone? -- might have a new life.

"Visitors to the collection step back in time through a forest of American consumerism, telling the story of culture," said Margaret Reynolds, executive vice president of GfK Global, which owns the collection. "Most of the collection is about 30 years old or newer. Some products date back to the early 1970s."

If a product contained perishable food, only the package was kept. But products such as soft drinks, nuts, soup and cleaning products are left intact for the ages. So the collection includes a lot of shampoos, shriveled soap and soda, "and we still have diapers from 30 years ago," Reynolds said.

Source: Packaging Digest

The lightest dinner out in town

26.09.11

Cost per person without wine: £40

THERE is so much that is pleasing about Galoupet. It looks like the kind of place you’d find in one of those super-cool northern European cities like Malmo or Arrhus, frequented by thin-legged crowds of effortlessly wealthy hipsters.

Or, if not to northern Europe, it’s the kind of place that belongs to the future. The dining room is a pale box, flooded with natural light, lined with enomatic wine dispensers and defined by sheer lines.

But the food – the food belongs to a future in which everyone is thin. The menu is completely without simple carbohydrate: no potatoes, bread, rice, pasta. There is natural sugar in fruit, yes, and sugar in the pudding menu. But probably for the first time in my life, I felt neutral (not full, not empty) after eating about six plates at a restaurant. It was all herbs, citrus, vegetable, fruit and small portions of meat. It was, in short, a dieter’s paradise.

But was it a foodie’s paradise?

Source: CITY A.M.