media meditation two. the key to successful product sales-21st century edition.

A friend showed me this website the other day and I instantly fell in love. A trove of beautiful package design, just in time for my branding/package design class I'm taking, at Champlain College. The Lovely Package site gathers unique and charming design from all over the globe and even include some really nice student work.

Reflecting on how packaging severely influences sales and a customer's decision, I thought of how Neil Postman's concepts of how physical aesthetic appeals must be made to the viewer, in exchange for some support. In his book, Amusing Ourselves To Death, Postman discusses how "fat, bald" presidents don't get elected anymore, and the cause of that is directly our utilization of visual forms of conveying a message. Television effectively molds our opinions, and our standards, for looks and what's "good" without making a justification of why. And without broadcasting the true message. That, hand-in-hand with sharp persuasive methods, can sway a crowd, or a population.

Back to packaging, Apple is well-known for their unique unpacking experience. Opening up a new ipod, iphone, ipad or mac computer is, literally, designed to be enjoyable. Their packaging, though maybe just typical now that everyone has seen it, was extremely unique at the time it was designed. Other tech-related packaging blended in on Best Buy's shelves without a solid information hierarchy.
I am certainly not a Microsoft basher myself, but being a designer, this video is pretty entertaining.


I am a total sucker when it comes to packaging. It could be the designer side of me that simply appreciates a beautiful box when I see it, and so I...subconsciously want to support this effort of cleaning up the ugly advertising? Maybe.

Would you buy this water?

I sure would.