Is Your Package a Work of Art?
January 04, 2012
Andy Warhol, the American artist known for being a leading figure in the pop art movement, debuted perhaps his most famous collection of paintings in 1962 – a set of 32 canvases each displaying Campbell’s Soup cans.
This was done at the advice of a friend of Warhol, interior designer Murial Latow, who told him to paint “Something you see every day and something that everybody would recognize. Something like a can of Campbell’s Soup.” And paint it he did, creating some of the most iconic American artworks of the 20th century.
So what two lessons can we in the packaging world learn from Andy Warhol 50 years later?
Be Recognizable
In the highly-competitive market that is the big box store shelf, you need packaging that is easily recognized by the consumer. The more time consumers spend searching for your product, the more time they spend actually seeing a competitors name rather than yours.
What was recognizable to the woman shopping for groceries in Tennessee was just as recognizable to the art critics looking at the Warhol exhibition in New York and LA. Now THAT is market penetration.
Be Beautiful
Beauty doesn’t have to be complex. The Campbell’s Soup can is simple with high contrast colors that are meant to convey information more than wow the New York Art scene, but nevertheless it was able to do both.
Beauty also doesn’t have to be classic. Modern design, like the kind employed by Method cleaning products, are the kinds of packaging that customers want to show off in their homes rather than tuck away unseen.
Make your retail products and packaging solutions works of art and customers will treat it as such. Want to know how? Contact Ernest today.
