Antrepo wonders what it might be like if the labels on consumer products were stripped of all their flare and were to go semi-minimal and completely minimal.
Obviously some of them wouldn’t work from a practical perspective, because well, customers would have no idea what the product was, but from an information design and visualization perspective, it’s fun to think about. Strip out the extraneous until you can strip no more.
This meme has annoyed me a little (and you mention your own caveats about it). Still, most of these are terrible looking and remove all character from the packaging. They are even backing away from it themselves.
Phil,
just watch this on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0; you should appreciate the less is more approach afterwards.
“Strip out the extraneous until you can strip no more.”
And sell zero units. This is why we don’t let designers run important companies.
I was thinking in terms of data graphics. Antrepo makes a note this was just an exercise.
Hmmm, how do you explain Apple’s success – by marketing clutter? This is certainly an extreme exercise, but there is something to it in order to ease the customer’s eyes.
in fact, labels should be used to put information about the story of each ingredient, to help consumer understand what they are buying, instead of stockphotos and motivationals.
At least they would save money on using less labels. Hmmm…