BOX BOX BOX

BOX BOX BOX is a blog dedicated to vintage packaging. Mostly light bulb boxes and small paper bags, but everything with a simple and colorful design has a place in the collection.

[boxboxboxx]

Medical supplies

[boxboxboxx]

Refreshing tissues

[boxboxboxx]

TROZ – Puderzerstäuber

Last year when i was in Berlin i found this lovely box at the Mauer Park flea market. Look at the beutiful rasterized pictures and the colours! The pink colour in the folder almost look lite neon pink. So modern already in the 50's.

[boxboxboxx]

I love East Berlin

This weekend I visited Berlin again. At the Mauer Park market you could find hidden treasures but this time I also visited a shop filled with things from old East Germany. In the back they had a kitchen and the shelves were filled with old packaging. It looked like a museum but it turned out everything was for sale. What a dream! Film companys often come there to buy or borrow packaging for their productions. Soon I will photograph the things I bought and share it with you but this is a preview.

http://www.veborange.de/index2.html

[boxboxboxx]

Small baking cases

This small box don't look much to the world. But if you zoom in and start looking at the details it becomes really nive. The "splash" shape on the front that actually is the pleated shape of the baking cases. A thin line is all you need to understand that. The chubby typeface (Cooper black) and the brown and yellow colours gives it a 60- or 70's look but the pictures of cakes on one side and the recipe in Futura typography on the back feels more 50's to me. Maybe the design lasted through all those decades. Good design often does!

[boxboxboxx]

The Russian game

This type of childrens game is called Lotto in Sweden. Maybe the name of this game is Lotto No 1. Cool name on a really cool product. The printing quality is so bad that the surfaces become alive and beutiful. That's what I like about most of the examples in my collection.

The colours and the rough printing is lovely but the thing about this game is really about the illustration. Simple, colourful, playful and just so nice I think.

I bought this in this lovely shop in Berlin http://www.okversand.com/.

[boxboxboxx]

Narva #2

Another example of a box from the East German company Narva. The logo is the same but the cyan and magenta colours makes this one look a lot more modern than the ones in blue and red.

http://boxboxboxx.tumblr.com/post/42535279704/narva-ddr-light-bulbs-new-followers-are

[boxboxboxx]

Jumping frog

Sometimes you could find packaging in shops today that look really vintage. Especially if thet are produced in China or India. Probably because there is still some old lovely printing machines left in those countries.

I love everything about this box. The colours, the typography and especially how they solved the bilingual problem. The French and the English sides look the same, but still different. The illustration is so cute and the print so rough that you could sea the dots.

[boxboxboxx]

NIVEA

Old version of this classic Nivea Creme. The creme is originally developed by German company Beiersdorf in 1911, but after World War II they lost the rights to the trademark and so forth this Swedish company could make their own Nivea Creme. And maybe their own design?  The typography comes from the original but the red stripe feels a bit "wrong" on the normally blue and white package. Anyway it looks really nice, especially the type.

A funny thing is that my father name is the same as of the company.

[boxboxboxx]

LUMA BOX #5

The colour and the refined simple illustration on this box is just fantastic I think. The Luma logo is not that special but the fact that it looks the same during the years makes it so strong.

This edition is older than than LUMA BOX #2 but the illustration and the typography on the numbers is the same. One thing that changed between the two designs is the paper quality. This one still has that beautiful rough uncoted cardboard that most of the boxes in my collection has. But some time, probably in the 80's most brands started to use cardboard that is coated on the outside of the box. More resistent to water and dirt but not as nice.

[boxboxboxx]

Help – light and heat

This can, wich I couldn't resist buying in an antique shop, is not only a can. It's a way to keep warm since it contains lights, matches and the lid works as a reflector. Really smart survival-kit with a really nice 70's design. Classic colours as orange and brown and bold swirly typography. The illustrations looks like there from Modesty Blaise on ski's.

One side is in english and the other in swedish and the opening mechanism is so cool.

[boxboxboxx]

AIRAM

This finnish light bulb box, with a design probably originated in the 80's, is maybe not that fantastic as a hole. But the different parts are really nice! The logo with the dramatic yellow triangle, the colours; black, white and grayscale together with yellow details. And the typography in the name and the word "Longlife", are both very nice but they don't fit together at all I think. And the rest of the the typography is not very good so this is a box that balances on the edge between super cool and quite ugly.

[boxboxboxx]

Läkerol #2

The day before christmas I got the best gift from my best friend Maria and her mother. Her great aunt recently passed away and they were cleaning up her house in a small coastal town, were she lived with her husband who was an artist. I told them about my collection and the blog and they gave me a bag full of beutiful old packages. Leftovers for most people, a treasure for me!

This box of Läkerol must be a special edition or something because it's not the classic look.

[boxboxboxx]

Solstickan matches

This brand is a Swedish classic and the design is as classic! Why is it that the colours look better at vintage packaging? Probably has to do with the printing teqniques. On the back of the box there is an "ad" for another product from the same company.

[boxboxboxx]

Coloured bulbs

These boxes are actually not vintage, I bought them in a hard ware store a couple of years ago. But the simple, monochrome and lo-fi look gives them a place in the collection anyway.

Visitors, likes and followers keep coming and I love it! Thanks Elisabeth (http://www.finelittleday.com/) and Ylva (http://bloggar.capdesign.idg.se/forpackad/) for the links!!!

[boxboxboxx]

NARVA – DDR light bulbs

New followers are "popping" in and I'm so happy! Soon there will be a shoot with new pics to fill the blog with.

These boxes I've bought in flea markets in East Berlin where I've been spending a lot of time and they are from the time when the wall still existed. That fact gives them such a special history I think. Imagine that probably was the only light bulb brand in the whole country.

But NARVA is actually a trademark that is patented all over the world, but founded in East Berlin in 1963, and the name comes from the following lamp components: N - nitrogen, AR - argon, VA - vacuum.

When it comes to the design these boxes are not one of the most fantastic in the collection but I really like the logo made in the shape of a bulb in a very simple and genius way.

[boxboxboxx]

SOFT DRINKS

This is how the cans with soft drinks looked like when I was little. Fanta from the Coca Cola company and the Swedish copy called Zingo. I get all nostalgic but don't you agree the design was better? So plain and easy and not over cluttered with gradients and "swirly" illustrations.

I really like what agency Turner Duckworth is doing with the Coca Cola brand – keeping it simple! http://www.turnerduckworth.com