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Nonetheless, packaging is moving forward at a rapid pace towards previously unimaginable frontiers. In early August, the Annual DuPont Packaging Awards for innovations in packaging technology recognized a beer can called the Labatt Blue Cold One that uses a patented process to create a thin, high-tech polymer wrap to keep the beer insulated from the heat transferred by warm hands. The result – a can that’s more comfortable to hold and beer that stays colder and fresher longer. Other honored innovations included creditcard-sized eye shadows from Cargo ColorCards™, holographic anti-counterfeit lined cartons from The Paper Products Ltd. and Sherwin-Williams’ combination paint container and roller tray. But if packaging is a science, it is also an art. Thus, Jose Cuervo’s Reserva de la Familia brand of estate-bottled tequila, aged for an average of three years, is prized among collectors not just for the complexity of its flavor, but also for the wooden box emblazoned with Mexican art in which it comes packaged. Each year, the Cuervo family commissions a Mexican artist to design a limited edition box for the Reserva tequila (10,000 boxes at over US$100 a pop). The artist is given nearly complete control over the design, which can be representational or abstract and not necessarily related to tequila. The boxes have become collectibles, and indeed, in early September, one of the 1996 bottles and its box painted by Manuel Velazquez could be found for sale on eBay for US$750. Most aspects of our lives are pre-packaged for us, but we still have plenty of packaging choices of our own to make – from how we will wrap a gift (today, you can even personalize the wrapping paper with photos or messages) to the clothing in which we package ourselves. Will we choose to present ourselves swathed in organic cotton or coated in vinyl? Will we choose to slip inside the package of an environmentally sensitive hybrid car or a gas-guzzling SUV? U.S. news commentator Shana Alexander once said, “Letters are expectation packaged in an envelope.” What will we use to wrap our expectations in the age of email? |
