Boxed water

Okay, so while I was prepping for a post about Penmanship, I got the Daily Heller in my inbox. Today's topic (see title link) is about a new brand of "eco-friendly" paper boxed water, AQUAPAX. Reading about it reminded me immediately of a project I did in my favorite and only packaging design class during my last year at the School of Visual Arts: design a brand of bottled water.

Roughly, the point of the project was to choose an audience and develop a brand of water targeting them. Remembering all of the crazy amounts of research I did at the time, I was mostly inspired by Military Ready to Eat packaging and other military items, as well as survival kits. While other classmates chose audiences of kids, modern design types, bar regulars, etc., I chose one interested in no frills,  just pure necessity and functionality. I named it Ration. I developed basic graphics to reference the hydrologic a.k.a. water cycle (remember that in science class?) and other utilitarian style design. 

Image by USGS, from Wikipedia

The type had to be very basic—I wanted to achieve the feeling I got from much of the industrial made military items—as if the person that made it wasn't a designer per se, but maybe military personnel that was forced to read "Handicraft Guide No. 10: LETTERING for use of U.S. Armed Forces Personnel Only." Four aluminum cans of water would be packed perfectly into a small cardboard box. In the research I did at the time, metal cans for the water seemed like a viable solution in the sense that contrary to popular belief, it supposedly wouldn't affect the taste of the water, it was easier to recycle than plastic (so I read), and it has a much longer shelf life than clear plastic or paper. Of course, I can't seem to find any of this information now. 

And there you have a bit of personal history. Here's the photo of the final project, as it was in my portfolio from 2005.

P-38 (a.k.a. John Wayne)

Have you ever seen one of these? If you haven't, it is called a P-38 can opener. Since I am a huge fan of army rations, supplies, or simple survival kits and tools, I was given one of these as a small gift over the holiday. Prior to that, I think I'd only vaguely remembered seeing one—probably through my grandfather—some time ago. Other than "can opener" I didn't know it had an official name, so when I was told it was called a P-38, I thought my leg was being pulled (as so often seems to happen). 

I'd forgotten that I received it, and so when I re-found it a week ago I decided to do a little Googling about it. According to Wikipedia, the P-38 was provided with the K-ration (daily combat food ration introduced by the United States army during World War II and issued until the 1980s). Developed in 1942, it is keychain size (1.5 inches, 38 mm long); the longer blade edge usable as a screwdriver, and the hinged portion to pierce can lids. 

My curiosity was mostly in regard to the name. Wiki notes that while it isn't certain where "P-38" comes from, the military designation is "US ARMY POCKET CAN OPENER" and coincidentally, there is a fighter plane also by the same name, P-38. However, the name may relate more to the actual measurement being 38mm and P for Pocket (side note: there is also a larger opener by the name P-51, which is 51mm).

On another site (Georgia-Outfitters.com), they note that the opener originally came in a brown wrapper printed with a diagram for proper use and that it was meant to keep the P-38 clean before using. Since many prepackaged openers were provided in the rations, each could be tossed after a meal. However, they write that many of the GIs were keeping the openers to prevent being without one at chow time.

While doing a little more quick research, I found an interesting advertisement from a 1924 issue of Popular Mechanics. And as I also observed, Wiki writes that it was featured there without mention of military background.

I hope you find this as interesting as I did.

Middle image above from www.georgia-outfitters.com

Advertisement shown above from www.blog.modernmechanix.com

What's On My Desk!

In what is sure to be the most talked about edition of What's On My Desk! ever, I present to you a selection of objects so charming, so amazing, so wonderous that I actually have no idea what they are. Let me explain:

About a month ago, Jennifer spied a set of these at an unnamed resale shop in Houston, Texas and immediately purchased them. They're about six inches long and appear to be slides of some kind for an antique Viewmaster style device. Each slide is sandwiched between two pieces of glass taped together with red paper tape. They seem to depict various battles and incidents (with the exception of the 4th slide down) from the Russo-Japanese war in the early 1900s and the Opium wars of the mid 1800s and have notes about the contents of the slide in German. Unfortunately, they are not a complete set and a few are heavily damaged. Nonetheless they definitely are like nothing I'd ever seen before. The illustrations are amazing and the colors are still shockingly vibrant when viewed with backlight despite their age.