On Thursday, I spent the better portion of the day at a training session. As anyone who knows me is aware, I struggle to sit still for that long without doing SOMETHING to stay awake. I'm a hands-on guy; watching someone else demonstrate best practices bores me to the verge of sleep. I needed something, anything, to get my mind rolling at 100 MPH. Lucky for me, there was lunch, because inside the plastic tray was a moist toilette.
Now I know what you're saying. You shouldn't use a moist toilette on your face because the chemicals will make you blind, no matter how refreshing it might seem. Well, don't worry, you. I'm talking about the packaging, specifically, the art deco wrapper.
Before you say it out loud and disturb everyone around you with your musings about how I've lost my mind, I'll say it (or type it) for you...
Clearly, I'm an idiot. But look at this thing. I can't decide if they're trying to make their customers feel as though they're eating lunch aboard a Zeppelin, if a designer just had a Random Shape Puke episode on his InDesign document, or if this is part of a larger collectible series of artistic period packages. But I'm an idiot, as we've already determined, so you figure it out.
Myself, I think its answer two. An overzealous designer threw up some Random Shape Puke, looked at it and said "Huh, that looks very 1930s", set the type in Futura to give it the proper context, and sent it off. That's probably exactly what happened.
But a man can dream, can't he? Yes, yes he can. Women too. So lets dream together...dream that this is part of a series of moist toilette packages for luncheons, a collectible series based on classical art forms and styles. I want the surrealist one myself, with the illustration of a melting toilette gracing the front of the package. Maybe you want the renaissance package, with its elegantly-draped lady using the toilette to freshen up. Maybe your friend wants the pop art package with the brightly painted Moire Pattern Lady crying, saying in a thought bubble "I wish I had a moist towelette!"
No, but that would never happen, because there wasn't that much thought put into this thing in the first place. You know what I really want to see? I want to see a true designer collection. I'm talking packaging inspired by actual graphic designers. (Warning: Inside Jokes ahead)
There could be one inspired by Mr. RayGun Magazine. These packages would feature lots of grungy elements, and all the type would be laid out in Zapf Dingbats. Unfortunately, 95% of the time that you order a case of these packages, your payment would be processed but the shipment would never arrive. You'd just get an email from UPS the day before the supposed arrival date telling you the shipment wasn't going to make it.
You could have one inspired by a certain Capital City Texan. These packages would be OK, not great but just OK, and they could talk about themselves and spew enough BS to make you forget their OKness. These talking, BSing packages would be creepy enough on their own merits, because nobody likes talking packaging, but the worst part about them is that the towels inside don't actually work anymore. And cases of them tend to show up in your mailroom, whether you ordered them or not.
Or you could have one designed by a certain duo from the upper midwest. These packages would feature the moist towelettes fashioned into a ski mask, which would be modeled by a clipart head illustration from 1952. For some reason, each case of the towelettes comes with a swarm of fruit flies, but the note inside the case insists that the flies are actually from the case down the mailroom from this one. It has nothing to do with the Cheez-Its scattered around the inside of the box, rest assured.
Man, I wish these packages existed. I'd reserve space for them on my shelves, I can tell you that. Hell, I'd even put up with the inevitable swarm of fruit flies. Because hey, fruit flies eventually die. But Awesomeness is forever.
On second thought...nah, You bet.
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