With more and more people becoming ‘green’ and ‘eco-friendly’, I think the rise in alterative packaging for wine has been a welcome one!

Don’t get me wrong, one of my favourite sounds is that of a cork being pulled from a good bottle of wine, however, there are many benefits to buying wine in a box.

 Aimed at those with an active, modern lifestyle…..the versatile containers are shatterproof, portable, and practical with a resealable, twist-off cap, making it a perfect wine choice for ski trips, backpacking, camping, and outdoor entertainment.  As an added bonus, wine stays fresh for longer and its better for the environment!

 While boxed wine has been on the shelves for a while, the packaging and design both seem to have evolved.  Don’t think of the large boxes in the 80’s that our parents used to try and fit unsuccessfully in to the fridge – but think more organic, streamlined, contemporary packaging;

Yellow + Blue = Green (see what they did there?!).  This wine not only comes in a box but it’s also organic and since it is more cost effective for the winery to have the wine packaged in a box they can sell it at a lower cost. So we are helping the environment and our wallets.

French Rabbit’s revolutionary packaging reduces packaging waste by 90% compared to glass bottles, and reduces emissions and greenhouse gases during shipping.  Also, for every 4 French Rabbit’s sold, one tree is planted. 

Boho Vineyards beautiful packaging is 95% recycled craft paper and uses only soy-based inks. This table –worthy design with paisley swirls pay homage to vintage bohemian chic.

 The Three Thieves “bullets,” sold four to a pack, resemble elongated, narrow juice boxes (complete with straw) with less severe edges. It’s nothing new to buy such a four-pack; mass-market brands have been doing it for years. But the new format offers both more wine — 250 ml, versus the standard 187-ml serving — and less waste.

For those of you concerned with the quality of sipping wine through a straw, fear no more, Tetra Pak has come up with a new ‘Sensory Straw’ that can direct the flow of a drink to different zones in the mouth to maximise flavour.  With a sealed end and four holes punched around the top, the straw is said to spread liquid over more of the mouth than conventional straws, which tend to squirt it down the back of the throat.  The new method means the drink comes into contact with taste buds in different areas, such as those on the side of the tongue which are most sensitive to sweetness… Cool!

With the Diamond Jubilee just around the corner, Brummie artist Graham Short has engraved what is believed to be the smallest ever portrait of the Queen!

Raising the profile of other Birmingham talent and highlighting our love of ‘craft’ – making the impossible, possible through vision, passion, focus and hard work.

Take a look at the full article plus cool video here

Also by Christoph Niemann.

Just found this and just had to share it. Created by Christoph Niemann I just love the wit, it really made me smile. For the full doughy experience go here.

Originally found here

I came across these two very different packaging bottles and it amused me that the non-alcoholic one – Crodino – was designed to appear alcoholic using traditional design cues you’d expect to see in a beer bottle design and that the the alcoholic one  - Mixed Emotions Vodka – has been designed to play down the alcoholic content and taste and focus on the emotional and fun aspect of drinking. Cheers!

PROHIBITION is a three-part, five-and-a-half-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick that tells the story of the rise, rule, and fall of the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the entire era it encompassed.

The culmination of nearly a century of activism, Prohibition was intended to improve, even to ennoble, the lives of all Americans, to protect individuals, families, and society at large from the devastating effects of alcohol abuse.

But the enshrining of a faith-driven moral code in the Constitution paradoxically caused millions of Americans to rethink their definition of morality. Thugs became celebrities, responsible authority was rendered impotent. Social mores in place for a century were obliterated. Especially among the young, and most especially among young women, liquor consumption rocketed, propelling the rest of the culture with it: skirts shortened. Music heated up. America’s Sweetheart morphed into The Vamp.

…This looks like a very interesting documentary which draws on lots of parallels to western life today.

Here is an interview with the film maker Ken Burns…

Check out this article about an interesting new website. Neighborland is a neighbourhood networking site in New Orleans and allows people to build crowd power around ideas to improve their local area.  To build a rallying call for improvements to their immediate environment and services. In an era when we no longer know all our neighbours – how they think and feel – this seems like a great way to prompt local authorities and other bodies to make the changes that their local populous really values.  I’m not sure which is the tail and which is the dog – but there seems to be a good bit of happy wagging going on here!

“The prohibition of alcohol in the 1920’s and 30’s in the United States is one of the most famous, or infamous, times in recent American history. The intention was to reduce the consumption of alcohol by eliminating businesses that manufactured, distributed and sold it. Considered by many as a failed social and political experiment, the era changed the way many Americans view alcoholic beverages, enhancing the realization that federal government control cannot always take the place of personal responsibility.” Source: About.com

This description jumped into my mind recently, upon reading that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has said that the government wants tobacco companies to have “no business” in Britain and will launch a consultation into stripping cigarette packets of all branding, according to an interview in the Times.

The similarity is stark.

There are many arguments, from many quarters, for and against the de-branding of cigarette packaging, that are well documented; perhaps, as designers, we should be flattered that branding is seen as being key to this whole debate?

This raises interesting issues about intellectual property rights for brand owners and design agencies alike. As John Noble, Director, British Brands Group has said “Branding also involves intellectual property rights that have been granted by the state and which companies have invested in over many decades to make extremely valuable so if the state effectively requisitions those intellectual property rights there is a question over the legitimacy of that and there is also a case for recompense and compensation.” This view is already playing out in Australia, where Philip Morris is suing the Australian government over a new law making plain packaging mandatory for cigarettes from December 2012.

Nobody can deny the amount of money that the NHS spends each year providing medical support to smokers; but where next? And is destroying brands the answer, with all its accompanying concerns regarding quality and counterfeiting? We all know and recognise that a brand is so much more than a “pretty pack” it is also a badge of authenticity and quality (amongst many other things). I’m not the first, and I certainly won’t be the last to wonder if this approach will be mirrored in other categories . . . Alcohol? Confectionery?

The question that needs to be carefully considered is whether it is actually the de-branding of the packs – or a change in consumer attitudes – that will result in the behaviour changes that our government seeks.

However you define the issue at hand and whatever your stance on it – surely the best course of action is to make the right changes for the right people in the right way.

Loving the Jubilee fever, tea parties at the ready…

…and igniting the creativity in all of us. Things we like this week – Noble – looks like it came straight out of Boardwalk Empire. Delightfully classic and a thing of nostalgic beauty – if this is what underground looks like I think I’ll start collecting.