I bought this tankbook at Magma yesterday. Interesting thing. Cigarettes are such nasty and disagreeable things (especially now all the smokers have been forced outside where you can't avoid them) but all the ephemera and packaging is so good. It's one of the iconic highly-designable shapes like the 12-inch record sleeve. I guess it's good because it's relatively cheap, simple and easy to change (some of it at least), it's thoroughly tested in the real world, millions of times a day and the design clearly matters; it has a significant impact on the horrible business of selling the things. Things that really matter to an industry tend to get better.
Tank have got the fetishistic aspects right, the little bits of fiddling you want to do; including the gold strip to remove the cellophane and the foil inside.
The book itself is a little disappointing when you get it out, but I guess they've got to save money somewhere. It's perfectly readable though, which is the important thing.
I like this idea a lot. There's nothing more terrifying than being stuck somewhere with nothing to read so having something with you all the time is a nice backstop. And, since the cigarette pack form is so nicely evolved it's good to see it being used as a force for good. It makes you wonder why other things haven't evolved towards the cigarette pack shape.
Would CD cases or minidisc packs have been more popular if they'd been more like cigarette packs? Could someone learn from the sociability of pack-sharing. Sweets manufacturers maybe? MP3 players have gotten too small to be cigarette-pack substitutes. Maybe they should get bigger again, but have a hard core around a softer exterior. It's not just the shape and size it's also the malleability. I guess that's what we're doing when we put things in MP3 cases. Phones are the obvious parallel, but is there a phone that's very ciggy-pack-like? Not sure.
It's also about what seems natural and right in pockets, they presumably co-evolved with cigarettes. I love pockets. Anyway.
"There's nothing more terrifying than being stuck somewhere with nothing to read."
Amen, brother.
Posted by: Mark McGuinness | January 06, 2008 at 04:39 PM
Somewhere, probably in a box at the back of a cupboard, I have a cassette single by the band Therapy? from sometime in the mid nineties I guess when:
a) singles came on tapes
b) people liked Therapy?
Anyway, the gimmick was that it was shaped like a cigarette box. I believe there were even 'cigarette card' style photos of the band.
Rather than fitting just 4 songs in a cigarette box, we can now fit thousands in there with room to spare for cigarettes...
Posted by: John V Willshire | January 06, 2008 at 06:17 PM
Damn - They look great, and I' do that terribly male thing of buying two, one to read and open and marvel over and one to save in it's virgin state. I never understand why everyone who sells doesn't embrace this idea.
Simon James x
Posted by: Simon James | January 06, 2008 at 08:57 PM
I'm still not smoking. 3 weeks, 1 day.
Posted by: The Kaiser | January 07, 2008 at 07:54 AM
I was thinking the same thing as John V: Cassette singles often used to be packaged in faux cigarette pack style. I think I had that very Therapy? single too (Stories, was it? Also came with cigarette cards featuring photos of the band in silly costumes), although the one that was popping up in my mind whilst reading your post was from Pearl Jam.
There was never anything nice about cassette singles, other than the fact that record shop bargain bins used to be full of them for 19p apiece … I suppose that doing interesting things with the packaging was an essential added-value attempt.
Posted by: Tony | January 07, 2008 at 12:25 PM
I like pockets too. They used to be detached from clothing - this was a drawstring bag called a poke...
I wonder if Poke (the agency) know that...
I imagine they do.
Posted by: Charlie Gower | January 07, 2008 at 05:12 PM
Thanks for that Russell. I'm visiting our new office for the first time tomorrow, and I've just looked and Magma is right around the corner on Clerkenwell Road! I think I'm going to pop in and get me one of those!
I loved your talk at Widgety Goodness by the way...
~biff~
Posted by: Biff | January 07, 2008 at 05:18 PM
That's good. And CD packaging - the jewel box specifically - is surely amongst the most hateful things ever deployed on the general public. Compared to what wonderful things you can really do with packaging CDs, it says dreadful things about the record industry and public acceptance of it. (Personally, I only keep CDs if they have good packaging - the rest are ripped and chucked/sold.) But the releases on Rune Grammofon, Touch, Tzadik, Winter & Winter, Digitalis, Room40 etc. all live on. It probably would've made a bit of difference to CDs if they'd been packaged more creatively on a grand scale (as per vinyl) - but more positively, it also shows that those creating beautifully rich physical objects as a music experience will continue to have business well into the future (as per books etc.) Losing the jewel box is just natural evolution, hastened by digital music, but the physicality of music experiences lives on.
Posted by: Dan Hill | January 08, 2008 at 01:54 AM
These are awesome, I wonder if I can find them in the US.
(BTW your TrackBack seems to not be working it gives "1Trackback pings and Comments must use HTTP POST")
Posted by: Reese | January 08, 2008 at 06:33 AM
Some sweets do have a similar style of pack.
Posted by: Rob Mortimer | January 09, 2008 at 12:41 PM