history

Pottery
The ancient city of Ife produced ball-shaped pottery approximately dating to the thirteenth century. This illustrative ritual vessel used for the worship and veneration of the inner spiritual orí inú meaning the person venerates his or her "inner head”, a personal spirit that guides an individual's destiny. Buried in the ground, with an opening at the bottom, the ritual vessel would have served as a conduit through which food and beverages could be offered in devotion to the spirits of the departed ancestors. The image design functions as a visual reminder symbolising the bond of collaboration between the people and their rules.

1. Ife, Yoruba culture, Ife, ritual vessel. Terracotta. (13th century)

Printmaking
Printing is thought to have begun in China with the first wooden printing presses, invented in 305 BC, and movable clay type, in 1041. In 1200 tinplate iron was developed in Bohemia and printing took hold throughout Europe. (fig. 2)

The advent of printing in the late fourteenth century and its spread in the fifteenth century had an immeasurable democratizing effect on culture by allowing ideas and information to circulate across time, space and social boundaries. Pictures provided access to texts for those who could not read and enhanced meaning for those who could.

Reproduced images communicated technological, scientific, and geographical ideas and information more specifically than words, and whether displayed in public or viewed in private, provided visual referents that shared meaning among social groups. Andreas Vesalius: On the Fabric of the Human Body (fig. 3) is considered most influential medical publication of the 16th century. This designed book integrates more than 200 fine woodblock prints within the descriptive text, inaugurates the age of modern medical illustration.

2. The Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist book from Dunhuang, China, (868 A.D.) Block printing

3. De humani corporis fabrica (on the Fabric of the Human Body) (1543)

The emerging technology and communication in the 15th to 16th century with the historical significance of the printing press and affected packaging. The mass production of printed materials Johannes Gutenberg revolutionized publishing through his method of printing with movable type in which individual cast metal letters could be assembled, disassembled, and reused to convey any text.

5. The invention of printing

The use of billboards and "broadsides" announcements posted on sides of buildings to post laws and government decrees-marked the first forms of advertising (fig. 6). Later advertising was a vehicle to depict early packaging design. In early British newspapers, vendors posted or "advertised" products such as medicine bottles with printed labels and illustrated tobacco wrappers. Packaging design evolved with the idea that the visual experience provided by the package was a critical component to sales.

6. A London Street Scene John Orlando Parry (1835)

Lithography
The principle of lithography was a significant milestone in the history of packaging design and was advanced by the developments of mass production. Since everything from cardboard boxes, wooden crates, bottles, and tins had a paper label, the lithographic process of printing labels was one of the notable developments of the time. Until then every label or wrapper was printed by hand with wooden presses on handmade paper. By the mid-1800s multiple-coloured designs could be reproduced in large quantities. Wallpaper print techniques inspired by the current art period influenced the design of labels, boxes, and tins.

Photomechanical printing in Colour
In the 1890s, after decades of experimentation, colour and photography came together in the form of photomechanical printing in colour. The constituent hues of the original to be reproduced were separated by means of colour filters (red for cyan, green for magenta, and blue for yellow). A combination of three colours could produce an acceptable colour image. Black was sometimes added to produce what would be called CMYK today but printing in three colours remained the norm for the first few decades of the 20th century. Such methods of colour printing were applied to lithography a little later than to relief printing.

7. The Sparling Cut Male, Vol.1, No. 6, (1926)

As printing technologies have developed and full colour printing has become more accessible and cost-effective, there has been growing tendency for more and more design elements to be added. Retail shelves have become cluttered with bright colours and graphic ‘noise’ as different brands vie for attention. Simpler designs can thus be more effective at grabbing consumer attention. Less is more definitely more.

By the middle of the 20th century, it was common to see brands moving towards more realistic depictions in their illustrations, to finally a shift towards the use of photography. By the 1950s offset printing allowed the reproduction of photos on packaging, being then the most popular method of commercial printing.

So, “perfection” was finally achieved- companies soon had access to various technologies that allowed for the most realistic portrayal possible of any images on packaging of all kinds- marking the end of the use of illustrations in this medium. Although, a few decades later there was a clear movement of brands that had upgraded to photography moving back to illustration and even new brands, which could use photography, resorted directly to illustrations.

This was the case of the canned vegetables brand Del Monte. Founded in 1886, the brand went through all of these developments in packaging. Its first cans, naturally, showed illustrations of its products (fig. 8) and until the middle of the 20th century they started to feature photographs (fig. 9). Now it is back to showing illustrations (fig. 10).