Design Decisions

This was a great lecture when it comes to easability of use and to attempt to keep things as simple as possible. My father, who is a big wine drinker, always gave me a trick to buy wines. He said the prettier the label and the more complex the label the worse the wine is going to be. Now that I am of age I completely agree with him to a certain extent. I am the one who goes for the pretty labels, the colorful ones, and I always get disappointed. It is very true that when it comes to certain thing the simpler the better. A perfect example is the "infuriating packing" that they use in electronics. While this packaging is not simple in any way it is true that this package serves a very important function and that function is to prevent theft of these normally expensive items. In this case it is important to not have a simple and easy package. If companies did not use this they could lose millions in lost and stolen goods. I recently started taking commit lozenges to quit smoking and one thing that completely irritates me about this package is that the box size is way too big for the amount of product inside. I feel like by making a package this fits their product snuggly they could save millions of dollars just on the paperboard that is used. You have 3 little plastic tubes in a paperboard box that could easily fit 4. And then when you go to the store the items are constantly stolen out of these boxes because you are used to having so much jiggle room. All in all though I feel like simple is always better but it some cases it is too much of a necessity to be complicated to save you money.

Appeal and Fashion

This is such an interesting lecture due to the idea that packages have changed so immensley throughout history. Take for example coca cola and how well it has evolved with changing times and changing markets. For instance look at the history of bottling at coca cola on the link below. It is insane to see all the changes that the bottles have gone through throughout its history and this is strictly because as times change so does the package to remain appealing to the mass media. If you want to become a successful packager you need to pay attention to the many things around you and most important you need to pay attention to the trends that are surrounding you.

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/historybottling.html

Like many others I too found the baby idea quite interesting. All these supposed preconceived notions are all taught to you in same way shape or form. I also found the male and female attractiveness to stay along the same lines as all stereotypes. Nothing in any way surprised me by men liking woman A and woman liking male C. When you are going to market a product you need to find your A typical attractive person because the more appealing the person selling your product is the more successful your product will be. That is why when something "sexy" comes on television in the US people automatically pay attention and next thing you know that is what everyone is talking about. A "sexy" commercial on the Super Bowl and people are talking about your product for weeks. Sex sells and the more fashionable and appealing you can market the better off your product will do.

Cognition

As entertaining and interesting some of the cognition aspects were such as Von restorff Effect, serial position effect, and progressive discolure were there are actually two things that I really wanted to discuss. It was stated that having friends over seas that come to the US buy some of the most absurd things that you never knew existed and I find this to be completely correct. Having many friends from overseas and being overseas myself I find that I buy things that have the more creative labels or have the most obscure pictures and My friends that come over to the US do the exact same things. My friend Francesca buys by far the weirdest things when she come over here for the 2 weeks every summer. I am not an adventurour person when it comes to trying new things but I always try things that she buys simply out of curiosity and sometimes it is amazing and sometimes it is a complete failure but I always look forward to those two weeks and trying new things that I would never have the courage to by on my own. The other idea that I found fascinating and had never thought about until listening to this lecture was the idea of the exposure effect. I can not even count the amount of times I have listened to the radio and heard a new song and completely had no emotion towards it or I thought it was absolutely horrific and yet when i hear it the next time it begins to grow and then after hearing it 8 or 9 times its my favorite song and i want to go buy the CD or download it. But then once the song is downloaded I get sick of listening to it and it become just another song that I have in my playlist. And the Geico commercials are insanely irritating. Cognition and memory are amazing things. I know that there are products that I had as a child that went away and if I see them is some specialty story I force myself to get it because it has tied into a good past memory. I also was amazed but the chunks of memory and the whole 7 seconds for 3 chunks and 70 seconds for 1 chunk that is something that personally to myself I have never thought about when it comes to memory but then trying to remember those 5 chunks was so difficult but remembering door was so simple. Memory is a wonderful yet crazy thing and cognition is so important when it comes to packaging materials.

Human Perception

After watching the lecture on human perception I was intrigued by all the small things we perceieve and don't know that we are doing it. The human psychi is a very interesting concept to think about. For example even the most basic concept of top down bottom up processing seemed so interesting to me because in general I do not walk into a grocery store and use bottom up porcessing very often but when it is broken down I do it more than I would have ever imagined. My cart is always full of things that I had an idea I wanted but only after time do I get it. I also found it interesting to know that there are 53 ways of perception. Starting with simply 3D projections and how much goes into even the simplest of drawings. Things like alignment do not seem overy important until you break it down to a science. The same goes to many of the things discussed in the lecture. Highlighting was one of the things that really caught my attention because I am a huge highlighter. I always highlight more than 10% of anything I read and or write but it does make sense that that forces you to lose the importance of the highlighting to begin with. It was also interesting to me to see the different ways in which you can highlight, by using italics or bold and even when it comes down to picking a color to highlight with. I also found the 5 hat racks particularly appealing when it comes to perception. It to me was things I did not really think about but now after hearing them in detail it is so important to pay attention to these things. The Gutenberg Diagram was also something that shocked me. The example of the book made the idea of the Gutenberg diagram so apparent. After taking some upper level classes the idea oof icons is also very important. The perfect example being in Hazmat packaging where icons can mean life or death. All in all perception is key when it comes to packaging. It is important to look at everything and know what people are looking at when they are going to buy your product. Make sure it nicely done without being overdone.

What I expect to learn in 320

320 is a class that in general seems to be one of those you do not know quite what to expect. After reading up and going through the syllabus, blog requirements, and the mintelcase study you begin to slowly piece things together slowly but surely. So as for what I expect to learn in 320 is actually quite simple. I want to take my knowledge from all my previous packaging classes. Taking the science aspects of it and even some of the graphics aspects and truly break it down for what it is. In 320 I believe my goal is to come to an understanding as to why certain packages are done in the colors they are done in. To see why a package is packaged in glass or plastic or metal or paper. To see why it was so important to use lime green instead of hunter green. I believe 320 will teach my about the supposed psychology behing picking one design over another or one color over another. To truly teach why a package location in the grocery store can make or break your product. To see why just by having brand recognition like coca cola red can make your company last centuries instead of a decade. Just looking ahead at some of the lectures truly shows you what we are expected to learn in this class. The ideas of human perception, cognition, apeal and fashion (this seems important to me because in order to have a successful package you need to make sure that you are keeping up with the trends of what is going on around you), space and shape utility, psychology behind your decisions, type and symbols, and pictures used are all important things you need to think about. Before I got into this major I strictly looked at everything in a store as a porduct I needed. It is amazing after taking classes to know how many man hours went into choosing something that seems so frivolous like what kind of lettering you used. So when it comes to what I expect to learn from this class it is to learn the basic aspect of all successful packages and that is how it looks on the outside is what makes your package be picked over the one sitting right next to it on the shelf.