Welcome to Wednesday's Weird Web Thievery, a collection of nonsense that we all get in out inboxes, made sense of; hopefully.

When it comes to designing packaging for foodstuffs there are clear rules which must be adhered to.
Ingredient lists, barcodes, manufacturers details and nutritional information and analysis.

One of the fundamentals however is the most obvious, communicating with your target audience.

For some companies this involves research, focus groups, trial products delivered to select markets pre launch and even powerpoint slideshows.

The asian market (please excuse my ignorance for not identifying the script) that produces this flavour of Doritos obviously did none of those actions, and perhaps just ran with a gut instinct. Whose gut we are unsure of.

The caption sums it up nicely.

Packaging is an artform, and when done correctly adds enormous value to a product.
There are many packaging websites I could have pulled up to steal some images off to illustrate my point, but coincidentally last night Haylee and I were discussing this very topic in relation to the stunning packaging job associated with the mind blowing 2006 Tool Album "10,000 Days".

Being essentially a digital product these days, marketeers need to understand the market and find ways to attract customers to physically buy the music product, rather than just download it (at a lesser quality) or worse still steal it.
The people in and behind Tool came up with these ingenious idea to sell their music - stereoscopic glasses built in.

This is 3D way before 3D was back in fashion.

The design of this package is very complex, and also one would presume very expensive compared to the traditional cd format. The external boxing is bespoke, and requires complex insertion of stereoscopic lenses.

When opened the viewer holds the glasses up to the eyes and views the double image, which magically transforms into a singular, 3D image.

This is brilliant. The imagery of Tool is very relevant and enhancing of their musical experience, as evidenced by the amount of detail and production in their music videos.
This image below does not in any way show the 3 dimensionality as it is a photo I have taken through just one of the lenses, but does give you an idea of the complexities that this project must of entailed.

For me personally this packaging has added immense value to my musical experience. It has been one of the few CD's I have bought over the last 7 years, infact I have not bought another since.

Some "facts" from Wikipedia about the Tool packaging:

Adam Jones is responsible for most of the band's artwork concepts. Their first album, Undertow, featured a ribcage sculpture by Jones on its cover and photos contributed by the band members. Later albums included artwork by collaborating artists: Ænima and Salival featured works by Cam de Leon; Lateralus and 10,000 Days were created with the help of Alex Grey. The releases garnered positive critical reception, with a music journalist of the Associated Press attributing to the band a reputation for innovative album packaging.

Both Ænima and 10,000 Days were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Recording Package, but while the former failed to win in 1997, the latter did win in 2007. As art director, Adam Jones created packaging for 10,000 Days that features a pair of stereoscopic lenses for viewing 3-D artwork and photos. Jones has been a lifelong fan of stereoscopic photography and expressed a desire for the packaging to be unique and to reflect the '70s artwork he appreciates.

Like alot of folks out there, most of my entertainment (both music and video) comes straight off the net via yooutube or the like so there is little need to own anything, I have access to more than I could ever consume. I will continue to support the concept of paying for music, the artists making it need a revenue stream, but unfortunately one of the ways of promoting themselves to sell more product also eliminates the need to buy the product. What a world we live in!