Monday, October 25, 2010

French designer reimagines the Coke bottle. Sexy? Hideous?


(click image) "Visionary" (his term) Jerome Olivet presents "Mystic," an experimental Coca-Cola bottle he calls "spiritual" and "supernatural" and "ambiguous" and "poetry." I call it "an unimaginative waste of plastic." I think the first Pepsi can from 1938 was a better design. But then, I'm a lowly copywriter who, in 7th grade metal shop, fashioned the ugliest candle holder in the history of humanity (pic available for media stories).
What do you call it?

22 Comments:

Anonymous Jaap Grolleman said...

I like it. But Coca Cola would lose too much brand recognition if they tried it. Perhaps something for a new taste when they launch it.

8:49 AM  
Anonymous ritakml said...

Hideous! I think the current design is good the way it is now.

8:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Think about the planet! just how bio-degradable are those bottles?

8:58 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

"Visionary artists" have no concept of how the real world works. They forget about the little things like each country has it's own rules and regulations on what is needed to be displayed on a product. For example, Canada requires an NFT (nutritional facts table), full ingredients list, and must be bilingual! This bottle design FAILS!

8:59 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hideous.it reminds of those horrid space-like football trainers. and 1996 raves. something like that. tacky.

9:03 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The dark brown bit looks like a dong.

9:05 AM  
Blogger RFB said...

I call it expensive. It may find a place in a futuristic sci-fi as a product placement.

9:29 AM  
Blogger Alpha Lim said...

"Unnecessary."

9:40 AM  
Blogger KåŠ√२भ said...

Hideous.. looks like a lamp..

10:20 AM  
Blogger KåŠ√२भ said...

hideous!! Looks like a lamp. Probably they can position it as the lamp of joy or something..

10:21 AM  
Anonymous -1-track-mind- said...

At first glance, a sleek, futuristic design but with primeval undercurrents.

A slow cascading flow of fiery lava, entrapping gas to form earth mother's cave hole and flaming lips.

10:50 AM  
Blogger copyranter said...

Also: the black space looks like a decaying tooth.

11:05 AM  
Anonymous Ann Nguyen said...

Looks like how they'd drink coke in the Space Station. And not in a good way. The fact that the designer called a plastic bottle "supernatural" and "spiritual" should be a sign.

11:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Dear lord...

12:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i'm not so negative about it. it has a sense of urgency and kind of compels you to touch it, reach out and take it from the fridge and buy buy buy, unlike the regular old comfy-jeans familiarity of regular coke cans/bottles.


although, as a longterm reader of copyranter, i am somewhat ashamed that this is what i chose to make my first post. please don't judge me.

1:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sure it may not be spiritual revival of jesus christ super coke, but it is different. A designer's wank with spacey spunk and all that, but fun in my view.

2:31 PM  
Anonymous Kee said...

I really kind of like it. It strikes me as a limited time cool collector-type design as yet and not a permanent one. It looks nostalgic and futuristic simultaneously. I don't know, I'm not in the business, but what I see is Coca-Cola has a long history, people collect it, and most of the regular packaging changes (and for most familiar products) they make are slight tweaks in the shape of the bottle, or the label. This is a more drastic leap ahead, so it instantly looks very different, but I also don't expect it to become their common look right now. If I saw this on the grocery shelf, I'd think I should hoard some so I can put them on eBay later for the collectors who missed it.

That said, when Pepsi changed their logo, it was instant barfo. This has more of a limited-time only appeal, artist's rendition, and a sort of an experimentation with the two contrasting plastics, which could be modified into a more familiar design appealing to consumers, as in the next step of their "everyday" design. I don't think Coca-Cola can do much to alienate people who are loyal to their product though, except change the formula.

2:42 PM  
Blogger MrPlywood said...

Looks like the guy had this shape in mind then decided to make it a "Coke" bottle. The design ignores any relationship with the Coke brand and/or logo - it might as well have been a Head & Shoulders shampoo bottle, or a quart of Quaker State, or a container of RoundUp. Now that 3d applications are becoming more accessible, looks like product design might follow the same path that graphic design took when "desktop publishing" hit the scene.

6:03 PM  
Blogger Black Phillip said...

It looks disturbingly organic.

7:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Coke is about fun. always has been, always will be.
no mysticism, spirituality, supernatural-ity and similar crap.
he completely misunderstood the brand.
did I mention it looks like someone sat on a lunch box and farted? no? well, it does.

4:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OMG! Can you say “clitoris”? “Earth mother's cave hole and flaming lips” indeed. Not reflective of the COKE brand, but it could finally get me to buy the stuff if just to lick the bottle.

10:14 PM  
Anonymous Dee said...

I LIKE IT!! Its Different and Id own at least 6 just because there odd.

9:34 PM  

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