JAPAN: REFRESHING DRINKS
author: Jana Nikolić
photographs: Irena Milenković
January 2007.

translation into English: Danijela Tomazović
November 2009

Refreshing drinks are not as refreshing any place else! They are always new, each season brings some special, limited series or a new flavor. The packages are so beautiful that I think I would choose them as accessories, in tone with a skirt or as an opposition with a coat. Fauchon peach tea with scarf, Calpis Water with dotted bag. Vitamin Water when I remember New York, Co-Up seemingly reminds of Cocta.

Even Coca Cola's commercial packages have some specific tone; they are more personal and more distinctive than the ones we are used to. Look at those Fantas! They don't carry the bitterness of many corrections and trade-offs made with the client, although the Japanese designer underwent absolutely the same process and had to deal with the same book of standards. The shape of the bottle itself is confusingly entertaining, reminds of those balloons tied into knots and turned into different creatures.

Essentially the bottles are very similar to the ones in our market, but “dressed” into a label completely like this, they are more complete units and look particularly attractive if they are placed in the group with products from the same line.

The thing we do not see here are water packages that more clearly stand out, are clearly profiled, they go for ice freshness achieved with ultramarine color of the plastic bottle, or for safe and cold pharmacy note achieved with the combination of atypical metal bottle and simple design in two flat colors. Regular waters are in most cases the combination of transparency, white and intense blue shades, and aromatized waters are completely different – the color and soft illustrations are added so these packages start to look like fragranced distilled waters for ironing.

The teas often have some vintage touch in design, and point out attributes such as the first, the best and healthy. Calligraphy is closer to the original lettering; those are not modern sans serif fonts. While other drinks emphasize a few well thought words which distinctively represent the drink in the front of us, the teas often have much more text, talk about ingredients, quality, safety and tradition behind the drink.

In the end, just as only a few old labels remained in our shelves, such as the one for plum brandy written by Petricic, Japanese also have retro labels which make them laugh and delight them. These two, for non-alcoholic beer and non-alcoholic wine cause the similar reaction as our reaction to the old packages for “Little boy” and “Little girl” chocolates. Japanese opened a large store with retro products in their original packages, and here the billboards representing new packages of Yugoslavian chocolates came out. It seems that only large markets can support long-term funding of memories.

Theme: JAPAN
Dried Ocean in a Colorful Bag
Tokyo Design Week 2006