When I began my design journey, I was happy to work on whatever was handed to me. I was young and clueless and just wanted a foot in the door. But, as I trudged along through trifold brochures and quarter-page magazine ads, I soon desired more. My first packaging project was that “more,” and my proverbial engine was revved. Beverage packaging quickly became a favorite. Cans, bottles, cartons, it offered it all. Tangible objects, in three dimensions, that I could hold and turn in my hands. Something I could see in a store, on a shelf, and humbly proclaim to everyone in earshot,
Check this shit out, I designed this!
Every project felt new and exciting, and I was loving it.
But there was a dark side to the packaging game. With the highs of knowing there were literally thousands, nay, millions of people who were not only seeing, but interacting with my “art,” so, too, came the lows.
I was on a random stroll on a random day in a random place, when something caught my eye. In the gutter across the street was something familiar, like an old friend, but different. It was grotesque. Crumpled and disfigured; folded, stained, and torn. Sunbleached and wrinkled like a relic from a better time. I reached down and picked it up, turned it in my hand. It was one of mine.
“How could they?” I wondered. How could someone be so obtuse? To flippantly toss aside something I had put so much love, and sweat, and detail into? Not to mention the fact that they were littering! But the nerve to take such a personal shot at me. It was beyond comprehension.
It was a bitter pill to swallow: the realization that all of the packaging that I designed, or ever would design, would be thrown away. My whole professional existence was to be consumed and tossed to the side. But was I discouraged? Nope, I was inspired. To think of the journey that piece of “trash” had been on, and the multiple hands it had passed through, the eyes that had gazed upon it. I was more excited about packaging design than ever.
I turned and looked back across the street to where my wife was ever so patiently waiting out my self-indulgent detour and proudly proclaimed, “Check this shit out, I designed this!”
