Sunday Morning Designer: October 2010

It’s been a mighty busy couple of days...couple of weeks. David Sedaris, Nuit Blanche, St. Lawrence Market and all kinds of autumn Toronto fun. I have a couple Fall thematic blogs in the work but while cruising my design weeklies I came across a blip on JOOZE. Yup, sound it out, think of younger years, lunch boxes and sticky puddles on your desk. Juice boxes are or should I say were an integral part of our midday rituals.

Photo Credit:
http://www.lostateminor.com/2010/09/27/jooze-juice-cartons/

Portable, virtually indestructible and vibrantly branded, juice boxes are all about function. That was until I set my eyes on Yunyeen Yang’s Jooze boxes. An Australian design student, these fruity packages conceptions were inspired from a school project. These boxes beckon thirsty tikes with bold colour, fruity depictions on carefully crafted crescents in which to spike a coordinating straw. While my mom was more in favour of the reusable leaky beverage containers in my lunch box, Jooze quenched my design thirst. I did a quick search on jucie boxes in general in what I expected to be a one note blog entry but was thrilled to discover some other goodies to share.

http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Juice-Box.html

FYI: A juice box is recognized as an individual-sized container, whose volume typically holds 4-32 oz of liquid and is accompanied by a straw. A juice box is an aseptic container, meaning it is manufactured and then filled in sterile conditions. It does not require refrigeration or preservatives to remain germ free, a patent design by the Sweed Ruben Rausing in 1963. The conception stemmed from the need to create a more travel friendly container for milk, smaller and less cumbersome than a metal canister. He developed a brick-shaped box coined Tetra Brik, rectangular in shape allowing for stackability and more compact transport. He also developed the sterile conditions for the filling process – aseptic. It wasn’t until the 80s that this design migrated to North America and consumed 20% of the market by ’86.

Juice is a bit of a fickle drink as its ingredients are predominately artificial flavours and tons of sugar. Added vitamins like C and D were introduced in the 90s to bring a healthy dose of nutrition to these fruity drinks. The barrage of health conscious trends in the past 10 years has also promoted some additional changes to drink content. Fewer calories, natural flavour and a variety of new ingredients are packaged into these little bricks including soy and other non-dairy bevies, all natural ingredients and portable protein punches. Not just for youth lunches, these mature off springs offer a variety of drink options for kids of all ages.

I won’t get too much more in depth with the history and manufacturing of juice boxes, madehow.com has a very comprehensive synopsis. Instead I offer up a delicious selection of mod boxes which can not but help entice a thirst for drink and design.