Over here in the UK, the powers that be are seriously considering new legislation to control the packaging design of cigarettes—a move intended to subvert the alluring brands of tobacco giants and make smoking less attractive.
Featured in ICON magazine earlier this month, London-based consultancy Build created these satirical yet serious visualisations of how a packet of 20's might look should the branding be stripped away. Looking like something out of Orwellian fiction, Build's austere redesign, entitled "Rethink", also offers up some interesting alternatives to the platitudinous "Smoking Kills" warnings; giving smokers some serious insights into how much time each pack smoked will rob them of, and making a feature of the terrifyingly long list of ingredients that go into each pack.
More pics and info on the Build blog.
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Comments
I get the point but...
These packs look really cool. They make me want to START smoking.
I'm a smoker and this packaging is definitely an attraction!
Before reading the article about how it's supposed to be a turn off, I thought it was a great idea just looking at the picture.
To me the design seems to have failed in terms of what the designer is trying to achieve.
Every smoker knows cigarettes are bad, they know what is in them, they know its killing them, but the kicker is that one cigarette doesn't kill you, so you keep puffing away until 50 year later when you get cancer. Thats why this wouldn't work for someone trying a cigarette for the first time either, they don't think they will smoke that long, and then boom, they are hooked for life.
If you are not a smoker, or aren't familiar with anti smoking government campaigns, which are a joke ( as the government makes too much money off taxing addicts to really want them to quit) I would suggest this NYT post:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/opinion/12iht-edlinstrom.1.18632161.html
http://zeitgeistandstuff.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/the-starbucks-isation-of-tobacco/
When I saw this design, I was kind of excited about this. It uses specific data to make sense of the situation when you are smoking. Though I am not a smoker, i guess it might work. who knows? test it...