Exhibit features lessons for today from retailing's past - Packaging the New, Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, New York, New York

Discount Store News, March 7, 1994 by Arthur Markowitz

To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the package is the product.

Of course, it really isn't so. The product still is the product, but the packaging performs a vital function -- it's the container that holds and protects the product while providing the information that helps to sell the item.

In modern times, the eight decades since World War I, packaging and its counterpart, product design, have become key elements in selling merchandising.

And that's why a new exhibition, "Packaging the New," at one of Manhattan's unheralded museums, the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design (2 East 91st Street), is a must-see for anyone in retailing.

The show highlights the works of such major American industrial designers as Richard Arbib, David Chapman, Donald Deskey, Henry Dreyfuss, Norman Bel Geddes, Raymond Lowey, Walter Dorwin Teague and Russel Wright, during a pivotal 50-year period, from the mid-'20s through the mid-'70s. Their design influence extended from packages for mundane laundry soap boxes (Desky) to then futuristic cars (Loewy), with the more common household products, receiving most of the show's attention.

The exhibit uses tableaux centered on themes like supermarket shopping to trace out the evolution of product and packaging designs -- and how the form and shape of an object and the print, colors and illustrations on boxes, cans and jars influenced the way consumers viewed and bought merchandise from toothpaste to tableware.

As with all good exhibits, the show has its lighter aspect, a fanciful flight of toaster designs, and a serious tone -- the use of design to let a product obsolesce to sell a newer version.

Letting a product grow obsolete as a means to promote "newness" has been viewed as a questionable way to generate sales. While this marketing approach has been a hallmark of the auto industry, package goods manufacturers have also resorted to this technique--to the benefit of retailers. It's worthwhile for retailers to get an overview of obsolescene marketing as it relates to the new consumer marketplace that places a premium on value.

The value of "Packaging the New" for retailers and manufacturers lies in its historical perspective--understanding packaging's past impact on consumers' purchasing of products -- and theh light it can cast on how new design imperatives like ergonomics can improve products and enhance marketing to make the goods we use more appealing, efficacious and safe.

When you go to the Cooper-Hewitt to see the exhibition through Aug. 14, bring your Smithsonian card. The museum is the New York branch of the Smithsonian.