Syrup and Lemons

The most famous design stories of our century weren’t born for museum walls, but for retail shelves (and showroom floors). Much can be learned from examining two famous design icons—one great success and one magnificent failure. The iconic and unforgettable Coca-Cola bottle and the unfortunate Ford Edsel have become symbols of the best and worst in American business.

Pop artist Andy Warhol’s attraction to the Coca-Cola bottle as a subject responds to its cultural implications. He likes the notion that the president drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and you drink Coke. The bum on the corner gets the same Coke as the rich man. The recognizable bottle transcends class, nationality, race, and sex. Warhol’s work may have launched Campbell’s soup from supermarket shelf to object of popular iconography, but the Coca-Cola bottle was already of heroic scale. It’s an icon.

In fact, it’s an icon that launched an icon (not to mention Warhol himself). Many credit Coca-Cola’s marketing campaign in the 1930’s to the popularity of Santa Claus and American holiday consumerism. Coke’s red signature partnered with the jolly red-nosed legend on countless posters and billboards. In magazine and on television the duo were inspiring uplifted holiday spirits across the country.

Warhol wasn’t the first artist to offer cultural commentary on the signature bottle. Robert Rouschenberg’s sculpture Coca-Cola Plan created in 1958 featured the bottle, his artistic contribution is that of neo-dadism and shares the qualities of forerunner Marcel Duschamp—the famous urinal and found-object artist. Ordinary object becomes art; the bum becomes a rich man.

Prolific industrial designer Raymond Loewy writes about the psychology and sensory experience as applied to product design and glorified the Coke bottle, which he considered to be the most perfectly designed package in the world. Delightful in hand, its body offers a cozy comfort which he compares to a man and his caressing grip of a brandy snifter glass, cupped lovingly, “firmly pressing the stem against the sensitive inner part of his forked and outstretched middle fingers.” When given the opportunity to redesign the famous bottle in 1954 his slenderized rendition mirrored the cultural effect that moderness and streamlining was having on the female form. Noting the anthropomorphic qualities of the product design, thin waist with rounder hips, it was an apt adjustment. The wider original “hobble-skirt” design introduced in 1916 was inspired by the short-lived popularity of the women’s shapely garment. Apt also was Loewy’s conclusion to only slightly modify the design. While the Coca-Cola bottle has had many renditions over the years, its evolution was a progressively slow march, each new design featuring only a minor variant. Over the period of ten years the iconic bottle was able to change and yet remain recognizable and beloved to the consumer.

This concept was one that Loewy had written about. His practical approach to advancing design is akin to the lesson of the tortoise and hare—slow and steady wins the race. With any design object, not singularly the iconic Coca-Cola bottle, he propagates that consumer’s choices are driven by two opposing factors: attraction to the new and resistance to the unfamiliar.

In today’s ever competitive consumer environment Loewy’s revelation would have earned him impressive compensation and the title of “branding guru.” Still relevant, it’s an idea that’s echoed across all aspects of a brand. From printed material, new media, and product design, right down to pixels of a branded email signature, familiarity is fed to the consumer. The bottle shape remains an iconic aspect of the Coca-Cola brand even though it’s no longer prominently used. The most recognizable glass bottled products of today, perhaps the Perrier and Absolut bottles, use repetition to encourage consumer familiarity. In advertising and online the bottle shape is featured over and over, in hopes that at decision time a consumer will choose it over a less recognizable competitor. Attraction to the new is achieved every few years with a pseudo-innovative new product launch or rebranding campaign.

The idea of model changes may have started in the automobile industry. Since machinery wore out every few years, it was conceivable that design revisions accompany the replacement parts. New features encouraged obsolescence of old models, and prompted new purchases. Critics of automotive styling, like Raymond Loewy, were skeptical of the new looks rolling off assembly lines. In a 1955 speech Loewy called the new designs “gaudy merchandise,” and “jukeboxes on wheels,” believing the tailfins and other stylized features to be tasteless and superfluous. His words were not being heeded, as development was already underway for a monumental commercial flop—the Ford Esdel. Far from Coke’s success is the Edsel and its sad failure. To Loewy, who authored Never Leave Well Enough Alone advocating model changes, automobiles in the 1950’s had simply taken the idea of styling too far. Design had to be substantiated by reason—functional, economical, or even sensory, like the feel of a chilled Coke bottle snugly in hand. Today’s marketers look to the Edsel launch as how not to launch a product. There are many reasons credited for the Edsel’s failure, the strange name (for Henry Ford’s son) among them. Others include its confusingly high price point and the onset of a recession during its launch. The most devastating criticism, though, applied to its design. One critic was quoted as saying “it looks like an Oldsmobile sucking on a lemon.” The term “lemon” has since been synonymous with bad cars.

Not everyone was critical of the Edsel styling, and many in the automotive industry believed it to be the best looking car built by Ford in 1958. The former design director of GM David Holls said “I thought it was a very imaginative car, not laughable at all. It was controversial, brash. But, you couldn’t run with the flock or you wouldn’t have anything.” The car was different—whether over-styled or rightly styled, it was new.

The Coca-Cola bottle, in fact, was born of this “different is good” mantra. It’s not surprising that Raymond Loewy found the shape of the bottle so perfectly suited to the hand—the bottle was designed to do just that. In the early years of Coke’s history carbonated drinks were uniformly presented in the same 8-ounce glass container, and in hot summer months grocers would put them all together in a tub of ice. Labels would get wet and fall off, and even Coca-Cola became a mystery cola. The bottle needed not only a distinguishable shape—one that could be identified by feel—but also a permanent label. So, a new shape was revealed, and the signature “Coca-Cola” scrawl was integrated into the glass design.

GM’s design director David Holls had a point, the Ford Edsel was unique. The failure of the car can’t be blamed on styling alone—there are many modern examples of commercially successful but shoddy designs. Perhaps the lesson to be learned from Coca-Cola’s example is that innovation should be driven by need. Coke’s unique bottle shape was responsive to a legitimate design challenge. The Ford Edsel was nonessential. It was created to fill a perceived void between affordable Ford and the higher priced Mercury, with differentiation resting solely on the shoulders of design. Over-the-top styling was Ford’s version of an expensive suit.

Shortly after the Edsel’s infamous flop Ralph Nader, a consumer advocate, environmentalist, and later presidential candidate, wrote a critique of automobile design in a 1965 article Unsafe at Any Speed. He scolded designers and their superficial annual model changes, citing a lack of concern for safety and engineering. Nader’s article is important as it raises awareness and shines a spotlight on vehicle safety, but he unfairly pegs design as a problem. In Nader’s scenario cars wouldn’t need to change. But in reality, model changes encourage constant innovation, and design can play a role, too. Each year safer vehicle components are designed, each year the roads are a safer place to be. (Imagine if we still drove seatbelt-less Ford Edsels?) His criticism was a warning, directing attention to the designer’s important role and consequences. While a beverage bottle design may be insignificant in terms of safety, the designer’s touches on a car can affect life and death in an accident. Simply, good looks aren’t a designer’s only responsibility.

Even when harsh, design criticism can be advocacy. Think about it. Design is credited for the success of the Coke bottle and attributed to the Edsel’s failure. Design has become synonymous with branding, and its pace of change or perseverance drives a product’s longevity in the market. Design is blamed—not engineering or management—for safety flaws in vehicles. Expressed through criticism these notions point to a singular important idea: a designer’s role is important.