Fractal Design Painter – Natural Media Painting Software
Mark Zimmer’s (Painter’s programmer) Blog. Amusing reflections and gory details on the paint can project.
Backstory
My design firm, Rucker Huggins, wanted to present 5 different packaging solutions for our new client, a brilliant team of software programmers who had managed to emulate the behavior of every imaginable artistic tool – watercolors, markers, oil paints, to name a few. They were ready to package it up and called it Painter. We create a presentation of packaging ideas, from cheap to pricy, standard to unusual. We showed 3 variations on a standard cardboard box, a wooden cigar box we sourced, and last minute, Rucker, of Rucker Huggins, picked up an actual paint can for fun. We saved our favorite, the cigar box, for last and hyped it heavily. But they passed it around like a hot potato – “we’ll get sued for splinters”. Instead, they fell in love with the paint can, and like a pit bull mucked onto a tire, they wouldn’t let it go.
What could go wrong?
The house paint can is an eye-rolling pun. We hadn’t put a moment’s thought into using it.
The floppies did fit inside the can, but any normal manual didn’t.
Strategies to avoid what could go wrong.
We decided to embrace the can – we justified it as a classic way to store art supplies. It became our super-model. We rendered the can at every opportunity showing off all of the software’s painting tools.
We focused on making the packaging beautiful and serious, we had to reinforce the product, not the pun.
The manual probably needed to be re-written to be way less wordy.
What went right?
The cost of the can was less than half the cost of the cheapest cardboard boxes.
Shipping weight was lighter.
The packaging stood out from the crowd of standard boxes. In fact, it didn’t fit on the shelves so it got a place of its own in the stores.
The brand name was constantly reinforced – by the packaging and the paint can as subject matter. Everything pointed to the name of the product – Painter.
The manual’s final can-fitting form factor turned out to be better than the standard 9×6. The technical writers got on board and tightened up the copy so we could design an efficient, skinny manual. The writing was tight and digestible. You could prop the booklet up behind your keyboard for reference – hardly moving your eyes away from the screen.
The poster shipped without folds in the naturally sturdy round can. The poster’s unique shape (tall and thin) caused it to be put up in places where standard square posters wouldn’t fit – everyone seemed to have a spot on their door, or between windows. Being elegant and understated it was put up on the wall as art, not advertising.
It survived for a decade and people still keep their Painter cans to store art supplies.
Notes to self
If you are a designer and you want to present options to the client, make sure you are willing to work with all of the options you present.
Get lucky and find clients with a sense of humor and adventure.
Embrace the wacky idea.
- Everyone will have more fun.
- You will actually enjoy finding creative solutions to roadblocks.
- It will be memorable.