Design: Vignelli exhibition, Rochester, NY. Packaging Design

View of the "Design: Vignelli" exhibition, Benetton Galleries, Vignelli Center for Design Studies, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, United States. The "Design: Vignelli" exhibition opened in 2010 at the Vignelli Center for Design Studies, which is also home to their entire professional archives. The exhibition mirrors the "Design: Vignelli" exhibition which toured nine countries between 1989-1993. As with the previous iteration, Lella Vignelli and Massimo Vignelli designed the displays, wrote the descriptive text, and curated the artifacts for the exhibition. It is the last exhibition designed by the Vignellis that is still open to the public. Pictured: Bloomingdale's (1972), Heller (1968), Saks Fifth Avenue (1974), Bullocks (1987), and Fratelli Rosetti (1984)

Text from design: Vignelli exhibition label:
Bullocks, packaging program, USA, 1987.
We used the logo as a continuous pattern throughout the whole packaging program from wrapping paper to boxes and shopping bags.

Saks Fifth Avenue, Packaging Program, USA, 1974.
We chose two colors for the whole packaging program, beige for women and gray for men, and delegate the identification to a hanging tag, the quintessential garment tag.

Heller, Packaging Program, New York, 1968.
The boxes were intended to identify the name with a new brand of design-conscious products at the point of sale. We decided to keep the name ‘Heller” the same size regardless of the dimensions of the box, cropping when necessary. The orange color of the type on plain corrugated board became so much a banner of what the company stood for that even when the name was shortened and transformed by the size of the box, it maintained its strong identity.

Fratelli Rosetti, Packaging Program, Italy, 1984.
This packaging program is part of a comprehensive program, from logo to packaging, from catalogs to signage. We were intrigued by the pattern established by the repetition of the Company logo and we used it throughout the program.

Bloomingdale’s, Graphic and Packaging Program, New York, 1972.
The concept we came up with for Bloomingdale’s packaging program was that of portraying and recollecting the shopping experience particular to this extraordinary department store. Boxes of different solid colors are distribute throughout the areas of the store. Only an elastic band carries the store name. The box is identified as it leaves the store, but once at home, the band gets discarded and the box can be used again as a plain beautiful container for storage.

The shopping bags are divided into two categories: permanent and temporary. The first, plain with the store name, relates to the graphic program; the second differs from the program as much as possible, portraying the fashions and suggesting a sense of change, or else promoting the store’s special programs. We call this approach “identification without branding.”