(almost) always thinking

perhaps someone needs a hand with their packaging design?

18 October, 2011 at 3:23 pm 1 comment

Take a look at these handcreams (collected from around my house).  Which is the odd one out?

It’s the Dove, front right.  Because it’s not actually a handcream.

I’ve been using it for the last couple of nights and had gone from thinking that it was a funny consistency, to thinking it didn’t smell like other handcreams, to absentmindedly looking closer at the packaging…and realising rather belatedly that it wasn’t a handcream at all and I’d been merrily rubbing hair conditioner into my hands.

But most of the blame for my oversight has to lie with the packaging designers.  It looks like a handcream, it’s made by people who make handcreams…the fact that it says ‘hair’ at the very bottom of the label in a tiny font isn’t really enough to override our internal computer’s (see Blink) recognition and categorisation process.

The slightly worrying thing is that I can’t imagine why I’d ever knowingly buy a small tube of Dove hair conditioner…so whoever stacked it on the Superdrug ‘hand care’ shelf must have made the same mistake too.

Entry filed under: design, packaging. Tags: Dove, handcream, typography.