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Square redesign of the Coke bottle
- antirez 17y agoCool, btw, I wonder what was the point of the latest change to the coke (and not only) can redesign. Now the diameter is smaller but the can is higher. Just marketing to make it slim? (while it will make you fat...).
- Zev 17y agoI wonder how irritating it would be to actually use that bottle to drink out of. One of the reasons that I tend to avoid Fiji water is because of the shape of the bottle (although, the environmental impact of the bottle and high price per bottle come ahead of the shape).
- swombat 17y agoAin't gonna happen. The shape of the Coke bottle is one of their key recognisable brands - to the point where they've sued people over it. Would probably have been better to target a different soft drink, like Pepsi, Sprite, Seven Up, or Fanta, and go from there.
- blogimus 17y agoWhat about all the generic containers for coke, such as the 12 oz can or the 2 liter bottle? They're the same as most of the other mainstream soft drinks, at least in the USA.
- steveklabnik 17y agoThey've started making 2 liter bottles in that same shape, too.
- stcredzero 17y agoWould probably have been better to target a different soft drink, like Pepsi, Sprite, Seven Up, or Fanta, and go from there. Branding is so amorphous for everything past Sprite, it would be a non-issue. When I think of Fanta, I now think of Spice Girls wannabes.
- mos1 17y agoNobody would link or discuss a student's conceptual redesign of a Fanta bottle.
- eam 17y agoLooks pretty awesome, but I would think it would feel weird holding due to the edges. I would make the middle part of it a bit rounder for better grip and hold.
- duck 17y ago100 zillion car cup holders would be useless. You could argue they are useless now I guess since they never seem to hold any thing I put in them now though.
- mcav 17y agoIt'd be fine as long as the maximum width of the bottle isn't wider than traditional bottles. Cupholders were designed to handle small variations in bottle width.
- ugh 17y agoWhat is it with Americans and cup holders? :)
- mhb 17y agoIt's a manifestation of the current mania to constantly be hydrated.
- frederickcook 17y agoWhich Coke created, if I remember correctly. Without a constant stream of sugar-water, there is no way I'll be able to keep up my hip, high-paced lifestyle!
- stcredzero 17y agoIt's just that we haven't devolved quite enough yet for the feeder bags.
- defen 17y agoTo make women think cars are safer: “…what was the key element of safety when you were a child? It was that your mother fed you, and there was warm liquid. That’s why cup holders are absolutely crucial for safety. If there is a car that has no cup holder, it is not safe. If I can put my coffee there, if I can have my food, if everything is round, if it’s soft, and if I’m high, then I feel safe. It’s amazing that intelligent, educated women will look at a car and the first thing they will look at is how many cup holders it has.” http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the-psychology-of-cupholders/ http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/the-psychology-of-cupholder...
- azm 17y ago<rant> Can we please, please, please stop trying to redesign everything under the sun, especially in the name of eco-friendliness or usability or some other such thing? That is not to say that designs and decisions and concepts should not be questioned, but that they should not be questioned for questioning's sake. A lot of thought, time and effort goes into the design of recognizable brands and widely used things. Just because they are designed by behemoths does not necessarily mean that they don't know what they are doing. On the contrary I would think they have put a lot of thought into it and the designs work quite well given the constraints. So if you are going to challenge it, please have something substantial that operates in the constraints that apply to the product, not just something that looks pretty. </rant>
- coryl 17y agoI say the opposite, lets redesign everything under the sun. If it works, we'll use it. If it doesn't, we won't. Why do people expect simple projects presented on a blog to have all the answers? Is it not possible to just take it on face value and entertain the idea?
- sketerpot 17y agoA few years ago I came across a vending machine selling bottles of something called "Pocari Sweat". I stared at it: what the hell was a Pocari, and why would I want to drink its sweat? I cocked my head and stared at it some more. Then I fished in my pocket for some coins to buy a bottle. It was alright; kind of fruity. Novelty can be fun, and it can attract customers. Why not try redesigning things for the fun of it? You don't have to make a New Coke every five months, but there should be a good amount of churn for its own sake.
- pedalpete 17y agoLots to love about this design, but it does have two significant flaws that could likely easily be fixed with a single change. the problems are as swombat and Zev pointed out 1) missing cokes iconic shape 2) uncomfortable to hold square bottles. So why not give the bottle some of that iconic shape in the middle? Go from square to a round with a wave through it? I'm sure that geometrically this isn't a huge problem with modern manufacturing techniques. I'm unsure how difficult it would be to get a shape like that to crush easily, but maybe it's possible. I suspect the offset of the cap may cause problems with packability, as it seems the bottles need to be stacked in a proper order.
- nailer 17y ago> I'm sure that geometrically this isn't a huge problem with modern manufacturing techniques. You're correct - my dad has supplied coke plants before. Boke bottles start out thick and test-tube shaped, with the threads on top and a stright tubular body. They are blown up into final proportions later.
- foleyfoley 17y agoSo question pedalpete (and anyone else). What do you like about the design? can you break it down for me?
- turtle4 17y agoThe test-tube shaped stage is a 'preform'. The shape might not be a huge problem, but it might not be trivial either. To blow the preform into the bottle's final shape, it is reheated, and then air is forced into the preform, causing it to expand to fill the mold containing it. The issue you would see with a bottle like this is that when the preform is reheated, the plastic in the wall tends to flow depending on the final shape. When you have sharp corners, like those displayed, it is difficult to maintain an even wall thickness on the final bottle. So you either have to use more plastic than you want to ensure a minimum wall thickness is kept, or risk having thin spots, which hurts the structural integrity of the bottle. There is a reason that you don't see many square bottles. The ones you do see, like Fiji, are really thick to account for this. You can get away with thick bottles when you are charging $4 for a bottle of water. Less so when charging a quarter that price for soda.
- duskwuff 17y agoHaving your product look like a can of oil probably isn't a desirable feature, either.
- thwarted 17y agoIt looks like a perfume bottle to me.
- JshWright 17y agoTasty...
- antipaganda 17y agoInstantly made me think "Olive oil. Yummy."
- there 17y agowould it still roll properly down the chutes of vending machines?
- appathy 17y agoI wish the current bottles would do this.
- eam 17y agoI don't think that would be a problem. At school we have a vending machine that uses like a little "bucket" lack of a better term. The bucket slides up to the drink you choose, then the drink slides into the bucket upright and comes out through an opening. This machine serves glass bottles like Sobe and Starbucks which wouldn't be good to roll down the chutes as they could break. So I am sure this vending machine I'm referring can be use to serve this squared bottle design.
- gridspy 17y agoThe machines with a rising catcher or conveyor tend to sell more drinks because people will buy one to see it go. (According a friend who is a vending machine operator)
- mhb 17y agoDoes it (including transportation cost) actually use less (material, energy) or generate less carbon than the aluminum can? Aluminum cans have become very thin. How many times can it be recycled? Can it be recycled into something useful?
- chanux 17y agoI posted yankodesign post about it which has some good comments. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224392 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224392
- axod 17y agoI want the phrase "carbon footprint" to die a horrible death. Please. soon. Come on though, this isn't hacker news. It's a square bottle - eg a carton. Which doesn't make any sense for a bottle of drink. Uncomfortable to hold, it looks idiotic. It's a non starter. Also by making the bottle square, you're actually using more bottle material than you need to - cylinder is the most efficient shape to hold contents. Way to waste plastic... I would also guess that manufacturing a square bottle is far harder and takes more effort/power/"carbon" than manufacturing a round one.
- Pheter 17y agoI'm not entirely certain what manufacturing process is used to make Coke bottles but if they use blow moulding, which is very common, then it is simply a case of making a different shaped mould. I don't see why that would require any more effort, and it seems unlikely that it would require any more power/"carbon".
- axod 17y agoWhat about the rest of the process? Labeling machines, filling machines, packing machines etc etc. These are pretty much all used to round bottles.
- Pheter 17y agoThat hadn't occured to me. On a large scale operation like producing Coke wouldn't these costs be quickly diluted by the large volume of containers that they are producing? Or do Coca-Cola contract many smaller companies that would have to change equipment individualy?
- jrockway 17y agoFor once in my life, I agree with you 100%. "carbon footprint" my ass. Glass bottles had a lower carbon footprint because you could wash them out and they were as good as new. Plastic in a landfill is plastic in a landfill. Forever.
- bfung 17y agoWill it cost the same but hold less volume of the delicious syrup?
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- tomerico 17y ago"my first thought was that the strength needed for stackability wouldn't jive with a crushable bottle" The author of the article should try to crash a closed bottle... He would both learn physics and understand why his claim is wrong.
- electromagnetic 17y agoAgreed, his sentence doesn't jive. The author obviously doesn't realise that a 371ml coke bottle contains 1.4 litres of carbon dioxide and a square bottle would likely require 4-times the plastic to remain in a square enough shape that it wouldn't affect packaging shape. I don't buy that this bottle would be eco-friendly in the short or long run.
- thristian 17y agoI guess it would be more accurate to say "the strength needed to contain pressurized Coke wouldn't jive with a crushable bottle", and stackability just comes as a freebie?
- jrockway 17y agoAm I the only person annoyed by random design students plastering well-known logos all over their projects? Dunno why, but it bugs me.
- ja2ke 17y agoIf the project is an industrial design project, or a branding related project, using an existing identity and it's associated set of rules gives a project structure. The request to use a known brand is usually part of the assignment from the teacher. This is like having a programming student code a Hangman game. The point of that, what you expect your student to get out of it, is totally different than an assignment where you say "design and program any game."
- keizo 17y agoDon't carbonated drinks need to be pressurized? wouldn't a square design get bloated? ie, you don't see square pressure vessels very often, I think for good reason.
- jacobolus 17y agoYou’d probably need to use a bit more plastic to make it as structurally strong. The question then is whether the need for less shipping/storage space makes up for that.
- ars 17y agoIt doesn't. You would need a LOT of plastic. There is a reason almost all drink containers are square, except for pressurized ones which are universally round. It's pretty much impossible for it to be actually square. It would need to bulge either in or out. Take a look at the bottom of a pressurized bottle, and notice it's not square either.
- jacobolus 17y agoI don’t understand the downvotes. I wasn’t trying to imply anything in particular about the amount more plastic, or where the trade-off actually sits. Indeed, my naive guess would be that soda vendors aren’t idiots, and probably currently do whatever is most efficient.
- goodside 17y agoIn terms of eco-friendliness, the current bottles are better. Square bottles enclose a smaller volume of fluid per unit surface area than round bottles, so these waste more plastic. The supposed savings in shipping costs are negligible -- the marginal fuel cost of shipping bottled beverages depends much more on weight than volume.
- bh23ha 17y agoReducing the content is a good way to raise prices without "raising prices". And the green spin as the reason to reduce content, well that's just brilliant.
- Qz 17y agoSquare bottles enclose a smaller volume of fluid per unit surface area than round bottles, so these waste more plastic. That's only true if the bottle is fully cylindrical, whereas most soda bottles have the narrower top and further narrowing along the body. the marginal fuel cost of shipping bottled beverages depends much more on weight than volume. Also only true if you don't take into account the overhead of the shipping mechanism. If you're trucking these across the USA, then reducing volume by half means you need half as many trucks and a comparable savings in fuel.
- sketerpot 17y agoPerhaps a good compromise would be hexagonal bottles. You can pack them just as efficiently, but they have a lower ratio of surface area to volume. From a marketing perspective, you could make a new flavor and call it Hexa-Cola. I'd try it just for the name and hexagonal bottle. (If you think that's a silly reason to drink a particular beverage, then consider this: the name is probably the only reason people drink Tentacle Grape soda. Names matter when flavors are so similar.)
- TeHCrAzY 17y agoWouldn't a truck, carrying almost twice as much weight, use almost twice as much fuel? Also, I think that (given normal combustion engines), the more power you try to get out of them, the worse the efficiency of the engine, so any gains you can gain from the "almost twice as much fuel" would just be lost there anyway.
- jwb119 17y agowhy is everyone hating on this kid? this is a freshman design student that put something on the web he thought was interesting. nobody should be seriously taking this as an effort to replace your beloved coke bottle!
- navchatterji 17y agoProps Andrew for taking an interesting take on an iconic design. The "squared" shape would def. be an issue with carbonated beverages ... but could work well with non-carbonated ones (ie. Dasani). I'd also take a look at what the folks at http://boxedwaterisbetter.com http://boxedwaterisbetter.com are doing with the carton approach. Best.
- ugh 17y agoNot exactly a new idea: http://www.otto-office.com/OODE/b2b/deu/mediadatacat/art/600/OODE_ART_74/OODE_ART_74010___00.jpg http://www.otto-office.com/OODE/b2b/deu/mediadatacat/art/600... Oh, and while boxed water may be better, water from the faucet is definitely best.
- ugh 17y agoWhatever happened to glass bottles? Why exactly did we stop using them? In what way are disposable plastic bottles better? Reusable plastic bottles? Are there weight issues? Is manufacturing them too expensive? They are pretty sturdy, after all, and I cannot imagine that the reusable plastic bottles we have here in Germany can be reused as often as glass bottles.