show box
contents, thus guaranteeing new priorities in the reading process (Against involuntary waste project). The enabling approach analysed the informativeprescriptive dimension and the morphology of the packaging so as to make users interact with the packaging according to a programme of actions useful for activating virtuous behaviours, by means of transforming the packaging or reusing it. This is the case, for instance, of the EcoPack project which proposes a packaging for fruit and vegetables with a dual pre and post purchase function: the packaging is transformed in the wake of its primary function into a shopper. The consumer is thus directly involved in a process of transforming the packaging and in a process of recycling the packaging in order to be actively involved with environmental issues and with the problem of the waste of resources. The third approach (enabling in order to inform) acted on the packaging, leading users to interact with it and, by allowing them to perform actions with a strong symbolic value, increasing their understanding of the production, purchase and consumption of products. Packaging, in the case of the Organic seed project, by means of a device which imprisons a seed, becomes a metaphor for the commitment required in order to obtain positive results for the planet over time. Thus, the person the product is destined for, stimulated by the packaging, is called upon to perform an action (planting a seed). In this way a means of access is activated which goes beyond the procurement of the product. Otherwise, the communicative potential of the sleeve labels is used to make people more sensitive to the
44
2/09
1 V. Bucchetti, La messa in scena del prodotto, “Da imballaggio a packaging. Disegno industriale e Comunicazioni visive”. This volume also takes up and expands on the reflections of Giovanni Anceschi, “L’involucro transitorio”, Imballaggio, no. 439 (September), 1992, p. 125. See also V. Bucchetti, “Discipline del packaging design”, LineaGrafica, no. 353 (September/October), 2005. 2 Giovanni Baule, “Dispositivi di comunicazione”, LineaGrafica, no. 367 (January-February), 2007, pp. 12-13 and the entry “Dispositivi” in G. Baule, “Lessico” in V. Bucchetti (editor), Culture visive. Contributi per il design ella comunicazione, Edizioni POLI.Design,
domestic waste of food products. The dual level of communication created by the surface of the container and the skin which covers it enable the person it is designed for to act on the two surfaces and, from the interaction between opacity and transparency, to perceive hidden messages useful, for instance, for an understanding of the transformation the product undergoes starting from when it is opened. It is namely a question of tackling the design in terms of a vision which moves from the social responsibility of the designer (4) in order to achieve a definition of the communicative devices able to represent an expression which bucks the trends. It raise new questions about what is used and for what purpose, as well as about the means of expression through which the transferral of information takes place. In other words, we are dealing with what Adriano Fabris (Etica della comunicazione, Carocci, Roma 2006) calls applied ethics, which brings real questions back to the forefront, moving from below, from fields of action and therefore packaging design. In other words, it is a question of attributing a new centrality to the communicative-informative accessibility (5) of packaging, favouring the step from an aesthetic of “plenty” and “luxury” to “adequacy”, not an aesthetic of subtraction, meant in the sense of deprivation, but an ethic based on reaching a minimum communicative threshold, suitable for guaranteeing the production of meaning. Valeria Bucchetti, visual designer. She is a research doctor in industrial design and a researcher at Milan Polytechnic. She is a lecturer of Industrial Design for visual communication on the degree course in Communication Design (Milan Polytechnic).
Milan, 2007, pp. 21-23. The observations of Giovanni Baule begin with the critical analysis of the concept of dispositivo by Giorgio Agamben in Che cos’è un dispositivo, Nottetempo, Rome 2006. 3 Research and teaching was developed within the sphere of Laboratorio di Sintesi Finale “100% Alimentare” (Valeria Bucchetti, Chiara Diana with Erik Ciravegna, Elena Zordan, Elisa Mastrofrancesco), Degree in Communication Design, Design Faculty, Milan Polytechnic. 4 E. Ciravegna, “Progetto e responsabilità sociale”, in V. Bucchetti (editor), Packaging contro.verso, Edizioni Dativo, Milan, 2007
and in E. Ciravegna, “La ricerca progettuale tra creatività e responsabilità sociale”, an excerpt of which is published in M. Bertoldini (editor), La cultura politecnica 2, Bruno Mondadori, Milan, 2007. 5 E. Ciravegna, Progettare la qualità comunicativo-informativa dell'imballaggio. Metodi e strumenti per l'accesso ai contenuti informativi nel packaging design. Doctoral thesis in Industrial Design and Multimedia communication, Milan Polytechnic, 2008, supervisor Professor Valeria Bucchetti, tutor Professsor Giovanni Baule.