A Surreal Warehouse Filled With 110,000 Old Package And Product Designs
The NewProductsWorks Collection is a treasure trove for researchers, housing 40 years’ worth of consumer goods.
Do you ever wonder if there’s a heaven that obsolete package designs go to when their parent corporations do a brand refresh? Okay, fine, only a design blogger would wonder that--but as it turns out, there actually is such a place. It’s called the NewProductsWorks Collection, and it’s a huge supermarket-size time machine for product and package designs from the past four decades. Maintained and curated by GfK Custom Research North America, the Collection is a resource for designers and researchers who (for whatever reason) want to know what shampoo bottles in 1973 looked like.
The collection even has an aura of the mysterious about it--the facility, in Michigan, isn’t open to the public. It’s like the huge warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, except instead of housing head-melting supernatural artifacts, it’s got shelves and shelves full of, according to GfK, "every product in food, beverage, household, health & beauty care, baby care, pet products, etc." The collection is arranged "grocery store style for easy access." You probably won’t get in unless you work for frog design or have a fancy academic degree, but you can take an interactive tour of American consumerism by clicking here.
