tap water.

A favorite corner deli must buy of mine is Vitamin Water (about $1.49/bottle). It's basically flavored water with vitamins. Good stuff they say. It has heavily bannered itself to be the healthier choice against soda. This drink some what reminds of C2 (and Mini-Stop) and my addiction and battle to kick the "ice tea" habit (sounds like a drug addiction). Another marketing ploy? Maybe. I read somewhere that each bottle contains two heaping tablespoons of sugar. Yikes. Anyway, the health benefit that they claim is only secondary to the main reason why I buy this product.

Of course, it's because of the packaging.

One of the things that make me decide to buy something would be how it is packaged. It's such a cliche, but it's true. I heavily rely on my design biases to make purchasing decisions. Like when I'm at Target and I'm going to buy a box of detergent, I would try to find Tide with the fluorescent orange box. I wouldn't buy the ones with weird floral graphics on them as I find them too frilly to be in my storage closet. One time I couldn't find the packaging I wanted so I ended up not buying any detergent at all and I was not able to do laundry for another week. Hassle. I'm sort of anal about these things...

Going back to Vitamin Water, look how perfect everything is about it's packaging.


• bottle shape
• lay-out of label
• color (use on labels against products color)
• font (!)

Not to mention the wit involved with how they named their flavors. A very pragmatic and self-explanatory way of doing it. But they made sure they explained it in the label what the consumer was drinking or what it was for, you know for slow people (read:me).


I love the labels so much, I actually remove the labels when I'm done and tack it to my wall.

These bottles look especially graphic when they are in the chiller side by side to each other lit up from the back. Such a sight to see all the colors!



Many of it's competitors has tried to rip them off by copying their packaging and style. But leave it to an artist to come up with some thing that may rival it. This I think is genius.

Photographer Till Krautkamer's Meatwater


How can you not be excited to try a product (if ever) like this? With flavors like Dirty Hot Dog described as "An authentic taste of the Big Apple you can sip through a straw! Ever wondered how those street cart vendors go when they have to go? With all that dirty water just sitting right there? Now try to enjoy this liquidy libation! Hot Dog!".

I'm still trying to find out more about this project of his. I wonder if theres a way to sample a bottle of hot dog flavored water for real...