

Square redesign of the Coke bottle - andr
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/andrew_kims_square_coke_bottle_design_16266.asp

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tomerico
_"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.

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electromagnetic
Agreed, 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.

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goodside
In 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.

~~~
Qz
_Square 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.

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btilly
Take a closer look at a plastic bottle. The goal is to enclose the largest
amount of soft drink with the smallest amount of plastic meeting
specifications such as having a drinkable top, resisting falls from a certain
height while filled, and punctures of a certain strength. As a result the
strength of the plastic varies greatly over the surface of the bottle (any
areas that are likely to hit hard in an impact are much stronger) and the
optimal design is far more complex than people realize.

Coca-Cola spent millions of dollars on optimizing this in the 90s. I would not
care to bet that on casual inspection you've noticed something obvious that
they missed.

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jokull
I worked for Coca-Cola on the container floor in my teens. It's insane how
much small point pressure a plastic bottle can take.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49ScJUCqj98>

We had fun throwing 2L bottles on the floor. If they struck the floor smack on
the bottom of the bottle they would bounce back up. The impact increases the
pressure inside the bottle. We'd do this a couple of times, then the last drop
would be top down, hopefully breaking the cap launching a coke powered rocket
to the roof! That's the quickest way to break the bottle without using tools I
think.

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axod
I 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.

~~~
jrockway
For 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.

~~~
gridspy
To strengthen your argument, you need to provide a machine that will wash and
refill a coke bottle. Otherwise you are simply sending some glass to the
landfill (lazy customers) and some to recycling.

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ja2ke
The very machine you mention can be found... In the past! Soft drinks, like
milk and juice bottles, used to be reused and refilled. I guess it was cheaper
to fire all deliverymen and not run refilling machines when bottles could be
made out of thin, throwaway plastic instead.

Most soft drink bottles still say "non-refillable" on them, even though no
refilling services exist, even if you wanted to.

~~~
gridspy
I was actually thinking of a machine where you insert your bottle and a screen
lowers. It then does a quick scan to confirm it is a bottle of the correct
dimensions and weight. It lowers a rod into the bottle and steam-sterilises
it. It bakes the outside of the bottle so the bottle reaches >100 degrees for
several seconds.

It then chills the bottle. It could do this by pumping refrigerated water into
the bottle and then extracting it again.

Finally, it rolls a label onto the outside of the bottle and fills it with a
refreshing beverage. Optionally, it could then seal the bottle.

This machine is then installed like a vending machine, but with far greater
capacity (it could mix drinks with filtered water on site) and lower cost.

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algorias
You could just return an empty bottle every time you buy a new one (or pay a
deposit if you don't have one). Oh wait, that already exists (doesn't sound as
cool, though).

~~~
gridspy
That requires the infrastructure, storage and carbon to transport the bottles
somewhere else to be refilled. In the end you still end up storing filled
bottles on site.

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keizo
Don'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.

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jacobolus
You’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.

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ars
It 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.

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swombat
Ain'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
What 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.

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steveklabnik
They've started making 2 liter bottles in that same shape, too.

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pedalpete
Lots 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
> 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.

~~~
turtle4
The 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.

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mhb
Does 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?

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duck
100 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.

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ugh
What is it with Americans and cup holders? :)

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HeyLaughingBoy
Have you ever tried to drive while wearing a CamelBack?

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philwelch
I have, actually. It's more comfortable if you wear it on your chest instead
of your back.

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eam
Looks 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.

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jrockway
Am I the only person annoyed by random design students plastering well-known
logos all over their projects? Dunno why, but it bugs me.

~~~
ja2ke
If 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."

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Zev
I 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).

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duskwuff
Having your product look like a can of oil probably isn't a desirable feature,
either.

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thwarted
It looks like a perfume bottle to me.

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JshWright
Tasty...

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there
would it still roll properly down the chutes of vending machines?

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eam
I 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.

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gridspy
The 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)

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PostOnce
There are two at our mall, both of which were jammed (the arms were clogged
with fallen-over drinks) when I discovered them.

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navchatterji
Props 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> are doing with the carton approach. Best.

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ugh
Not exactly a new idea: [http://www.otto-
office.com/OODE/b2b/deu/mediadatacat/art/600...](http://www.otto-
office.com/OODE/b2b/deu/mediadatacat/art/600/OODE_ART_74/OODE_ART_74010___00.jpg)

Oh, and while boxed water may be better, water from the faucet is definitely
best.

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ugh
Whatever 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.

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antirez
Cool, 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...).

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andr
I think that's for shipping efficiency, too. They can fit more cans per case.

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antirez
thanks interesting, this is what I used to think too but they are using more
aluminum with the new design, and that looked strange without taking into
account the marketing stuff.

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chanux
I posted yankodesign post about it which has some good comments.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1224392>

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bfung
Will it cost the same but hold less volume of the delicious syrup?

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jwb119
why 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!

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azm
<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>

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coryl
I 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?

