Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Coca Cola Redesign


Coca-Cola and Emeco have combined their products to create the Navy Chair made from recycled plastic Coca Cola bottles in hopes of doing something "green". Each of the 111 Navy Chair is made from 60% rPET plastic Coca Cola bottles and 40% is from other materials such as pigment and glass fiber.

Although the product is aimed at recycling and giving used objects a second life, I can't help but think that it's just all a business scheme, especially as it was debuted at the 2010 Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan and the fact that only 111 were made makes it seem more like a limited edition designer item to get people to spend thousands of dollars on.

On the other hand, a design like this: Andre Kim's Eco Coke Bottle would definitely not be even considered by Coca Cola despite all its merits in reducing the carbon footprint to 0 for every 321,856,830 bottles shipped. And all because Coca Cola has to retain its image and the silhouette of their bottle for branding reasons. Guess that's the difficulty of being a designer... trying to create a balance between our own design principles and the business value for the company.

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