Evian revamps its bottle with a little joywashing

BrandChannel has just published a neat piece on the collaboration of bottled water company Evian and designer Paul Smith to put a bit of sparkle not into its products but into its bottle design. The feature notes:

"In the bad old days when water was a status symbol, packaging values emphasized luxe cues: elegant typography, sleek curves, and delicate surface treatments. The purported functional benefit was purity, an image conveyed by a general tendency towards minimalism. But luxe is out, and now that the display of wealth is considered distasteful, premium water is searching for relevance to the cultural mood.

That's why the choice of Paul Smith, a designer known for his whimsical, childlike approach to the world, is interesting. His vibrant stripes, which would have run counter to the pure luxury of the past, now speak to a downtrodden elite eager for permission to let loose a little. The colorful, energetic treatment is also a perfect expression of the new functional benefit embodied in Evian's positioning, "live young," which attempts to shift water away from an association with materialism and overconsumption towards hydration as health and vitality".

This looks like an effective use of design as product differentiation. The fun for legal practitioners comes in counting the number of registered and unregistered rights one can bring to bear when seeking to protect the totality of the newly-designed product and its component parts.