Monday, December 10, 2007

Match Bond 火柴邦


Ironically, I started to notice Taiwanese designers after I studied abroad. Probably it’s because I took everything around me for granted until I was away from them. Anyway, after I’ve seen some designed works from so-called “Europe, America, Japan and other developed countries,” I can recognize that art and design in Taiwan is drastically improved. Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t mean we are the best or others suck, but I do feel that we should give ourselves some credit. Umm…, my introduction is getting too long and far…

Back to the topic, Match Bond is founded by a group of people who are obsessed about the feeling of igniting a match and the smell of a burning stick. In 2005, they decided to get into this dying industry (or dead industry)—selling matches, and lunched their first set of products in 2006.

Their products is a good example of how a good package design can make an ordinary thing extraordinary. For me, I don’t really care if they are selling matches or candies; I bought their products because of those cute characters on the box. On the other hand, matches do make this brand stand out ‘cause it’s the only brand in the market. Also, I’d like to mention the matchbox “Double Pipe(No.010)”, as I think how they utilize the action of rubbing a match into the matchbox design is brilliant.

By the way, as I was searching for their website (I couldn’t find it on google!?), I found another company with the same name in Chinese. Just to clarify that they are two different companies.

(p.s. “Europe, America, Japan and other developed countries” is a common phrase that we usually use when we want to mention countries batter than us, although Europe is not a country.)

一直到了出國唸書後才開始注意台灣的設計師,很諷刺吧!大概是因為我一直把身邊的東西當作理所當然,直到有天離開了它們。現在,在看過一些所謂的“歐美日等先進國家“的設計產品後,我覺得到台灣的藝術設計產業有長足的進步。我並不是指我們是最好的或其他人不好,而是我覺得我們應該給自己一點掌聲,嗯…前言有點太長太遠了….

回到正題,火柴邦是一群對火柴有偏執的人組成的,其餘相關介紹請見其網站的“我要火下去“部份,我就不贅述了。它們的產品是個包裝如何將一個平凡的物品變成不平凡的例子。對我來說,我不在乎他們賣的是火柴還是糖果,其實我只是被盒子上的角色所吸引。另一方面,火柴也的確給了他們獨特的定位—因為他們是目前市場上唯一賣火柴的品牌。同時,我想提一下”兩根褲管(No.010)”這個火柴盒,他們把點火柴的這個動作結合到火柴盒的設計裡,非常有趣。

再順便提一下,我在google他們的網站的時候竟搜尋不到!?,發現大陸有一個同名的公司也在賣火柴ㄟ!

No comments: