Square bottle, round hole

I commented the other day about the design of our carton, and confessed that whilst it was not the most beautiful in the world, it certainly was the most practical - doing the job that it was primarily designed to do, protecting our bottles.

Sometimes design forces us to make compromises, and we make decisions about our packaging for possibly the wrong reasons. The new, trendy bottles design that I have illustrated above is a case in point. For me, it simply doesn't work, and I mean that for the most practical of reasons.....

Yes, there is no doubt that it is eye-catching, and makes a change from the run-of-the-mill bottle shapes, but I ask you, have you ever tried to pour a drink from one of these bottles?

The mineral water on the left of the three bottles is Galician, and we use it at home. Possibly, when we first bought it, we were influenced by the unusual design, and it therefore ended up on our dining table. OK, so we were hooked, the marketing had worked - but then came the second stage of the process - trying to use it, or to be more accurate, pour it.

The square shoulder of the bottle is a design disaster, and was certainly not thought through when the shape was first conceived on the designers drawing board. Liquid from the bottle does not pour, or rather it does not flow, the square shoulder causes it to surge in an irregular sloshing motion (difficult to describe in words).

That's not too bad if a stray drop of mineral water ends up on your table cloth, but what happens when that spill is port or possibly red wine, and is caused by no fault of your own?

I rest my case.