Everyone says they love pizza, but no one loves pizza as much as Scott Wiener. He writes about pizza, talks about pizza, and gives New York walking tours devoted to pizza.
One of the most overlooked aspects about pizza, he laments to Co.Create, is general indifference about pizza boxes. He began collecting boxes to get a better grip on the engineering and aestheticism of those iconic cardboard boxes.
Wiener notes that the history of the pizza box is long and evolving. While originally the boxes were extremely simple and few and far between, in the aftermath of World War II, pizza delivery became much more common. The pizza-box industry blew up, but still little variation in box art persisted. Box art is expensive, so pizza joints don’t usually shell out money for more than one, but occasionally restaurants will collaborate with artists to create special designs. Ed Hardy, for one, was enlisted to create one for Tony’s Pizza Napoletana in San Francisco. Box design is an effective form of marketing and an easy way for pizzeria’s to carve out a spot in the marketplace.
While it’s still rare to find an artist’s signature on a pizza box, Wiener hopes that will cease to be the case in the future.
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[via Co.Design]
