Roll of Blue Tape

     This roll of blue painting tape is a very simple  doughnut-shaped design that is small enough for convenience of storage and travel, and big enough to permit copious amounts of tape.  Even the hollow interior serves a function, that being to provide a space in which instructions and information regarding the tape's purpose are printed in Spanish and English.
   
     Given this linguistic range, this particular roll was designed with the region of its purchase in mind; the designers, manufacturers, and store chains collaborated to ensure that this tape was printed with two specific languages in order to meet a specific regional quota, which gives insight into both the corporate purpose behind this tape's construction and the demographics this tape was aimed at. 
   
     In a general sense, though, this tape would typically be useful in any general situation where an adhesive material is required, but its specific function as a painting tape makes it specially useful for painters.  This tape creates borders that block off certain sections of a composition that the artist does not want paint on, which can be very helpful for any artist of any skill level who wants to maintain a profession quality of presentation in their own work.  In effect, this tape was created by design, for design.
   
     The blue coloring of the tape itself is an aid that distinguishes it among other types of tapes and adhesives on the store shelf.  When an individual sees this blue tape, and uses it frequently to help them paint, there is a chance they will develop a mental association between the color blue, its use in design for tape, and the tape's function as a painter's aid.  The internal cardboard is responsible for framing the roll and providing space for the text.  It is cheap, easy to manufacture, and easily disposable, which is useful for store sales and for the consumer once the product has expired its utility. 
   
     There's an evident sign of previous use of this roll through the small flap of loose, unrolled tape.  That kind of naturally occurring imagery evoke a sense of fulfilled purpose, in that the tape is clearly being taken advantage of and serving its purpose, even when the absence of surface area is not immediately recognizable.   Even so, there is still a vast quantity of tape remaining, so the evident use of this roll is still very young and its full potential yet to be realized.  This image can be likened to a journey having taken its start, with still a long ways to go before its end.
   
     The idea behind this design was to find the proper geometric form that would best cater to the customer in their needs for a painting-aid adhesive, and best serve the store in stocking and selling these tapes in bulk.  The problem has to do with determining the proper amount of tape, the size of the tape, and the size of the overall roll in order to meet all of those previous functions, as well as provide instruction on the product's use.
   
     The most apparent flaw with this idea's execution is readily clear with the internal design of the text, namely that it is cut off in both the top and bottom of the inner ring.  There clearly is text missing that might be important to the rest of the instruction and cautionary notes of the product.
   
     Increasing the height of the roll might have allowed enough space for every part of the instruction, but that would also mean increasing the width of the tape itself.  Doing so might be helpful to some artists, but probably unattractive to stores with limited space to store these rolls.  Decreasing the text size, while possible to include all the instructions, would potentially decrease readability, especially for customers with sight problems that prevent them from reading small text.
   
     Perhaps the best solution is to slightly decrease text size and to revise the text itself in order to decrease the number of characters and words needed to communicate the information.  The spacing between the top and bottom text should also be slightly reduced, a few millimeters at most,  and the red borders should be shrunken and thinned out, if not removed entirely, since they unnecessarily take up space.