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Medieval get-togethers, apparently requiring a greater sense of theatre and occasion than the dinner parties held today, were witness to some bizarre food creations. The cockatrice, for example.

A visually terrifying and functionally pointless hybrid comprising the lashed-together upper half of a pig and the egg-producing end of a chicken, the cockatrice was primarily concocted to confuse and amaze hungry guests. A plate of chicken kievs wrapped in bacon and some freshly cut slices of Vienetta obviously didn't cut the medieval mustard.

Scouring the internet recently, I stumbled across the modern-day packaging equivalent of the cockatrice: the bottle-can. Or should that be can-bottle? Either way, it's the top of a can fused with the bottom of a plastic drinks bottle, and it's... odd. Type 'can-bottle hybrid' into Google Images and see for yourself.

There's a fine line between genius and madness, it's said, and I'll let you decide which camp this creation has pitched its tent in - one thing's for sure: some local authority collection trucks would have a field day with it. But it did get me thinking about innovation in packaging, and how new ideas can add or detract value from a product.

I once had a design-technology teacher whose classroom wall was emblazoned with the acronym KISS, which stood for ‘keep it simple, stupid'. Forgetting the questionable wisdom of passively insulting the fragile, budding designers he was supposed to be nurturing, the message obviously prevailed, because it's stuck with me.

Of course, it's tricky to achieve the right balance. For instance, green currently features heavily on the colour palettes of packaging designers, and rightly so. But what happens when eco-initiatives overtake the function of the design? RPC's Jugit, for example, is certainly a worthy concept.

But has the final product done the idea justice? It's claimed the pouches cut the materials used by 75%, so on the one hand the answer should be yes. But to my mind it looks clunky, unattractive and, crucially, more difficult to use than the milk cartons we've become accustomed to. And I'm not convinced the bags wouldn't burst in car boots laden with shopping. Green issues are, of course, important, but these other things matter to consumers, too.

So, surely, there will be a hardcore of green stalwarts that will make the switch to milk in a Jugit, but the majority of shoppers will no doubt consider the fiddly process of cutting the top off a bag and clipping it into the jug a tedious task too far in an already traumatic morning routine.

A sustainable innovation that did catch my eye recently was the reusable HDPE can crate, designed by Tom Wooller, a product design graduate at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication, and displayed at the New Designers show in Islington.

By simply being shaped around the cans, rather than the standard rectangle, the crate allows 36 more cans per layer - 17% more on a standard pallet. Obviously, this innovation doesn't have the added problem of having to appeal to the consumer, but it does illustrate my point here - a simple, well-executed idea often works best.

So, perhaps, taking two ideas that work separately and stitching them together is a practice best consigned to the history books. To paraphrase my erstwhile technology teacher, it's better to KISS than miss the point altogether.

David Elliott is production editor of Packaging News

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