I bought a can of Coke today, which is fairly rare for me.  On the way home I noticed that the top looked a little bit different than usual, and I was reminded of conversations I had in the early Nineties, when the shape of soda cans noticeably changed last.

The change that happened in the Nineties was that a crease appeared near the top of the can.  At work where industrial design was a common topic of conversation, various theories were suggested for this.  One of which was that it was to allow the contents to expand if the can should be stored below freezing.  It seemed vaguely plausible and I didn’t give it much thought until some years later, when I decided to find out once and for all what the real reason for the change was.  After some lengthy and devious boolean searches on AltaVista, I came across a research/presentation paper by the company that owned the patent on the new can design.  I turned out that the freezing theory was very much wrong.  The real reason for the switch was to reduce the weight of the can, thereby saving money on raw materials and shipping.  The new design eliminated the solid base of the can, as well as reducing the amount of aluminum required for the top, without compromising the rigidity of the container.  The savings were actually quite impressive.

I suppose that someone has improved on the design once more.  The top looks even smaller in diameter, and has a deeper groove.

The continual optimization of design always impresses me, especially when it shows up in something that most of us would consider mundane, such as a soda can.  But it’s going on all around us, all the time.  Not because of a philanthropic drive to improve our consumption of natural resources, but to maximize profit and increase efficiency of effort.  Even still, it’s nice to know that somewhere, someone is thinking, or being to told to think about ways to improve something.