Magyar élelmiszer-csomagolások száz év fogyasztói kultúrájában – designelmélet, történeti áttekintés
Hungarian Food Packaging across a Century of Consumer Culture – Design Theory, Historical Outline

Summary/Abstract: This study examines the place and epistemological role of twentieth-century Hungarian food packaging in the nation’s culture. Its main research question is how used food packaging – considered a “banal object,” in the “waste” phase of the product consumption cycle – transcends its original function and acquires cultural and symbolic meaning. The research explores how these objects integrate into the epistemological frameworks of art history, design culture, sociology, cultural anthropology, material culture, and consumer research studies. Moving beyond these contexts, it also examines the professional considerations and historical sources that inform how food packaging displayed in museum collections as “authentic objects perceived as testimony to reality” (musealia) can be interpreted as carriers of value. Drawing on the author’s PhD research, the study presents examples of “everyday design” and the world of commercial objects. It focuses on Hungarian pop-cultural items that gained widespread recognition through consumption and, upon assuming a new role in the museum context, contribute to the understanding and in-depth analysis of their original consumer environment. The analysis interprets consumption as symbolic cultural activity and the analyzed packaging as complex sign systems reflecting design thinking. In doing so, it presents the multifaceted design perspectives of branding and communication design with the aim of research methodology representation.

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