Customer Reviews

Hong Kong Apothecary

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a history buff with an interest in packaging and pharmaceutical history, I was enthralled by this book. With a beautiful layout and interesting text, this book taught me a ton about Chinese medicine and provided hours of entertaining reading.

Hong Kong Apothecary is a very entertaining read. As a Chinese-American, I grew up around different Chinese medicines and remedies all my life. But I didn't know that there was so much history, success, and scandal behind them until I found this book. Until I saw all the different designs together in one book, I didn't appreciate the intricate designs of medicine packaging either. I get nostalgic looking at some of these photographs. I say to myself, 'Hey! I've used this medicine before!' It's a fun book to read through and the designs make for very inspirational reference material.

I was drawn to this book originally for all of the fascinating stories it told about traditional Chinese medicine, but I became increasingly interested in what it had to say about different ways of packaging.

Packaging, in its simplest expression, is little more than a wrapper. As shown throughout Hong Kong Apothecary, good packaging can deliver so much more - a brand promise, a visual guide to the product, a sense of the genuine.

Regardless whether or not you "believe" in Chinese medicine or not, this book will reveal new ideas for how to deliver products of all sorts, and will give you a sense of how much more interesting packaging can be when its primary job is to tell a story.

(It doesn't hurt that the book itself is beautifully designed!)

For anyone who has wondered "what's in all of those little drawers" in the apothecaries featured in classic kung fu flicks, this should also be a big help.