ALL ONE!

Behold the magic soap that unites mankind, spaceship earth, genuine compassion, a "more is more" philosophy when it comes to copywriting, and dreadful typography — ALL ONE! First, I need to mention that this is great soap. I am especially fond of the peppermint (pictured). In reviewing the documentary "Doctor Bronner's Magic Soapbox" David White had this to say: "(I)t's great soap. You should buy some. Just make sure you follow the directions on the manifesto-crammed label ("DILUTE! DILUTE! DILUTE!") or your 'undercarriage' will sting like crazy. "

About the label. (Click on the image to see it larger.) The layout ignores any and all typographic conventions such as readable line lengths. (The longest line lengths are 50+ words.) Focus on a concise message is also out the window as the ruling principle seems to be, "Why waste space by leaving it empty?"

Doctor Bronner (It may surprise you to hear that he wasn't really a doctor.) wrote the copy using a curious strain of English that I'll call Bronglish. Bronglish employs unique sentence structure, odd abbreviations (Thos. for Thomas), creative hyphenation, and a general substitution of exclamation marks for periods. Below is an example that illustrates most of the above. I have been careful to maintain the "formatting."
5th: Whatever unites mankind is better than whatever divides us! Yet, if absolute-unselfish I am not for me, I'm not but classless, raceless, starving masses, never free nor brave! Only if constructive selfish I work hard perfecting first me, like Mark Spitz - arctic owls - penguin - pilot - cat - swallow - beaver, bee, can I teach the MORAL ABC's ALL - GOD - FAITH, that lightning-like unites the human race! For we're ALL-ONE or NONE! "listen children eternal father eternally one!" EXCEPTIONS ETERNALLY? ABSOLUTE NONE!A team of graphic designers and copywriters would have never allowed this. It's good we didn't touch the project. All these quirks are now hallmarks of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. "Oh, yeah! The soap with all the writing on it," people will say. The label is unique, recognizable, and distinguishes itself from other products.

But packaging and typography weren't important to Bronner. Even the soap was secondary to his message of teaching the moral ABC and uniting spaceship earth. Emmanuel Bronner traveled the country, spreading his teachings and distributing his soap until his death in 1997. His eldest son, Ralph, now does the same.

All this and more about the soap, the maker, the message, the company, and how they have been and continue to be a true force for good in the world are include in the documentary, Doctor Bronner's Magic Soapbox. The documentary is produced and directed by Sarah Lamm with graphic design by Dmitri Siegel.The basic message of both the documentary and the over 30,000 words on the soap bottle are summarized on the company's activism page:
1. Constructive capitalism is where you share the profit with the workers and the earth from which you made it.

2. We are all brothers and sisters and we should take care of each other and spaceship earth.
And last, a picture of Doc Bronner, uniting spaceship earth with his cool and tingly peppermint soap.