Own Label: Sainsburys Design Studio 1962-1977

Supermarkets haven’t always been joyless cathedrals of mindless profit mongering. Oh no… There once was a time when they had to literally prove their worth to an impliable British public. Getting people to give up the routine of buying high-street products with all their brown paper-wrapped honesty in favour of the almost clinical packaging of a modern supermarket was not an easy task.

By the early 1960s many supermarkets had already begun to engineer the product packaging to suit their brand aspirations. Perhaps the most cohesive and astutely executed of the supermarket house-styles came from Sainsbury’s between 1962 and 1977. To tell this story is a new book (finally back in stock!) outlining how the  in-house design team at Sainsbury’s, headed up by Peter Dixon would change the customer perception of ‘own-label’ goods forever.

The book is a curious insight into how the graphic design industry was changing at the time, but more importantly it charts the beginning of an era when popular packaging design took on a contemporary aesthetic and the basic design elements such as typographic treatment or colour application were experimented with heavily. This was a difficult battle for the in-house teams who would clash regularly with over-bearing marketing departments and stubborn senior staff. But the differences in opinion must have forged a productive system somehow, because the visual language they created would eventually establish the reliability of their own products in the public eye.

The designs are beautifully collated in the book and perhaps heartbreakingly to the nostalgics amongst us, it clarifies how today’s supermarket own brand labels are pathetically devoid of consistently interesting design. A terrifying clip-art style illustration is sadly what supermarkets think best represents our tastes these days. Unless, of course, you buy the ‘finest’ range or the one that has patronisingly been ‘chosen for you’ where a grotesquely manipulated photo and a celebrity chef signature awaits your hungry eyes. Compare that to the minimalist genius of the brown ale cans pictured above, which charmingly mimic a dimpled pint glass complete with a head of froth.

As an in-house designer myself, I sympathises with Peter Dixon’s struggle to establish a coherent graphic style and convince those around him that they should trust his ideas over theirs. This book reassured me that design can also be an education – All it needs is a little loyalty and some intelligent thinking.

Grab yourself a copy over the Xmas period and maybe compare your festive pudding wrapper to the one in the book. It’ll make you think a bit.