Supermarket Packaging Design

The food packaging design of own brand products in the context of a supermarket is very important. They have to compete alongside brands that are more appealing because of their name or their reputation, so in order to be appealing, design needs to be simple but attractive in order to take away the stigma of shopping for the cheaper products. 

Waitrose own brand basics - Designed by Turner Duckworth

Tesco Own Brand - Designer Unfortunately Unknown

Sainsburys Basics by Williams Murray Hamm

Morrisons Own by Coley Porter Bell

Morrisons and Waitrose are ahead in terms of design, whilst Sainsburys basics range is the more attractive of the value brands, by using simple colours, and cute hand-drawn style illustrations of the food within the packaging. The script font also adds a more aesthetically pleasing element to the packaging, however, the necessary use of the colour orange, in keeping with the colour of the supermarket's branding, makes it look slightly cheaper, but does fulfil the purpose of making it stand out to customers. 

Tesco's own value brand struggles with its unattractive packaging, and is the only design that really increases the stigma attached to the purchasing of value products.  Whilst the blue and red colours are visually strong and work well because of their contrast, the hues used, and the use of white stock cheapens the design, whilst the typeface used and the poorly designed layout retain simplicity but don't create something that is nice to look at.

Morrisons own brand range is currently undergoing a rebranding, under the direction of design firm Coley Porter Bell. The packaging of the ready meals uses a strong black background, an interesting and slightly unusual layout in terms of the placement of the Morrisons Bistro label, and a hand drawn typeface to create  something modern and attractive, and whilst not groundbreaking design wise, it fulfils the needs of the client, and in fairness, shouldn't be expected to be forward thinking and heavily concept driven. The packaging of the soup is also successful in its use of colours, typeface and simplicity. 

The strongest design is the Waitrose own brand packaging, courtesy of Turner Duckworth agency, who have used strong block colours, layout and a strong gothic font to make a simple and appealing design template for all of their own brand products. The clever use of photography in making a line of pattern on the range also works well with the design because it adds an element of fun to the packaging.