An overview of our records of packaging design
Packaging design has been important to Sainsbury's for as long as it has sold pre-wrapped own brand goods. Containers must keep products safe and hygienic, but they also have to be ‘silent salesmen’ which appeal to customers aesthetically. In the 1960s Sainsbury’s was paying more attention than ever to how its packaging looked. Designer Peter Dixon arrived at the company in 1963, and the range of items it sold at this time was increasing rapidly, particularly in the new self-service shops. A 1965 article in Sainsbury’s staff magazine ‘JS Journal’ already noted that ‘the firm’s policy is to create a strongly individual design style for products carrying the JS [Sainsbury’s] name.’
A film produced for Sainsbury’s centenary in 1969 noted the ‘clean, efficient image’ of own label goods, which were by then over a thousand in number. Dixon remained at the company until 1988, by which time the ‘direct’, ‘simple’ and ‘honest’ approach of the company’s Design Studio had become well-established. ‘JS Journal’ noted in 1985 that ‘liberation from following established design trends in the food trade’ was one of the studio’s key motivations.
Over the years the design process generated a large amount of paper, card and plastic items. Many can be found today in the Sainsbury Archive, organised into files according to the products they relate to. Some files comprise only one or two items, but others contain a wealth of artwork and written information. This article will explain the types of material that survive, illustrated with lots of examples, and then suggest the most effective ways to access them on our website.
Design brief
The 1985 ‘JS Journal’ article explains the various stages involved in designing an item of packaging. It began thus: ‘When the design team receives a brief, for example from confectionery, to produce a package for a new sweet the requirements for the job are received by Peter Dixon who delegates to a designer in his team the task of creating a number of design concepts. The designer takes into consideration the type of product to be sold and the customer to whom he is appealing before he can decide on the vast possibilities of colour, lettering, shapes of label and whether to use to better advantage photographs or illustrations.’ The Archive has dozens of examples of these briefs, dating from the early 1960s to the 1980s. All contain a range of interesting details about the packaging to be designed and the product it would contain.
Concepts
As noted above, the first items the designer would create were design concepts, which were presented to one of Sainsbury’s directors in weekly design meetings. These can be quite rough sketches suggesting possible colour schemes, illustrations, layouts or fonts, and include ideas that were not used in the end. The Archive also has more detailed pieces of work giving an artist’s impression of how the finished packaging might look, which were perhaps produced when just one or two fairly clear ideas were in mind, or a similar item of packaging was already being produced.
Mock-ups
The next stage was to create mock-ups of the concepts. These generally look more like the finished packet or label (some examples more so than others), and give a better impression of the size, shape, construction and colours. The mock-ups generally lack finished versions of any images that would appear in the final design, and the text was often added using transfers or handwriting, so may not show the actual fonts or wording that would be used. Many mock-ups were created by cutting up paper or card and sticking it onto pre-existing items of packaging.
Illustrations and photographs
Many packaging designs include an illustration or a photograph, often showing the product which would be found inside. Some of the design files contain the original drawings, prints and transparencies that were used or considered for this purpose.
Artworks
Design Studio manager Audrey Fletcher explained her role to ‘JS Journal’ in 1985 as follows: ‘It is my job to sort out a photograph or an illustration, whichever has been decided to be featured on the product, order the black and white artwork from one of our artwork studios, combine the two together, get it all approved and off to the supplier’s printers.’ Many design files include what appear to be examples of this ‘black and white artwork’. There are also numerous copies of items annotated with details such as the colours to be used.
Design Studio recordkeeping
Last but not least are the written records created during the design process. Audrey Fletcher estimated that ‘From the first request for a new design to the product appearing on the shelf the average running time is six weeks’. Detailed documentation helped the Design Studio to keep track of progress and find out about previous work more easily. The Archive has numerous examples of these records. The earlier ones appear to have been cut out from the covers of folders known as ‘job bags’ and generally include the designer’s name and key dates and decisions in the design process. In the 1980s these were superseded by forms on green card which often provide additional information such as typefaces and Pantone colours used. The meanings of some of the details and abbreviations in the forms and the significance of other items found in the design files is not always entirely clear today. Any suggestions for improving our catalogue can be shared as comments in the box at the bottom of this page or pages showing the relevant records.
Accessing the design files
There are several ways to access the design files on our website. The simplest is just to search for ‘Design’ on the Catalogue page, perhaps adding another keyword as well such as the name of a product you are interested in. More focused results may be found by limiting search results to those indexed with the term ‘Design’ – here, for example, you can see only design files relating to cat food, and nothing else. An alternative method involves navigating the Explore page. By scrolling down to ‘Packaging and products’ (reference number SA/PKC) and expanding the ‘Products’ section (SA/PKC/PRO) using the ‘+’ symbol, you can see items arranged into series according to product type. The first subseries level below each series will contain design files, and clicking the arrow on the right side of the page will show you them all.
Once you have selected a particular design file record you may see buttons below the image and a number such as ‘1/5’. These indicate that there are multiple images of this record. The arrows take you to the next or previous images, and the button in the middle shows a thumbnail overview of the whole file.
Unfortunately many files came into the Archive in a disordered state, and it was not possible to catalogue each item within them in a logical sequence. You may therefore find that some items clearly created later than others appear earlier on in a file. You may sometimes come across items that do not actually belong in the design files at all, such as artwork created for advertisements featuring products. Another useful tip to bear in mind is the large number of design file records linked to other records in the catalogue showing finished packaging that resulted from the design process. You can see this link by scrolling down the record page until you see a section headed ‘Related content’.
Although searching through the design files may seem daunting at first, taking some time to browse through them will hopefully make them less mysterious. The Archivists are happy to answer questions about them to the best of our ability, or you might like to book a research visit to look at some of the files in person. Contact details and further information can be found here.
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