UK Pack Age

UK Pack Age is an exhibition of British packaging which has been designed in the UK. (I consider design to be the process of ‘controlling the evolution of ideas’—the creative process which has less to do with fashion and much to do with underpinning intuition with methodology.)

If you’re a packaging fetishist Britain is a very good place to be as it is festooned with packages of all shapes, sizes, materials and constructions. Napoleon hit the nail on the head when he scorned us, calling us, “a nation of shopkeepers”. But Britain has a distinguished history of design education and has evolved sophisticated methodologies which underpin packaging and retail design, therefore, it follows that we should be good at wrapping things up.

However, packaging is about much more than retailing and we have included in the exhibition items such as coffins and tea bags. The retail environment is a ‘hot-house’ yielding consumer goods that demonstrate the extent to which many packages, such as alcohol and shampoo, have evolved. Curating this exhibition was not easy. One walk through any supermarket reveals several thousand packs, a walk along any shopping street multiplies the choices several hundreds of times.

The game of curation is made harder still by manufacturers and retailers who delight in updating packs with phenomenal speed—in the five months of searching I selected packages and requested samples only to find that they had been discontinued and replaced by new packs.

This is especially true of ‘FMCGs’, or, ‘fast moving consumer goods’, like laundry products, toiletries and staple foodstuffs. These items are almost constantly re-calibrated, more rapidly than fashionable clothing, in order to compete with rival brands and find favour with the latest consumer trends. I would even go as far as to suggest that a nation’s economic health and cultural well-being can be measured by the rate of change of its packaging—because packages do much more than merely act as containers for products, they also act as mirrors of changing cultural attitudes, reflecting who we are and what we believe in, what our history has been and what tomorrow may hold in store for us. A healthy society should be in a constant state of flux. This is expressed through the objects we make, through the thought and care that goes into their detailing and construction, to the consideration given to how they will work in the home as well as in the retail environment, to how gracefully they will age and what impact they will have on the environment. We do get the objects and packages that we deserve.

Packaging performs such a broad range of functions within society that it almost defies classification. I chose to divide the exhibition into three areas: packages that protect and preserve, packages that perform and packages which promote. These four Ps provided a framework which allowed me to discuss some of the many complex roles that packages fulfil. It is important to understand that the exhibition is not a survey of UK packaging design, it is a personal selection and the simple framework provided by the four Ps helps to focus on broad characteristics. In reality, most packs, often the best packs, perform all four roles simultaneously.

Traditionally, packaging design occupies the ground between product design and graphic design, the area between objects and words, between advertising and art, creator and consumer, between manipulator and manipulated. However, as a direct result of technological developments and shared software, designers now move across traditional areas of specialisation. It is now possible to find musicians working as graphic designers, graphic designers working as product designers, musicians working as both and all collaborating with scientists, manufacturers and marketeers. Industrialists and scientists can contribute at many different levels. Because packaging involves elements of creativity and science it is an excellent medium for creative collaboration, perfectly reflecting these new, interdisciplinery trends in creative working and providing a showcase for some of the very best design solutions.

I believe that our supermarkets are among our greatest art galleries. They are at the cultural coal-face, giving an accurate picture of our attitudes at any fixed moment in time. Try strolling through the aisles with no money, or plastic, in your pockets. Examine the limited edition prints, the ironic multiples, the structures formed through display, the point-of-sale installations, the performance, the technology, the architecture, music and drama. Entry is free and if you see something you really would like to buy, the chances are that you can afford it.

Because of the high volume and low cost demands of the medium, packaging is a challenging area for designers to work in. Generally, packs must communicate with great eloquence and within extreme cost restraints. Designers can’t buy their way out of problems, but must instead use their ingenuity.

We always ritualise our deepest cultural activities, such as birth, death, marriage and power-giving, because it transforms them into indelible components within our lives, forming the hidden bonds which weld society together.

Packages tangibly express our feelings for one another. Gifts are expressions of ‘care’ and reverence. They are remote dispensers of compassion where the wrapping method carefully signals the manner in which the present should be given and received and the esteem in which the contents should be held. By extension, many everyday packages have the potential to make us feel good, or careful, or downright disappointed. This is powerful magic for packaging designers and for ourselves as we all like to receive gifts and probably enjoy ripping and unwrapping the layers of paper which have been carefully constructed for our pleasure. We all know the drama of a new purchase and the adrenalin rush as the last wrapper is breached and the delicious mystery of the package’s contents finally resolved.

Carluccio’s packaging is constructed like a gift. It appears to be hand-crafted and uses lots of different, contrasting materials including a traditional hard, wax box wrapped with a softly textured satin bow which feels romantically old-fashioned and well-mannered. Inside there’s crinkly straw, a ‘real’, ‘authentic’ material and crisp cellophane—lots of satisfying textures, sounds and smells to make the act of opening the package a pleasurable and memorable sensorial delight. The whole ensemble makes a group of standard products into a ‘gift’, economically and culturally increasing the value of the goods.

Packaging designers understand and respect the particular demands of different generic products such as soap powder, beer or bread. Many packs are so thoroughly researched, so carefully honed and regularly re-designed that they become like heat-seeking missiles homing-in on appropriate targets.

Each product type is ‘shopped’ in a different way by the consumer who has, often subliminally, been educated by the pack designer to differentiate between economy, mid-value and premium quality products within that generic type. Staple products such as soap powder must shout their messages much more loudly and quickly than more occasionally purchased products such as beer or cosmetics. The consumer expects to enjoy a longer period of time agonising over the purchase of a premium quality treat than a loaf of bread. Consequently the type, colouring and language of soap powder packs is larger, brighter and louder than any other pack in the supermarket. The packs’ messages are simple, brash and indispensable. For without soap powder packaging we would have no way of judging one product against another.

As well as being my favourite area in the supermarket, soap powder aisles provide excellent examples of own-brand products which are designed to compete with brand leaders. Sainsbury’s ‘Novon’ range has diversified to meet the customer’s expectations of the big brand leaders. In addition to ‘automatic’ and ‘biological’ the supermarket now produces ‘condensed’ and ‘colour’ versions of its products in all standard sizes. The products are designed, not as ‘economy’ alternatives, priced well below the market leaders, but as solidly constructed brands in their own right.

Harvey Nichols store has a range of own brand goods which are more covetable and expensive than many premium competitor brands. These handsome and unconventional packs carry duotone photography which makes them distinctive in a sea of multi-coloured images. They are cool, contemporary and desirable despite their economic two colour printing, which proves that is creativity, not expensive production, that is the key to a successful package.

As well as protecting and preserving the products (and the environment) from destruction and promoting brand messages, packs also act as totems and talismans. Packs simultaneously protect and preserve our cultural heritage and our sense of social and personal well-being.

Through many of the exhibits it is possible to uncover a hidden web of dynamic activity ranging in scale from the local and vernacular to vast, global relationships, between designers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers. Some multinational companies, like IBM, use local designers and carefully source carton material through local manufacturers, producing corrugated card in small batches in order to ensure that each batch is made from the same raw, straw material and is of consistent colour.

Some packs, like Kirriemuir Gingerbread, HP Sauce, Newcastle Brown and Guinness, retain elements of their local, cultural identity while tempering others in order to compete in the national and international marketplace. They are bastions of national identity and valuable national assets. This was recognised by the French government years ago and has only recently been recognised by government in the UK. Pop music, film, architecture, fashion and design are now viewed as valuable commondities central to national economic well-being rather than being viewed as impotent peripheral decoration.

As markets inevitably grow, and homogenise, elements of local identity ensure that products and services remain distinctive and desirable. If every company has essentially the same product, cultural idiosyncracies, as expressed through design, can provide the difference that gives that package an edge on it’s competitors.

When I talk of ‘cultural difference’ I don’t mean that all products from Scotland should be tartan. Cultural elements might include the typefaces created from local references or experiences, attitudes to layout and form and, perhaps most importantly, the manner in which the pack interacts with the user. The initial experience of opening a package colours our attitude to the contents. Manufacturers such as IBM take time to ensure that the out-of-box-experience is rewarding and appropriate. The unpackaing ritual may evoke laughter or humility, it may pamper or excite or tease. Manufacturers also take time to ensure that they communicate with the user and indemnify themselves against uncontrolled unpacking which may damage the contents or the user.

Music packaging deserves an exhibition all of its own because the choices are so vast and the quality of graphic innovation breathtaking. In his video interview Daniel Weil bemoans the conservative attitude of the large music companies who refuse to consider a standard CD box to be anything more than a protective, brittle, styrene, cover for a disc and a leaflet. The packages afterlife in the home and its usefulness outwith the retail environment are not considered. While this is disappointing, many of the smaller music companies have used the limited constraints of the CD format to produce some of the most beautiful packages. Nuphonic, Talkin’ Loud, Mo’Wax, Deconstruction, Intro and Phono are only a tiny selection of the companies responsible for commissioning some of the most exciting new graphic design. They are responsible for launching the careers of a generation of talented graphic designers.

When examining packages it’s important to consider not only who they must attract or repel but the context they will be placed within. Often the next layer of design around the package is ‘point of sale’, which is a kind of mini retail environment all of its own, fitting snugly within the big pack, the shop itself. You can tell from the shop’s facade what kind of retail experience to expect inside. Brown profiled aluminium cladding is the architectural equivalent of the cardboard box. Beautifully detailed stone and glass mean money, both inside and out. As a rule-of-thumb, plastic outside usually means plastic inside. It’s a shame that we have yet to get to grips with big, high-quality, plastic buildings when we’re so good at smaller plastic products, like Persil Concentrated Washing-Up Liquid and Halfords Oil.

The next time you shop, pause for a second before you reach for the package and ask yourself why you have chosen it above all others. Analyse your reactions—are you doing what the designer expected of you? We are all experienced, and usually unconscious, shoppers who could learn so much about ourselves through what we buy if only we make time to pause and think.