Cornflakes to Cola - Design Museum Exhibition


During the summer I visited the Design Museum in London to see the Stanley Kubrick exhibition, whilst there I had a look at the ‘Cornflakes to Cola’ exhibition; exploring the early work of Sainsbury’s in house design studio who created the labels for all the own brand products.

In the 50’s in London, Sainsbury’s set up its first self service store - customers could pick their own products from the shelves, which was very exciting given the had not long ago been rationing during the war. In 1963, Sainsbury’s in house graphic design studio was created, led by Peter Dixon. The team created hundreds of designs a year for own brand product packaging design and general branding for the store. The aim was to create a fun and exciting brand identity and line of products, making shopping a fun experience. 

I found this exhibition very interesting, it was intriguing to read about the general day to day of the studio and their design process, consulting often with CEO John Sainsbury. The bright modernist designs for each product are very of the era and all have a strong sense of continuity, whilst still communicating the individual product. 

This exhibition applies to my COP design project so well. Seeing all these packaging designs has really emphasised how interesting it would be to contrast contemporary graphic design with more mundane supermarket branding for my ‘New Music Market’ visual identity, and in doing so, create something more individual and engaging. It’s also led me to think about the packaging design of the products I will produce. While I was considering doing completely individual designs for each product, informed purely buy the album they’re based on, I think it would be very interesting to have a sense of brand continuity throughout the product line. 










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