Whilst looking through a collection of Eye magazines down in the library, I came across one which has quite an interesting look into packaging - mainly focusing on the typographic side of things. The Eye magazine I picked up was a food edition (maybe I was hungry at the time…), where I came across an article called 'Identity Preserved - The labels for Tiptree jams stand out by staying the same' by Jay Prynne.
The article is about the changes and development of the identity of 'Wilkin Sons Ltd.', a company that produced 'fruit jellys' or more commonly known as jam. It begins by talking us through how the company came around in 1888 and was originally called the Britannia Fruit Preserving Company and that by 1905 the company changed its name to Wilkin & Sons Limited. The writer then talks us through how the company used an oval label, that looked optical round when places on the jar (quite a good technique if you ask me). Over the century the labels haven't changed much, with only the typographic side of the labels being changed such as size, typefaces, more type etc and the fruit decoration around the lid staying the same. Throughout the older changes of the label, all the lettering was originally drawn by hand; though two years ago they decided to stop the different typefaces and have their own recognisable type. They re-thought things and went back to the hand drawn sans serif days of Donald Sutherland with a condensed width and flexibility for the curvature of the labels. When the writer interviewed my Thurgood was asked who took care of the labels, he said that it was important to the they they had somebody that actually cared about the design of the labels.
Whilst reading through the article I couldn't help but notice some quite good quotes such as "I like to think its a breakable brand - if you dropped it on the floor and broke it into bits you would still know it" which I thought was a good quote to resemble a recognisable company.
I thought the article was rather interesting, with the fact that the company is still successful with such an old base label design. However, one problem I believe is that by sticking with such a similar design for such a long time, the company hasn't had chance to change much and could be restricted in some things, but I believe that the element of the design that keeps it successful is the simplicity of it - it looked good then and still does now, and it doesn't look too dated like some older labels may do.
Below is an image of the various different labels used by the company:
From reading this article, it has made me think a little differently about rebranding. Sometimes little changes work really well and just flow with the most up to date technology and whats 'in style', and that maybe little but subtle changes are a good thing,rather than completely changing the brands style, almost making it unrecognisable.
