Own Label: Sainsburys Design Studio: 1962 - 1977 [Paperback]

This is an outstanding book by Jonny Trunk, who is probably better known for his day job as a vinyl archaeologist with his record label, Trunk Records. Printed on high quality paper, it is crammed with photographs and scans of the packaging and labels designed by the Sainsbury's Design Studio between 1962 and 1977 and it highlights just how much time, money and effort Sainsbury's spent on establishing and promoting their own product brands. From cereal boxes to cans of ale, hundreds of designs are featured and there are even a few photographs of Sainsbury's stores from the period.

Compiled with great care and attention to detail, the exact dimensions and the year they first appeard on the shelves at Sainsbury's is given for nearly all of the designs featured. Produced with the cooperation of Sainsbury's, it's a visual feast. The quality of the scans, photographs and the overall layout of the book is top drawer.

With a foreword by Trunk explaining how the book came about and a detailed essay by designer Emily King, this is an immensely enjoyable book. Whether you're interested in graphic design, in need of a nostalgia trip or just curious, I wholeheartedly recommend it.

I worked in the Sainsbury's Design Studio in the 1970s under Peter Dixon. It was a wonderful place to work. Peter forbade anyone from marketing to come into the studio and dealt directly with Sir John Sainsbury. Effectively your work went off the drawing pad and straight to the Chairman. It was not fiddled with in the way it would be nowadays. Mine are the petfood tins (which one other reviewer has been very sweet about), the crisp packs and a few others. The best work is by the late Peter Proto, Dixon himself and Bill Wilson. The cripsbreads and paper tissue packs make current own label look tawdry. If you love design from a purer, less marketing led age, buy this book

Journey back in time to the sixties when creative folk pored over the latest Habitat catalogue and if they were print designers they knew intimately some of the letterpress types of the day: Monotype 215 and 216; Plantin; Times; Grot 9 (not forgetting the dreadful looking Placard) and Letraset Compacta. The flat graphic style of Sainsbury's packing burst upon the Nation's shoppers thanks to an enlightened management and Art Director Peter Dixon who started the in-house design studio in 1963.

The nicely produced paperback includes more than a hundred packs mostly shown in a flat-plan format with the rest as individual still-life shots. What did strike me though when seeing so many of these packs in one place is how, despite a simple design format, they looked so varied. The really successful ones, it seems to me, have an illustration, either a photo or graphic. On page 179 seven can labels for pet food look as fresh today as they did in 1976. A simple silhouette of a cat or dog gives them such a lift. Page 159 shows a pan scourer pack with a simple graphic of a pan and clean looking typography. Page 42 has two crispbread packs with graphics for rye and wheat. These are all brilliant pack designs that clearly stood out on the shelves, especially against alternative products with their brash designs.

Why some sort of illustration wasn't used on more of the designs seems strange because the pure type and colour panel packs come across as trying too hard and some look positively uninspiring. The Instant hot oat cereal (page 45) and Mixed dog biscuits (page 176) have a feel of an art school project. Peter Dixon is quoted as saying each of his design team had to produce an average of two and half packs a week. With that sort of turnover there are bound to be some duds.

I noticed another interesting thing about the packs. The changing style of Sainsbury's logo. Dixon says it was Venus Bold Extended, always as caps on the exterior of their supermarkets. Looking through the pages you can see various faces used: Helvetica and Helvetica Medium; Venus light, bold and bold extended. Either in caps or lower case and some with rather ugly letter spacing, too.

'Own label' is a delightful book of design nostalgia showing packs that surely must have been in every middle-class household across the land.

>>>LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.