Quality Street

Graphic Design in Context Module

Quality Street is a magical brand and has held a special place in the hearts of the public in Britain and around the world, since it was launched in 1936 by Halifax confectioner Mackintosh’s. Quality Street was named by JM Barrie (of Peter Pan fame) play and the two figures on the box were originally inspired by the two principal characters Phoebe Throssel and Valentine Brown. In 1936 Quality street costs two shillings (10p), equivalent to £3.69 in today money. Today Quality Street are often associated with the Christmas period in Britain, Ireland and are bought as gifts throughout the season.

Last week I visited Halifax Bankfield Museum to find out more about this product’s history and to dive into atmosphere of the past centuries, howdesign looked like before and to compare that with today’s Quality Street design.

Design dating from 1901 year- even before the Quality Street brand was launched. In 1901 – the name of the sweets was ‘Mackintoch’s Toffee Deluxe’.

Also I received a lot of evidence how people used to advertise their products. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take any packaging examples with me, but I managed to take a lot of pictures. Looking in the past – is very exciting process, because you can see how people used to live before, what their lifestyle was and to compare that with nowadays, how our lifestyle together with design changed during the years. During my visit to museum Jeff Wilkinson also showed me the first ever advert of Quality Street, published in Daily Mail on Thursday, February 25, 1937. It was published almost 73 years ago, but that piece of news paper looked like it is only few years old.

Also I managed took take a picture of first ever advert published by Mackintoch’s. I think, it was in 1901 year.

1900’s

Display of egg and Toffee de Luxe

VS

If to compare today’s packaging

with 20’s, 30’s 40’s, 50’s- you will be

able to find a lot of differences. First of all the difference is

in graphics.

First ever design of Quality Street

Nowadays design look much simple. Not a lot going on the tin. They use mainly one colour for the carton design, no characters; they replaced characters with sweets. I think, this design is more reflecting our century, when most of the work made with the help of software. Personally, I like the old packaging design of Quality Street, because it’s reflecting people life and happiness

With appearance of technology packaging became more realistic, because now we are able to use photographs, prints, scans for our designs. To apply different fonts, shadows using the variety of software. But before people used draw all designs by hand, which they used for the projects then. It was much harder to do it manually.

During my visit to Bankfield Museum I took a lot of pictures of drawings, which designers created and used for Quality Street tins. It was like a cartoon, a lot of characters applied on the tin.

For example, a pair of hussars walking and laughing, on the background carriage going pass , another hussar gives sweets to the children. A lot of actions go on the tin of sweets

. I think this design was much better to compare with what we have today. People would buy it due to such design only, because illustrations were colourful passing through Christmas atmosphere and celebration mood.

It was a good present at any time of the year. Unfortunately, not all of the drawings were used for Quality Street designs, and were left as drawings on the paper only. So I think, Quality Street packaging design was very moody. It was like a cartoon-story applied on the tin, well drawn characters and interesting design

Also I visited Designing Company in Bradford ‘Chesapeake’, where they make packaging for ‘Quality Street’. Today we have a good opportunity to make our design work simple and fast. Designer Leigh Armstrong showed me the process from beginning, when they come up with idea of packaging design, till design completed and shown to the client

Cutting machine

Massive printing machines

Cutting machine

Example of design, which was printed recently

Storage, where designers keep all laser knives for their projects

Laser knives for cutting packaging

My design responds to our century. I tried to produce something new, what still is not on the shelf. My Quality Street tin opens in very unusual way, what could make people interested in this product and to choose it from others, which located on the same shelf on the market.

I went through the long way to create my packaging design. The most difficult was to make the actual prototype without help of technology, which designers use in their workplace. It takes a lot of time and tests, before producing complete piece of design.

The End