Milk it

For me a visit to the supermarket is a distraction of packaging. I go off-list very quickly indeed if something is designed nicely and needs to go home with me.

For example, I very often feel the need for a whole set of Waitrose herbs and spices. They look great all lined up in the shop, nice big lettering, simple clear containers, interesting innards. The other day I spent a long time looking at the cake decorations and bun cases in there, similarly packaged but brighter on the inside. And I don’t bake.

Tea packaging is a big like too. Nice little rows of cardboard boxes with illustrations on them. Inside, disappointingly, you often find rather unnatural flavoured natural herb teas. Top opening tea packets with hinges are the best. I can take or leave a cellophane wrap.

Marks & Spencers tend to have small clusters of nicely packaged goods in their shops. Amongst horrible, vivid fast food wrappers and ye-olde looking boxes and bottles for the grey shoppers you can find some gems. They have some corking sweet packets in store at the moment. This small ‘milk carton’ fairly leapt out at me the other day. Fabulous typeface. Lovely visual play on the packaging of real milk. Nice milky milk sweets inside. Bliss.

Milk is a wonderful thing anyway. As a word it looks great. It’s a nice colour – full cream, anyway. Milk bottles used to be nice – those old glass ones were a classic shape. Pushing in the tin foil lid was most satisfying. Such a simple packaging solution. The cardboard milk carton is a classic now too. Up there with – dare I say it – Chinese cardboard takeaway pots with little metal carrying handles. But that’s a whole other blog.