As she whistled down the aisle my Mum cast a finely tuned shopping eye over hundreds of lined-up jars with the efficiency of a bar code reader.

“What are you looking for?” I questioned. “Pickles”, she answered and made swiftly for a jar just below eye-level. “There” she smiled “that one looks nice!”

This ‘brand instinct’ has been the refocus of food producers in recent years after having been left behind by other industries. Designers have engineered an entire spectrum of new food brands that target it. But what is ‘brand instinct’?

To the food industry it’s food fashion! Food today defines who we are, what we believe in and categorises our personalities – are you the sort of person who likes Marmite^â? The fine food industry exemplifies this with clever and sophisticated new brands that ooze ‘must have’ and loose ‘mundane’.

But already this new fashionable food has been through several evolutions in style as our instincts advance and our values change.

For example: Photographers now use advanced photographic techniques when shooting food. Plastic apples and papier mâché vol au vents don’t fool anyone anymore as today we see pictures of onions with roots, potatoes with soil and broken biscuits with crumbs. Thankfully there are less ‘anti-gravity floating food’ shots as well. Or perhaps no photography on a bottle of tomato sauce says more than a picture of a tomato!

Style-wise, with the exception of a few established brands we’ve moved on from doily wrapped lids and gingham bows to a more contemporary look with boldly coloured graphics and easy-to-read fonts.

(Reference:  ‘Relish the idea of..’ designed by Nik Pettett of CravingDesigns with permission)

At the premium end less has become more as small brandmarks portray ‘precious’ and uncluttered backgrounds suggest ‘sophisticated’.

(Reference: designed by Nik Pettett for Yin&Yang Design on behalf of Speciality Farm Foods)

The other senses can play a part here too. Maybe cotton paper is used for the label to mimic silk. Stick this on a jar of buttery Hollandaise sauce for a sense of what’s inside.

Of course it’s really the customers who are the better designers. They tell us what they want to know by buying the brands that inform. Currently that is; how big is its carbon footprint? What’s the name of the farmer? Can I recycle the plastic?

What about the future?  The industry has seen a growth spurt and as such many new brands are still on trial. Cost and the ecology will continue to be high on the list of considerations by brand managers and designers whilst legislation will demand that food packaging incorporates ‘American-style’ information panels and health warnings, most of which is currently optional – but advisable – under UK law.

Whatever happens it’s certain that changing food fashion is big business as customers search for better food experiences whilst designers and manufacturers come up with new ways to satisfy them.