Design Firm P&W Wins Award For Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Private Brand Packaging Design Work

Private Brand Showcase
Private brand packaging design

The London-based firm Pemberton & Whitefoord (P&W) has been honored at the annual Design Business Association (DBA) awards event in the United Kingdom for its 'fresh&easy' private brand packaging design work for United Kingdom-based Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which operates 162 fresh food and grocery stores in California, Nevada and Arizona.

P&W won a "Bronze" award in the packaging design category for its design of over 600 private brand SKUs for El Segundo-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, including all the items pictured in this piece. You can read what the judges said about P&W's work for Fresh & Easy and its 'fresh&easy' brand here.

The DBA's packaging design category has four classes of winners (in the following order of honor) - Grand Prix (first), Gold, Silver and Bronze.

The "Grand Prix" winner for best packaging design went to the upscale United Kingdom food and grocery chain Waitrose and its Waitrose Graphics Design-Packaging Team, for its 'essential Waitrose' private brand. You can view pictures of the 'essential Waitrose' brand items here.

Waitrose also took home a "Gold" medal for its new range of home baking products, which was designed for the grocer by the Lewis Moberly firm. You can see the interesting "handful of, spoonful of," ect. range here.

Additionally, you can view all of the Gold, Silver and Bronze medal winners in the product packaging category here. Also, click here for all the details about the awards competition.

Britain's Design Business Association (DBA) focuses on how design, including product packaging, can aid in the growth of a business or the sales of a product, as it explains in its mission statement: "The Design Business Association is the UK's most vocal champion of the role of effective design in the creation of business growth. The DBA was founded in 1986 to recognise, communicate and reward the integral role that design effectiveness plays in commercial success." Design effectiveness is what the group focuses on in judging and giving out its awards, as well.

We've featured a number of the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market private brand SKUs designed by P&W in our 'Private Brand Showcase' feature.

For example, most recently, in a February 9, 2011 piece - New 'fresh&easy green things' Eco-Friendly Household Products Line Hitting the Shelves at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market - we wrote about a new line of "green" or "eco-friendly" household cleaning and paper goods products, the packaging of which was designed by P&W.

Additionally, the following are some recent stories in which Fresh & Easy private brand product packaging designed by London-based P&W are featured: December 13, 2010: House (Sparking) Cider Rules at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market; October 16, 2010: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market 'Bags' the Humble and Nutritious Plantain For A New Snack Chip Item; and October 16, 2010: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's Private Brand Kids' Cereal Wins Bronze 'Pentaward' in 2010 Packaging Design Competition.

Design competition awards don't sell products. And in Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's instance, aren't likely to garner its private brands designed by P&W much publicity per se, since the award comes from a design association located across the pond in the UK.

But such awards don't hurt either. And in the case of the DBA's awards, which focus on the effectiveness of a brand in a business and brand building context, they offer a window into those product packaging designers, like P&W, that are putting efforts into trying to make sure their work for clients like Tesco's fresh & Easy serves multiple masters, with one of those key packaging masters being effectiveness for the client - in this case a food and grocery retailer. And for grocers and private brands, effectiveness is what matters most.

Reader Note:

You can read a selection of past 'Private Brand Showcase' features by clicking private brand showcase. Use the "older posts" and "newer post" links at the bottom of each linked page for additional pages/stories.