1. Quality
Street
Graphic Design
in Context Module

3. 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.

4. 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, how
design looked like before and to compare that with today’s Quality Street
design.

5. 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’.

6. 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.

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

9. 1900’s
Display of egg and
Toffee de Luxe

12. 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.
VS

13. First ever design of Quality Street

24. 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.

25. 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.

27. 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

32. . 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.

34. 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

37. 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

38. Cutting machine

39. Massive printing machines

40. Cutting machine

41. Example of design, which was printed
recently

43. Storage, where designers
keep all laser knives for
their projects

44. Laser knives for cutting
packaging

46. 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.

47. The End