Practical Design
Why Good Design Matters in Everyday Items
By Niko Kitsakis, August 2024
Good design could be so obvious. That’s what I think at least. Because if you look at the world with the eye of a designer, you see countless examples of where man-made objects could be much better designed or, at the very least, markedly optimised. Unfortunately, the media and even most design blogs have a blind spot for these matters. To criticise the latest tech gadget is more interesting – and an easier sell to their audience – than trying to think about how to make, say, a better faucet or door handle. Or indeed a glass of herbs.
The Label
If you like to cook (like I do) you’ll end up with lots of ingredients on the different shelves of your kitchen. Most of the stuff that doesn’t have to go into the fridge will usually last from six months to up to two years or so. Canned goods, rice and pasta, herbs and so on. If you only have a few of these that’s no problem. These items accumulate however: You’ll buy some special pasta or herb which you don’t use very often and it will land in the shelf next to similar items. This is what the shelf for my herbs looks like for example:
The herbs in my kitchen. Take note of how many glasses are placed with their backs facing forward on the shelf.
The glasses in which the herbs are sold have a label that goes around them. On the front you’ll find a picture of the herb and its name, and on the back you will get more detailed information like the expiration date. Take a look at the front:
The glass on the right comes in a newer (and worse¹) design that the maker is in the process of switching to. This newer design, however, doesn’t address the usability problems that the old design already had.
As you can see, the herbs are Oregano, Basil and Parsley – all made and distributed by the same supermarket chain called Migros in Switzerland. And since they are also sold in Switzerland, the front of the label has their names in the three most used languages of that country which are German, French and Italian. So what’s the problem with their design?
Expiration Date
If you have many of these herbs in your shelf, you will lose track of when they expire because in order to see when they do, you need to turn the glasses around. When you do that and leave the glasses as they are, however, you can’t tell which herb is which anymore in many cases. Take a look:
Can you tell which herb is which when the glasses are turned around? Neither can I…
With the Oregano, Basil and Parsley for example, what is inside the glass looks pretty much alike². The same goes for paprika and cayenne pepper or turmeric and curry powder. To turn every glass around to check if one has expired and then turning them again so you can read the front of the label is an unnecessary hassle.
And there’s another thing to consider: The expiration date on the back isn’t very legible since it isn’t the only thing that has been printed on the label during the packaging process. In our example there’s also the country of origin (on the newly designed glass at least), then, what I think, is probably a lot number and a timestamp, and then another number. Take a look:
On the left is the custom printed information as it is today, on the right is what is actually of interest to the consumer.
None of these pieces of information is of any practical use to the consumer in 99% of cases³. Only the expiration date is. That is not to say that the additional information isn’t needed, but that it should be smaller than the expiration date or somewhere else entirely. Granted, some manufacturers do actually print the expiration date larger than the rest, but it is still a visual mess and you still need to turn the glass around to see the date. So why not do it like this instead:
The front of the label as it is (more or less) today on the left versus a redesign where the expiration date is printed on the front of the label.
When the expiration date is printed on the front of the label, it eliminates the need for the consumers to turn the herbs around in their shelves. Every bit of useful information is visible at a glance. And nobody is stopping the manufacturer from putting the lot number etc. on the back of the product. Also, it’s not only a convenience issue either: I’m convinced that putting the expiration date on the front would go a long way toward counteracting food waste as it reduces the chance of forgetting to check the date. I started by saying “good design could be so obvious” and I think this proves it.
Wait a Minute
I had written this piece up to here when I suddenly realised that I might actually have seen this before! The place where I had seen this was, like with the Migros supermarket chain, on the items of a company that not only makes their own food products but also sells them in their own stores.
Muji puts the expiration date on the front of many of their food products. Note how on the curry to the right, there’s even a little space for it that cuts into the picture.
Muji, in case you don’t know them, is a Japanese retailer that sells everything from food products to furniture. Think of IKEA plus H&M (but with much better quality products than those two) plus a supermarket and more. They are known for their well-designed products and their philosophy of minimal packaging. Well-designed in this case also means practical, hence the expiration date on the front of the product⁴. And it’s in the interest of the maker too: When you run your own stores, like Muji and Migros do, this simplifies the restocking process for your employees.
I’m glad that I thought of the Muji example because it’s also a good counterargument to the sort of people who would say that the date on the front of a product somehow makes the product look less appealing. Muji products and their packaging (where it exists) are very often far better designed than the counterparts from their rivals. So for them to put the expiration date on the front of their food products should give their competitors some clues. You would think…
These are some stationery products from Muji. As you can see, there’s little to no packaging at all on their products.
The only reason I can think of for why most manufacturers of food products haven’t put the expiration dates on the front of their packaging yet is a misguided sense of aesthetics. And then there’s also the typical disease of middle management: No one wants to rock the boat and introduce a potentially controversial change. So the people responsible mostly do nothing but slightly change the look of the product every five years to justify their position. Meanwhile, the consumer sees little real innovation.
Good design is about functionality. By placing the expiration date on the front of the packaging, manufacturers can significantly enhance the convenience and customer satisfaction of their food products⁵. This simple change makes it easier to keep track of which items might have expired and so reduces food waste. The example of Muji demonstrates that such an approach – if done correctly – can be both feasible and doesn’t need to look bad.
- Why do I think that the new design is worse? I’m not in love with either label but the new one has, amongst other problems, photos of green herbs on a green background. That means someone must have slept through the part about contrast in their graphic design classes… ↑
- If you’re really pedantic, you will no doubt insist that at least the parsley on the right can be identified by the different shape of its glass. But as I’ve mentioned under the first picture of the three glasses, the maker is in the process of switching all its herbs to this newer design. Once all their customers have restocked their herbs, the glasses are going to look exactly the same (as they did before when all had the old design). ↑
- Of course the lot number or country of origin might be important to know in case a product gets recalled or something similar, but it’s not like this is the case every week. There’s no reason, therefore, to make these numbers visually appear as if their significance was somehow the same as the expiration date. ↑
- Muji, unfortunately, also has some information of no interest to the consumer next to their expiration date. That – as I said earlier – belongs to the back of the product. And as for how the date itself is written, I would prefer that everyone, not just Muji, adopted what is actually an ISO standard, namely ISO 8601. It basically says that dates should read left to right from the largest unit to the smallest, resulting in a format of YYYY-MM-DD (and the year always consisting of four numerals). An approach which is not only logical but would remove the ambiguity when you want to read the date in other countries or on imported products. ↑
- In case you haven’t picked up the hints from the text: This goes for all food packaging of course, not only herbs. Those I picked because their badly designed label is a personal gripe of mine and they were also an ideal example for illustrating my point. ↑
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