Monoprix Wages War Against Junk Design

Ever wish your store-brand tomato purée had more oomph? France's Monoprix is answering the call with pop art-inspired packaging for its proprietary food items.

Before and after:



Dreamt to life by Design Havas City in response to Monoprix's refusal (inability?) to compete pricewise with stores like E. Leclerc, the packaging does away with generic food images and instead features contrasting colour bars buttressing words describing the contents, accompanied with a single pithy line.

For example, for a long horseshoe-shaped package of sausage, the label reads, "High-quality dry sausage: the sausage that does a demi-turn."

The marketing surrounding the labeling facelift is simple, consistent and bloody everywhere. Here's one of the handful of reaction videos Monoprix is disseminating online:



Some of the métro ads slathered all over the underground:

No to junk design!

2 frozen cheeseburgers.

This morning, open your eyes to something beautiful.

A street-level ad with the "No to junk design!" manifesto:

The packaging for sterilised milk, in-hand:



In the US, Target and a handful of specialised eco-friendly grocery chains come to mind as having taken a similar course, and for good reason: a sharp design change that lasts the ages can help alter feelings about a brand ... and shopping in general. Suddenly, you're proud to buy generic - because it's Monoprix! - when you might have felt dumpy about it before.

And a lot of that has to do with the way the change is being promoted: it's aggressive, educational, omnipresent, proud of the space it's taking up. And that's all okay because it's beautiful and clever.

In the French style, think of this as a kind of aesthetic revolution in banality.

Last two photos come courtesy of the magnanimous Joffrey Faroux.