On Targeted Ugly and Respect

February 2, 2010 by Brooke | Design | 1 comment

Grocery store shelves are teeming with poor design–primarily of generic, store brand products. You know: the box of Doodly-O’s you shove into your cart face-down because it looks so awful. Or maybe that’s just me. But is this apparent lack of skill or discretion actually a misguided form of targeted marketing?

Generic food brands.

When we walk the aisles of a store with the intention of buying the cheapest product, our eyes seek out bad design. You may not think of it in those terms, but because generic brands typically have a cheap, half-hearted look, that’s what we expect.

I believe this is intentional: stores design their products to catch the bargain shopper’s eye.

It all seems reasonable, until you consider why it catches our eye. In a typical chicken-egg scenario, did the poor design or the expectation of poor design come first? Why do we assume that inexpensive = ugly?

When we moved to southern California over a year ago, the first grocery store I noticed was Fresh & Easy for its unexpectedly well-designed signage. On my first visit I loved what I saw: great design, attention to detail, and an overall refreshing approach to store brand design. I actually wanted to buy their products in preference to other brands.

Fresh & Easy's excellent packaging design.

Simple, but innovative: alphabetically-labeled spices for better organization.

So now we come to the question, did this make it difficult for me to bargain shop? Not a bit. We’re already trained to assume the store’s brand is cheapest, so the challenge is to be able to quickly spot their products. On my first visit, I immediately picked up the store’s logo as an identifying mark, and in many cases, I simply and correctly assumed the best design was theirs.

Fresh & Easy's excellent packaging.

Also interesting to note: Fresh & Easy’s prices tend to be lower than other local grocery chains who employ the targeted ugly method.

I doubt Fresh & Easy’s design budget is greater than that of giants like Walmart, but they’ve managed to package their products in a way that doesn’t assume their customers lack taste. In doing so, they’ve also given their low-priced products a feeling of higher quality.

The point to take away from this is simple but invaluable. Respect your audience. Assume their aesthetic judgment is equal to yours. In all likelihood, it is.

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