Beyond the template: how M&S is giving own-brand packaging more personality

By moving beyond rigid category templates, M&S Food is showing how own-brand packaging can build desire, communicate product truth and turn the supermarket shelf into a more expressive brand environment.

The own-brand aisle is changing. Once characterised by tightly controlled templates and visual systems designed primarily for consistency, supermarket packaging is becoming more varied, expressive and culturally aware.

Few retailers illustrate that shift as clearly as M&S Food.

Across its Foodhalls, the retailer has been introducing packaging with markedly different personalities. Some products use pared-back typography and place ingredients at the centre of the design. Elsewhere, illustration, colour and playful visual language help bakery, confectionery and seasonal launches establish identities of their own.

The result is a portfolio that feels less like a single template applied repeatedly and more like a collection of individual brands connected by a shared understanding of M&S quality.

From consistency to distinctiveness

Traditional own-label systems have often relied on uniformity. Repeated layouts, fixed colour structures and prominent tiering make large ranges easier to navigate and manage.

That consistency remains important, but it can also limit a product’s ability to communicate what makes it special.

M&S appears to be taking a more flexible approach: allowing the nature of the product, its ingredients and the occasion surrounding it to influence how the packaging behaves. A premium food item can borrow cues from specialist delis. A sweet treat can be playful and visually indulgent. A simple pantry product can communicate with clarity and restraint.

Rather than asking every pack to look the same, the system gives individual products greater freedom to tell their own stories.

Creative Review attributes this evolution to the work of M&S head of packaging design John-Paul Hunter and the retailer’s wider in-house team, including designers, artworkers, project managers, product developers and other creative specialists.

That collaborative structure matters. Building distinctive packaging at supermarket scale requires more than a strong creative concept. Designs must work across extensive ranges, meet regulatory requirements, perform in production and remain recognisable in fast-moving retail environments.

Packaging as product communication

One of the clearest examples of the strategy is M&S’s reduced-ingredient cereal range.

The packs bring the number of ingredients – and the ingredients themselves – to the front, using minimal layouts and clear typography rather than relying on conventional cereal imagery. Some products contain six ingredients or fewer, enabling the packaging to turn formulation simplicity into the primary visual message.

It is a useful demonstration of packaging’s ability to make product information part of the brand experience.

Transparency is not treated as an obligation confined to the back panel. It becomes a source of differentiation. The pack communicates quickly, gives shoppers a clear reason to believe in the product and reflects growing interest in how food is made.

For packaging teams, the wider lesson is not that every product should adopt minimalist design. It is that the most relevant product truth can become the foundation of the visual identity.

Designed for the shelf and the screen

The modern supermarket pack no longer exists only in a physical aisle.

New food launches are photographed, reviewed and shared across TikTok, Instagram and other social platforms. Visually distinctive packaging can contribute to that momentum by making a product feel discoverable, collectable and worth sharing.

Creative Review notes that M&S launches such as cookies, sandwiches and limited-edition desserts have attracted attention online, with packaging becoming an increasingly important part of how those products are encountered.

This does not mean every pack needs to be designed as social-media content. It does, however, mean packaging must now perform across more environments.

At close range, it must inform. On the shelf, it must interrupt. In a photograph or short video, it must remain recognisable. And as part of a wider portfolio, it must continue to reinforce trust in the retailer behind it.

M&S’s varied approach suggests that recognisability does not always depend on repeating an identical layout. It can also be built through a consistent level of confidence, craft and product focus.

A broader role for own brand

The evolution of M&S Food packaging reflects a wider change in the role of retailer brands.

Own label is no longer positioned solely as a lower-cost alternative to established manufacturers. Retailers increasingly use it to build loyalty, respond quickly to emerging tastes and create products that shoppers can find nowhere else.

Packaging is central to that proposition.

When each product is given a relevant and compelling identity, the retailer can behave more like a curator of brands than the owner of one visually uniform range. The overall portfolio gains energy, while individual products have more opportunity to stand apart.

There are risks. Too much variation can weaken navigation or make a range feel disconnected. Greater creative freedom also places more pressure on governance, production and quality control.

The opportunity lies in balancing coherence with character.

M&S demonstrates that a strong own-brand system does not necessarily need every product to speak in the same voice. Instead, it can establish the principles within which different voices are allowed to emerge.

For packaging professionals, that may be the most significant lesson. Consistency remains valuable, but consistency of thinking can be more powerful than consistency of appearance.

As retailers compete for attention both on the shelf and on the screen, the brands that stand out may be those willing to treat every pack not as another application of a template, but as an opportunity to make the product’s story visible.