Archive for the 'Rants' Category

The canned-food aisle got a makeover a few months ago. One or two cans came out at first, then all of the sudden everything was converted. And they look great.

Publix had a pretty extensive line of canned vegetables already, so this is not one of the areas where we see a lot of new products introduced with the new packaging. I think the selection has expanded a little bit, though. For example, I could be mistaken, but I believe there are more vegetables with reduced salt or no salt at all.

The packaging is consistent with the other products in this general category: a serif font for the emphasized product word combined with a traditional product shot. I appreciate that the designers picked colors corresponding to the products when selecting the colors to use on the labels. I would imagine it was a little tricky to select several distinguishable shades of green, but they pulled it off rather well. The cans are infinitely better than the previous store brand version, and in my opinion they’re now better looking than the brand names, too. And as always, the products themselves taste great and can compete nicely with the so-called real thing.

The only part of this packaging that I object to is the same thing I often object to: the word choice for the emphasized part. Notice in this picture that the middle can is labeled as “No Salt.” Lots of the vegetables have no-salt varieties now, and lots are green as well. (Different shades of green, though.) It’s hard to tell what the product is from a distance. It makes the shopper pick up the can and read it carefully to make sure it’s the desired product. In this specific case, it’s kind of hard to tell whether the can contains green beans or peas. (I think it’s peas.) The emphasis works better on the top can (“French Style”), but that’s because there’s only one vegetable that that phrase applies to: green beans. I’m sure it must be a hard decision, though, because I recognize that if the vegetable names were highlighted, a similar quandary would result. Instead of struggling to differentiate peas from beans, shoppers would have to work to identify the particular style of beans, etc. An interesting problem…