In 1998, Tesco Finest stood alone in the supermarket sector as the very first own-label premium brand. But now, twenty years after it first made itself at home on British dining tables, Tesco Finest was grappling with its place in the world. It had its sights set on whetting the appetites of modern foodies with new, meticulously crafted packaging designs.

From the off, Tesco Finest delivered remarkable food and drink experiences. It’s a brand with stories to tell - of provenance, expertise and taste experience. Our idea was to refocus the brand’s attention away from communicating fine dining at home and towards sharing these rich stories of craftsmanship.

To reintroduce craft into the brand, we would delve deep into each products’ unique origin and use design to bring these tales bang up to date for modern British foodies both young and old.

Up first on the menu was tinned fish. A humble kitchen staple, it’s as rich in heritage as it is in flavour. So, we decided to peel back the years and seek inspiration from traditional designs once popular across Europe.

Bright, cheery and vastly creative, traditional European fish tins offer a masterclass in packaging design. Bringing that same bold charisma to our six unique packaging designs would be key to appealing to modern foodies.

We meticulously pored over the details to design an illustration style that leaps off the can and looks (almost) too good to open. Then, we paired each illustration with an evocative colour palette to champion flavour cues and topped them off with detailed touches to convey craftsmanship.

Visually rich, it’s a contemporary take on the time-honoured European styles that tells a wholly modern story. Now, each tin dramatises the provenance of the fish inside and seamlessly continues a story of craft that begins long before canning. Look at Tesco Finest mackerel or sardines today and we hope you’ll agree that their packaging feels as fresh as a Mediterranean morning.

Since launch, the new designs for Tesco Finest tinned fish have succeeded in enhancing perceptions of taste and quality with consumers, driving reappraisal at shelf.