> I know it's untenable in practice, but in my perfect imaginary utopia, products on shelves would have minimalistic (and standardized) packaging with no branding crap, and the labeling would be maximized for utility. Product type and core variables (e.g. "milk" and "UHT 2%") in large font, ingredients, nutrition table and manufacturer/expiry date in small font below or to the side.

Sounds like the Canadian 'no name' house brand of, I believe, the No Frills/Loblaws supermarket group:

https://www.nofrills.ca/search?search-bar=No%20name

They definitely missed on having their truck/trailers branded "Truck" in that same black on yellow look.

There are lots of brands that do this. I think Ikea in particular has some pretty minimalistic branding on its own products. Tesco, lidl/aldi (I forget which) too.

That's true actually, Waitrose's 'essentials' isn't far off the simplicity of 'no name'; I suppose it's just my lack of familiarity (I'm British, not Canadian) that made 'no name' stand out as unusual and most like this to me at first.

But yes, you're right, supermarket own brands in general are relatively straightforwardly packaged. I suppose in part it's because they cover such a range of products, so they can't pick a more 'normal' theme that might look better for some of them, because it would be so odd and out of place on other lines.

I think often they are exactly the same as branded products (repackaged), so they agree to make the packaging plain.

> in my perfect imaginary utopia, products on shelves would have minimalistic (and standardized) packaging with no branding crap

In the recent production of The Handmaid's Tale, the handmaids do their shopping at grocery store (more like a commissary) that is as you described. I know it's context-dependent but the thing looks terribly bleak, and oppressive in that it implies lack of choice and in turn lack of freedom to make any choice. I would never want to shop there. I think the appeal of minimalist design is that it stands out in a field of non-minimalist (maybe more functional) designs, and one expresses his individuality with the choosing. I don't think we would prefer the world to look mostly like an Apple Store.

In The Handmaid's Tale it's even worse than the quoted commenter described: the packaging and all the signage in the store is all pictures and no text because handmaids aren't allowed to be literate.

In my Utopia there's no packaging, just dispensers. You bring your own reusable package and thus reduce waste.

I was just talking with my colleagues how it'd be ideal if some sort of bottle washer was ubiquitous in work/public places. I buy freshly pressed orange from a cafe near work. I try to re-use their disposable bottle (you can't provide your own because volume) but there are only so many times I can wash the orange bits out by hand.

Milk bottles are thoroughly steam washed. Not sure If I could trust a bottle washing machine unless they where my dirty bottles.

Yeah, I mean for one's own bottles. I have a bottle; it was new, I use it for things like milk or orange juice then I need to wash it to fill out with some other consumable liquid, but washing out orange is hard.

We have such a supermarket here; here's a video from the inside: https://youtu.be/m-4GorCp-uk?t=166

https://www.loes-market.dk/

Re: your imaginary utopia, take a look at Repo Man - pay attention to the shelves in this clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoRqyWkBxos

Perfect! I'd shop in that store (outside of the hours people shoot at each other).

There was a short-lived sci-fi show in the 80's called "Otherworld" which involved various parallel universes. One of them had stores with products like these:

https://b.allthepics.net/1meat.jpg

https://b.allthepics.net/2food.jpg

(sorry, that's the best image quality I could find)

They're kind of a real thing. Look up Generic Brands. I remember seeing them in the early 90s. The one I remember most was "Beer". White can with just "BEER" written on it.

I think they've started to eventually jazz up their packaging so they just look like rip-offs now.

That's a bit underspecified, but I can think of some contemporary items on the shelves whose richful branding communicates about just as much actual information.

>I know it's untenable in practice, but in my perfect imaginary utopia, products on shelves would have minimalistic (and standardized) packaging with no branding crap, and the labeling would be maximized for utility.

It is not so untenable, as proved by RxBar ─ a bootstrapped venture, which sold to Kellogs for $600M a few years ago. The pivot to clean, minimalist design and colors with relevant typography, proved to be a turning point in it's fortunes.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/308136

> (don't Google lotus seed pods if you're not ready to risk a very unpleasant feeling).

Only 15-17% of the population get that reaction (it's called trypophobia)

I'm hoping with this, arachnophobia (3.5-6.1% from random googling), a photo of tumor and perhaps one or two more, you could get to 50%+ of people finding something viscerally disgusting on the packaging.

BTW. I am in this 15-17% of the population, as I discovered recently thanks to someone mentioning lotus seed pods on HN.

Well, I have a fear of needles (not sure how common it is), not just for myself but also if someone gets administered or administers themselves. I need to really control myself if such happens. Tuesday someone who decided to sit next to me in the train gave themselves a diabetes shot. Needless to say I had to apply some breathing exercise there, I nearly fainted. I'm not sure that's the reaction you want to have on people who just 'see the product'.

I do agree the amount of meaningless choice as well as non-products and ridiculous colors is off the charts in terms of misinformation and uselessness. The reason is they get away with it. You need to regulate companies, else they do whatever the fuck they want which is in their sole interest; not yours.

Wait, arachnophobia is 3.5-6.1%, while trypophobia is 15-17% ?! I find that hard to believe.

My figure is a result of quick, random googling; as for trypophobia, I'm guessing it's a tentative figure, given how until recently, the phenomenon didn't even have a name, and it's still not formally recognized as a thing by medical sciences.

> Only 15-17% of the population get that reaction (it's called trypophobia)

Most people still think these seed pods look sorta weird.

Adding to examples, the Blåvitt ("blue and white") series of goods sold in Swedish cooperative stores from the 70s until the early 00s come pretty close to this aesthetic:

https://kf.se/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/2-in-1.jpg

A bit of history:

https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

As always ... a relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/993/

Looks very much like No Frills which was the own brand of Kwik Save, a now defunct UK supermarket. All very much in this style https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dzru1pPW0AE8aDF?format=jpg&name=...

I wish there was a supermarket that just didn't have all the redundant products. Take laundry detergent for example. Why do there need to be 523423 different brands and types. They should offer just 3 options: Color, Dark and White. I don't want to have to choose between all these irrelevant options, I just want my clothes to be clean.

They should only offer choices where it matters, like different kinds of beer or frozen pizza.

This was the original Aldi strategy. Cut down on variety and compete on price instead. Until the early naughts, the average German Aldi store would have less than 1000 SKUs. In fact, they didn't have barcode scanners. The cashiers knew the code for each SKU by heart. It was only in the last 15 years or so that they slowly ramped up to match other discount supermarkets in selection.

They're still pretty close imho. There's still only one type of spaghetti, one type of wheat flour, etc. Some other articles are more diversified now (cheaper and more expensive olive oil, but all store brand, same with milk, of which there is now {skim, full-fat, fancier full-fat} x {non-organic, organic} iirc) and they've added some brand foods, especially sweets (Aldi Nord may be different, I'm in Aldi Süd territory). But it's still much more pleasant to shop there than at regular supermarkets, which have music and advertisements playing and way too many practically identical articles. I don't need twelve brands of yellow mustard.

Aldi Nord is pretty much like any Edeka.

> Cut down on variety and compete on price instead.

I don't care so much about price as I do about convenience. ALDI only sells low-budget store-brands, and that's going a bit too far. I want A brands where it matters, and high-quality generic things where it doesn't.

Not sure where you are, but Aldi Süd in Germany is pretty nice. It's not the place to go shopping for specialty foods, of course, but for everyday items, their products are well-priced for decent quality in my experience. In some areas it's even better than that, their cheese selection puts quite a few non-discount supermarkets to shame.

In the US, I really liked Trader Joe's, which seems like an up-market version of Aldi. Which makes sense, seeing as it's owned by Aldi Nord.

With the advent of home delivery, this is as easy as filtering inline search results to said brands. And, if it matters to you, printing out your own minimalistic labels..

The problem is not the labels, the problem is that I don't want to have to make a choice.

Then just buy all generic store brand.

Hire a personal shopper

There are so many reasons why this is a bad idea:

- what seems like superfluous options to you might be required for people with allergies or other conditions

- even those that don't have any medial reasons might still have preferences. eg some washing detergents smell rank to me while others don't. There will be people who have the reverse preferences too. So just because you cannot detect any difference it doesn't mean others also don't.

- monopolies are bad for consumers for a multitude of reasons. Lack of innovation, higher prices, etc. Really this point alone should be multiple bullet points.

What I really wish supermarkets stopped doing was moving stuff around. I know exactly why they do it (lost customers tend to buy more stuff by accident) however as a customer it's REALLY(!!!) annoying having to relearn where you're preferred breakfast cereal is now located when the last place you'd want to be on a Saturday afternoon is stuck in a Supermarket with two bored kids (though these days I just pay for home delivery)

And also a lot of the minimal brand own label foods are not as good.

A uk supermarket substituted its own brand sausages one time and they looked cheap and looked so vile when cooked that the entire packet was thrown away

You have to be careful in that assumption. Sometimes it's true and sometimes it's just preference (eg I prefer Tesco cornflakes to Kellogg's). Often it depends on the supermarket and range (eg some supermarkets will have a few own brands for different price and "quality" brackets).

Another thing to baring in mind that it's quite common for some producers to distribute to different brands. Eg they might make the same product for a budget brand as they would for a premium brand. Maybe just sorting the product by what's more aesthetically pleasing. I've noticed this a lot with loose vegetables where "ugly" carrots would be sold to cheap brands whereas the smaller but prettier carrots would go to premium brand and sold for twice the price (even without factoring in the smaller weight). But it does also happen with some pre-made / pre-seasoned dishes as well.

The best advise is not to take brands nor even price at face value. Try a few products and see what works for you. Unfortunately though, much of our experience is distorted by bias (this is an area for amusement during wine tasting studies under controlled scientific conditions). So often we end up actually preferring the more expensive brand because we assume we should so our brain convinces us we do (isn't our human psychology fun!)

I can’t tell if you’re being ironic, because even for laundry detergents, scents matter, both for personal preference or for medical reasons (some folks have medically bad reactions to scents others find pleasant). You quickly reinvent the combinatorial explosion.

I, on the other hand, detect no meaningful difference between any beers, ‘cause to me they all taste bad. ;)

> even for laundry detergents, scents matter

A detergent should clean my clothes. If there is a scent after washing they aren't clean.

For you... hence the different types of detergents.

But your clothes smelling like sticking your nose into a bag of washing powder feels sooooooo clean

Also, to add to other people's points; newborns/infants should have their clothes washed in non-bio, it's less likely to cause irritation to their skin, conversely it's not as effective due to lack of (biological) enzymes, particularly at lower temperatures, so you should be using regular "bio" most of the time.

Also, competition. If you're happy to pay 10 times more for Colour, Dark and White powders because nobody else makes it, that's your choice, we'll just put it on the shelf next to the rest of the more affordable options.

Sounds like stores during socialism in eastern Europe. No thanks.