Muji No-Brand Design × Plain Tobacco Packaging

Both strip branding, but one is a regulatory sanction in drab brown and the other a voluntary, serene choice.

From the research on Muji No-Brand Design (Mujirushi Ryohin)

Mix them and make something Muji No-Brand Design Plain Tobacco Packaging

A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Plain Tobacco Packaging, their arrangement from Muji No-Brand Design, the finish from Muji No-Brand Design. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Muji No-Brand Design (Mujirushi Ryohin) Plain Tobacco Packaging

Type from Plain Tobacco Packaging: Grotesque & neo-grotesque
Humanist sans
Colour from Plain Tobacco Packaging: Earth & mineral
Flat fields
Form from Plain Tobacco Packaging: Rectilinear
Naturalistic depiction
Composition from Muji No-Brand Design: Isolated object
Generous white space
Surface from Muji No-Brand Design: Paper & letterpress bite
Flat

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Plain Tobacco Packaging

Grid

Inter Tight, standing in for Helvetica (Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann, 1957): Australia's warning statements in bold capitals and its explanatory and information messages in upper and lower case, under the Competition and Consumer (Tobacco) Information Standard 2011

Text · Muji No-Brand Design

A house style that sells goods by withholding branding: clear cellophane and plain brown paper, plain labels stating the item and its price, and products centred in wide margins. Begun in Tokyo in 1980 under Ikko Tanaka, it makes calm a design method rather than a mood; Kenya Hara, art director since 2001, later articulated this through his idea of emptiness in his writing.

Zen Kaku Gothic New; Muji No-Brand Design used Japanese gothic (kaku gothic) sans-serif, the plain Japanese text tradition for labels and signage and Neutral neo-grotesque Latin sans-serif for English-language labels and signage, in the Helvetica tradition

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Plain Tobacco Packaging, with a counter-accent from Muji No-Brand Design. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Muji No-Brand Design (Mujirushi Ryohin) Plain Tobacco Packaging

#111111 ground · 36%
#ffffff ink · 14%
#ffd100 accent · 18%
#d7261e accent · 14%
#c9a97c accent · 10%
#4a412a accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #111111;
  --ink: #ffffff;
  --accent-1: #ffd100;
  --accent-2: #d7261e;
  --accent-3: #c9a97c;
  --accent-4: #4a412a;
  --font-display: "Inter Tight", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Zen Kaku Gothic New", sans-serif;
}

Use it with care

Plain Tobacco Packaging: Graphic health warnings show real disease and are official public-health instruments; WHO's warning database lists the Australian Government as the owner of its warning images, which it may license to other countries free of charge. Use the shock imagery only for genuine health communication, never as decoration or as a parody that could mislead about a product's risks, and check the terms before reproducing a country's actual warning photographs or mandated layouts. Respect the dignity of the people pictured, never generate imagery that could pass for an official warning, and do not turn the drab-pack look into anti-brand styling for tobacco, vaping or nicotine products, which would make a tool against persuasion persuasive again.