Safeway decides not to replace Mathers

Supermarket giant Safeway has decided not to replace its former head of design, John Mathers, who left earlier this year to join Sampson Tyrrell Enterprise. His responsibilities are now being handled by the chain’s three design managers.

Ian Welsh, Paul Hutton and Roy Harlington have assumed guardianship of the Safeway brand, as well as responsibility for packaging, corporate identity and signage respectively.

A Safeway spokeswoman states that design has been given a broader perspective within Safeway, but refuses to comment further. She confirms that Argyll, owner of the 370-strong Safeway chain, will adopt the Safeway name. The group’s other supermarket brand, the 103-strong Presto chain, is also being rebranded under the Safeway banner.

Mathers is now senior consultant at Sampson Tyrrell Enterprise, the group which carried out Safeway’s last identity review in June 1995. He joined the group in February and will run identity and change management programmes.

“When the work on the identity change had been completed, I felt I’d outgrown my role as guardian of the [Safeway] brand,” he says.

Wagstaffs has designed a new sub-brand identity and packaging for Safeway’s Oracle range of oral hygiene products (pictured).