WMH the top bread winner at Idea

Williams Murray Hamm has bagged the Grand Prix award at this year’s Design Business Association International Design Effectiveness Awards, the first time for ten years a packaging project has taken the top honours and only the second time in the award’s history.

The consultancy’s work for British Bakeries reinvented the Hovis brand with bold on-pack images of tomatoes, eggs and cucumbers. What initially seemed a risky strategy has proved a ‘stunning’ success of design innovation, according to judges. Hovis is now the category leader in both brown and white bread sectors.

Section winners were Redpath/NHS Scotland and Front Page Design/Edinburgh Festival for corporate identity over and under £100 000 respectively; Seymour Powell/Tefal for consumer product; Kinneir Dufort/Roche for industrial product; Felton Communication/Terence Higgins Trust for consumer print; HGV/Folio Wines & Spirits for business-to-business print; Conran Design Group/MFI for retail and leisure interiors; Felton Communication/Lambeth Housing for exhibitions; Nucleus/ Orient Express for digital media; Carnegie Orr/KPMG for design management; Elmwood/Richardson Sheffield for non-food packaging; and Interbrand/National Trust for design for good.

WMH/Hovis won the branded food and drink packaging award, while the judges’ award went to Lewis Moberly and Jasper Conran at Stuart Crystal.

Chairman of the judges Sean Lewis, worldwide brand strategy and development director at Orange, comments, ‘I was encouraged to see companies going back to their core values to create effective design.’