Resource created by M&S Archive.

This resource is intended to provide an overview of biscuit tin design at M&S, using selected images from the M&S Archive collection. The overall aim of the resource is to show changes in approaches to food types and packaging design, and how this might link to wider social and design history. 

Curriculum Links

• KS2 & 3 Design & Technology: Design and Make
• KS2 & 3 Design & Technology: Food and Nutrition
• KS3 PSHE: Health and Wellbeing | Living in the Wider World

Learning Objectives

• Knowledge of different examples of past and present packaging design
• Understanding of how packaging design can be influenced by other factors
• Skills of identifying different elements of packaging design, such as font and 'look and feel' 

Discussion and Activity Ideas

KS2 & 3 Design and Technology

• What do you think makes a good design? 
  • How important is the design of something like a biscuit tin?
• Choose your favourite biscuit and design a tin for it in the style of a particular decade. 
• Different fonts are fashionable at different times - find ones that were fashionable in the 1920s and the 1960s.
• Design a 'scary' font and a 'happy' font.

• What health and safety issues would you have think about when producing tins for food?
• Make a collection in your class of unusual tins or containers.

KS2 & 3 Design and Technology: Food and Nutrition

• Choose a favourite biscuit and find out what ingredients are used to make them.
  • What nutritional value do they have? 
• Bake some biscuits yourself and ask your class to 'rate' them nutritionally.
  • Think about what ingredients you could use to improve their nutrition rating. 

KS2 & 3 PHSE

• How has the food we eat changed over the last 50 years? 
• What kinds of food are good for our health, and which ones are not? 
• Make a list of all the things you love eating and then compare those with your answers to the question above. 
• If we only ate food that could be grown or produced in the UK, what would our diet be like? 
• What are some of the issues involved in buying food that is not produced in this country? 

Glossary