Nothing to See Here: How UK Art Departments Invent Brands That Can’t Be Sued

The first rule of a convincing fake brand is that nobody should notice it. The second is that somebody, somewhere, should have checked it to death.

On a wet Tuesday in a production office somewhere off the M62, a script lands on a graphics desk with a line that looks harmless enough: “Janet opens a bag of crisps and offers one to Dev.” No brand is named. No logo is described. And yet, before the scene can be shot, someone has to invent a crisp packet that looks like it belongs on a British shelf, carries no legal risk, and will not distract the audience for a second.

That is the quiet work of the UK art department’s brand-builders: graphic artists, prop buyers, clearance coordinators and production lawyers who spend their days making fiction look shoppable without borrowing anything real.

A packet of crisps, a page of script

The crisp packet is a good place to start because it is almost aggressively ordinary. In the script it is a prop. On screen it might be in someone’s hand for four seconds. But those four seconds still need a name, a colour scheme, a typographic voice, a barcode, a weight, a recycling mark, a flavour description and a back panel that does not accidentally promise medical benefits or pretend to be certified by a body that has never heard of it.

The art department will first ask what the packet is doing. Is it a hero prop, seen close-up and handled? Is it background dressing on a kitchen table? Is it meant to signal a character’s taste, budget or postcode? A fictional brand for a gritty council-estate drama is not the same design problem as a fictional brand for a glossy food commercial within a comedy. The packet has to tell the truth about the story while being a complete lie about the company.

In this case, the graphics team lands on Pellow & Pike, a made-up artisan crisp brand with a whisper of West Country deli about it. It sounds plausible. It looks good on paper. And now it has to survive the checks.

The name comes before the artwork

Before anyone draws a single crisp, the name goes into the research file. A UK clearance coordinator will check trademark registers, Companies House, web searches, social handles, domain names and image searches. They are not just looking for identical names. They are looking for confusion: a similar wordmark, a near-identical colour combination, a pack shape that feels too familiar, a strapline that echoes a real campaign.

This is where the UK-specific legal language starts to matter. Trademark infringement is one thing; passing off is another. A fictional brand that looks too much like a real one can suggest a connection that does not exist. Defamation and malicious falsehood can rear up if a made-up company is shown doing something dodgy and a real business could plausibly be mistaken for it. Copyright can bite if the artwork borrows too liberally from an existing design. Broadcasters add their own compliance layers on top, especially for television.

The goal is not parody, unless the script is explicitly asking for it. The goal is a brand that can sit in the frame without a real company’s legal team reaching for the stationery.

Drawing something that feels shoppable

Once the name is provisionally cleared, the design begins. A good fake brand is built from small, boring truths. The typeface has to match the supposed price point. The colour palette has to feel at home in the category. The flavour roundel, the “sea salt” claim, the packet weight, the barcode, the recycling icons, the address on the back: all of it has to look like it came from a real supply chain.

That does not mean copying. It means understanding the grammar of packaging. A supermarket own-brand crisp packet has a different visual dialect from a heritage brand or a budget multipack. The art department is effectively inventing a company and then designing its entire visual identity in a couple of days.

For Pellow & Pike, the team avoids real certification logos, real charity partnerships and real postcodes. The address is invented. The phone number is invented. The barcode is decorative. The back panel is checked for accidental health claims. Even the paper stock matters: a hero packet may be printed on a real foil-lined substrate so it crackles properly when opened, rather than flapping like a folded A4 printout.

The clearance pass

Then comes the part that rarely makes the behind-the-scenes reel. The clearance coordinator and production lawyer read the script context, not just the artwork. Is the brand shown committing fraud? Is it a front for a crime? Is a character defaming it? If so, could a viewer reasonably think it is a real company? Fictional disclaimers help, but they are not a magic spell.

The checks are practical and repetitive. Has the name appeared on a trademark register in a relevant class? Does the logo resemble a real mark? Is the trade dress too close? Are there real companies with the same name in the same sector? Does the newspaper masthead look like a real title? Does the fictional TV channel use a real broadcaster’s idents? Does the fake charity logo echo a real campaign?

In 2026, the paperwork is no lighter. If anything, the internet makes the first pass faster and the second pass more paranoid. A name that looks clean in a UK search can turn up a small business in another country, a dormant trademark or a social account with 43 followers. Someone has to decide whether that matters for the scene, the territory and the distribution plan.

From PDF to greasy prop

When the artwork is signed off, the packet becomes a physical object. The graphics team outputs print-ready files. The prop-maker prints, cuts and assembles. The continuity team logs how many packets exist, which ones are opened and which ones are hero versions. On set, the packet gets handled, crumpled, maybe aged with a little tea or chalk dust. By the time it reaches the final cut, it should look like it has been in a cupboard for a week, not designed by a committee.

That is the strange craft of it: the more convincing the fake brand, the less the audience thinks about it. A bad fake logo pulls you out of the scene. A good one disappears into the world of the story. The art department has done its job when nobody asks who makes Pellow & Pike crisps.

The bin of almosts

The last part of the process is the least romantic. The rejected names, the near-miss logos, the packaging concepts that looked too much like a real supermarket range: they go in the bin, or at least into a folder marked “do not use”. The final prop carries all that research invisibly.

So the next time a character opens a bag of crisps in a British drama and you do not give the brand a second thought, consider the small army of people who made sure of it. The packet is fictional. The checks were not.