One of the oldest and most old-fashioned Irish packaging designs has been given a makeover. The scene displayed on the label of Old Time Irish marmalade remains a traditional Irish kitchen with a big open fire, a three-legged pot and a black and white cat.

Whereas the original image was a naive line drawing, it is now a colour photograph. To emphasise this new realism, the background colour has also been changed from a creamy mellow yellow to a hot red-orange. The lettering is still in the same clichéd, handwritten Celtic style.

This transformation is the work of BFK, a design consultancy that claims to offer solutions which “go far beyond excellence in the field of graphic design”. With the Old Time Irish revamp, however, they are laughably far away from excellence in design, let alone far beyond it.

BFK’s supposed updating is peculiar, given that it has replaced a drawing of an idealised scene with a staged photograph. With the illustration, the traditional kitchen scene was clearly imaginary, but it at least referred to a setting held in Irish communal memory.

By using a photograph of this scene, the suggestion is that it actually exists. But even if this was the case 35 years ago, when the design allegedly first appeared, then this kitchen is now a jarring anachronism. As such, the photograph is a double fake, mirroring a representation of a fantasy scene.

Maybe the thinking was that photographs, as a relatively recent innovation, always look more modern than illustrations. However, such tableaux were present in late Victorian photographic practice.

While the now-obsolete design evoked nostalgia, its bitter-sweetness has been replaced by an image that presents a clearly staged kitchen, making the overall effect meaningless and tawdry.