Product packaging is an industry itself. Multinational design companies including CBA’a, Landor, and Coley Porter Bell has hundreds of designers who focus on creating strong brands in the market through packaging design and branding. However, manufacturing packaging for products is not that simple as it seems. You’ll have to consider a lot of things, and for your assistance, we’ve mentioned a few insights that you need to know about. To learn about them all, be sure to read this article till the end.
1. Clarity and Simplicity
What is this product all about? What is the brand behind it? These are the question every product packaging should answer within a few seconds. Next time you go to any superstore, go to a random shelf and look through some products. Browse through them and ask yourself these two straightforward questions. The maximum time customers will spend to judge the product is only 4 seconds. When you scan through the shelves, you’ll be amazed to learn how hard it is to find the answers to these questions within that time.
What you will find is hundreds of products with no clear brand name. You’ll also notice that they might look good from outside, but they failed to describe what is in it. There will be a lot of product boxes fail that are a good example for you to learn that packaging should be clear about the product and the brand.
2. Stand Out
Just covering the shelves of the retail is not enough. Being a brand owner, you must know how important it is for your brand to stand out from others on the shelf. You need to make your brand the customer’s signature to the classification. The packaging should have a point of orientation on it that will help in drawing a shopper’s attention and communicates the essence of the proposition with them.
For this, your packaging should be unique in its own way. One way to do this is the use of cusps. Cusps are pointy and sharp shapes that trigger feelings of anger, fear, and caution. If you have cusps shapes in the logo, then it will attract the customer’s eye and will make your products stand out from your competition.
3. Honesty
Usually, brands depict their products in the packaging in the perfect way imaginable. They will print a cookie drenched in chocolate when in reality you are purchasing a simple chocolate flavored biscuit with a few chocolate chips in it. Same goes with the fast-food advertisements, and brands will show how fat and large the burger is in a small price while in fact, the burger is entirely opposite to what shown in the advertisement or on the packaging.
You don’t want to do that. By showing a product ten times better on the packaging than it is, you are misleading and ultimately disappointing your shopper. It will only lead to low sales performance and terrible brand image. The product might be the best but is not anything like packaging shows it. So, you can edit the image of the product on the packaging, but cannot change it, because your customers deserve to be treated right.
4. Different and Authentic
Memorability, originality, and character are a few main things that lead to great brands and of course, great packaging designs. There are thousands of brands out there competing on the shelves every day to grab the attention of their potential customers. However, the best way to be different is to be authentic.
If you are stuck with standard packaging design, then apply a different design style with strong visual standards. For example, if everybody is using photography, use illustration instead. Look into other product categories for inspiration, and be bold and different.
5. Shelf Impact
If we see form a customer’s point of view, all we’ll see are veritable patterns made of different products. It is because we are viewing products from a distance and the fact that products are arranged in rows and columns. All products look the same until we see a product that stands out to them.
This uniqueness and charm of the product, when placed on an actual shelf, is something sellers call “shelf impact,” and believe it or not it makes a huge difference in sales. It is something you must test and explore in your packaging designs.
6. Extensibility
You must design your product packaging in a way that if you are introducing new products in the future, you can extend the product line. For example, if you are launching a juice brand, your first product is apple juice. However, a few months later, if you decide to launch a cherry flavor under the same brand, your design enables easy variations without losing visual appeal.
7. Practicality
Probably practicality is the most overlooked feature of product packaging design, maybe because customers often pick the tried and true things in which opportunity for innovation can lose. Let’s take an example of Heinz ketchup, when the ketchup industry was in growth crisis, turning things on their head really helped Heinz sell more ketchup. Alone practicality can resolve a lot of packaging design challenges. Therefore, if you get to design your next product packaging, make sure it is practical, easy to use, carry, and store as well.
Last Word!
If you are just starting out, then you should consider all the factors we’ve mentioned above in this article. For any brand to be successful in the market, these product packaging insights including authenticity, simplicity, practicality, etc. are a must that they need to know about.