How to Create Great Package Design for your Brand

We each have our own style of what we like and don’t like, but great design is not based on a few personal opinions, it’s based on strategy and thorough research. At Straydog Branding in Vancouver, our package design process starts first by taking the time to understand the target market, what’s important to them, and what currently resonates with them.

Packaging has a significant role to play in the success of your product. Your package design needs to cultivate emotion and long-lasting relationships with the consumer. For many brands and their products, the packaging is often the only vehicle of mass persuasion and it can make of break your business…

Once your package hits the shelves, you no longer have control, therefore it’s critical that you take the time to ensure that the design elements will resonate with your audience.

How to design packaging that will resonate with your audience

Build your brand personality and know your audience.

The brand personality should fit the group you’re targeting, so it’s of the utmost importance to design for your market and this comes from knowing your audience. Take the time to research and learn everything you about your audience…what resonates with them, how they interact, and what other products and brands they’re buying (related or not). A package design that is misaligned with your target market’s patterns of behaviour can certainly break your business.

Take the time to consider how your product will be shopped.

Before the design process begins, be familiar with where and how your product will be shopped and where on the shelf it’s likely to be placed. With packaging design, it’s important to have a design strategy in place ahead of time. What type of information is most important to your consumer? The hierarchy of information on the package should reflect the interests of the consumer, and these various elements should be obvious to the consumer for easy shopability.

Be logical about the design.

Don’t design something too elaborate or innovative just for the sake of it. Innovation is great, but make sure you aren’t losing business because of it. After all, it needs to fit at retail and the consumer needs to understand what it is. The goal is to get as much on-shelf efficiency as possible, your retailers will appreciate it.

Move towards more sustainable packaging material.

Packaging is everywhere. It’s fundamental to our lives, so it’s hard to imagine life without it. Packaging serves to contain, protect, preserve and market products. It enables products to arrive from any part of the planet and reach your table. It sustains the quality of products over prolonged periods without losing quality, thereby reducing losses. Nevertheless, packaging, particularly plastic packaging, has developed a bad reputation when it comes to its environmental impact.

Moving away from single-use packaging to reusable options may take time but is an achievable target. Another great way to reduce manufacturing burdens is to use materials with higher quantities of recycled content.

Many organizations have adopted fiber-based packaging as an alternative to plastic to help them achieve their Sustainability goals. Fiber-based packaging has a considerably lower carbon footprint than plastic because it does not rely on fossil fuel-derived products. The waste generated in the manufacturing of virgin paper and cardboard (such as wood shavings and black liquor) can be reused to supply thermal energy. This, in turn, can satisfy the energy demands of the papermaking plant. While fiber-based packaging is typically meant for single-use like plastic, it has fewer end-of-life impacts on the environment. Much of their carbon dioxide output is biogenic, so it is a matter of simply releasing the carbon previously sequestered in the raw material.

The US Company Arka, works with brands worldwide to provide more sustainable packaging solutions, and ec0-friendly printing processes. Their focis is on imporving the custiomer experience while also being more responsible for the environment.

Balance design with form and function

The type of product that you’re selling plays a big part in the design of your package. If you’re selling a toaster, consumers understand the product, so the form shouldn’t come as a surprise, but what’s on the package should be given more consideration so as to effectively call out why your product should be considered over the competition.

When you’re selling a new product with breakthrough innovation, consumers need to understand what your product looks like, what the specific functionality is, what the benefits are, and why they should buy it. The packaging has a significant role beyond aesthetics to educate the consumer and convince them that they need this product.

Good packaging effectively balances design, form and function to create a harmonious experience that stops the consumer in their tracks (great design) and convinces them to buy (with the beautiful and informative typography and brand promises). It’s a fact that consumers have been known to make purchases based on colour, package shape/size, and with almost 75% of purchases being made on impulse, your packaging has to strike the right emotions and make the right statements.

For many companies, packaging is their marketing and advertising, so it’s important to invest the right resources in it to make it successful. Good packaging is good business.

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