Packaging design is a crucial element in the sale of a product. It can make or break an impression on potential customers, and it’s one of the only opportunities to communicate with your audience before they know what you have to offer.
This being said, choosing a packaging design that will meet your needs isn’t always easy. Many factors go into designing an effective package: color, size, shape, material type, and more. To help you on this journey, we’ve compiled some helpful tips for selecting the right packaging design for your purposes.
- Clarity is Key
You want your packaging design to be able to convey important information. The last thing you want is for your customer not to know what’s inside of it or how much something costs.
If you are designing a package that must have the product visible, whether it is food or some other product, you’ll need to choose a clear material that won’t obscure the view of your product. Presentation boxes are a great way to display your product. The more intricate the design, the less likely it will be well-received by customers.
You want customers to see the product’s name and its manufacturer quickly. If they don’t get the critical information within a few seconds, it’s going back to the shelf.
- Simplicity is Key
Simplicity is the key to almost everything. You may have an elaborate design in mind, but if it’s convoluted and messy, odds are your customers will be confused by it and leave it for something else.
Customers check the product’s packaging to learn more about its benefits, ingredients, product name, and other essential information. If the labels are hard to read or customers don’t find what they need to know from the packaging alone, they’ll move on to something else.
- Honesty Goes a Long Way
If you want your packaging to convey trustworthiness to consumers, you need to clarify that the product is what it says it is.
This doesn’t mean your branding and design can’t be creative – in fact, creativity is encouraged. But if you bring a customer’s attention to something that isn’t true about your product, their trust in you as a company will be lost.
The key to honesty is making everything as straightforward as possible. Please make sure the product’s ingredients and their quantities are clearly labeled on your packaging, as well as any dosage or other information that you want people to know about the product itself.
- Carefully Choose Your Colors
The colors you choose for your packaging design will have an enormous impact on the way customers perceive it. They can make the packaging pop, but bold colors can also be distracting, and they might make customers think your product is strange or unappealing.
If you want to use bright colors, do so sparingly – it’s better for less saturated shades to stand out amongst the rest of the design than it is for your primary packaging color to overpower everything else. And remember: without text, a foreign color scheme isn’t going to make sense, so it’s best to stick with both colors and text that people will understand.
- Show Your Brand’s Personality
Your brand’s personal style isn’t just for social media accounts or your website – it can make a large impact on the way you package your product as well. This is an excellent way to differentiate your product from that of competitors.
- Don’t Skimp on the Materials
Quality plays a crucial role in terms of packaging. You also need to think about shipping, and substandard materials may cost you more in the long run. Instead of going for cheap materials, look for a supplier that offers packaging products with attractive qualities and a competitive price.
- Show Professionalism
Packaging design is your calling card; it’s how consumers know who you are. Find out your competitor’s packaging, and look at various areas in which you can improve on.
Remember that it’s always good to look at what your competitors are doing, but don’t copy them! Your brand identity is unique, and infusing it into all of your designs – including your product packaging – will help give you an edge over the competition.
- Put Some Personality and Funk Into Your Packaging Design
While your packaging design must have good design features, there is another crucial part. Your customers need to be able to connect with your products on an emotional level. What will give them this experience? A unique personality color scheme and message make people feel like they are buying a product with character rather than a product that is a commodity.
- Follow the Trends
It’s vital that your packaging design stays up to date with the latest trends, but remember that what is considered “popular” isn’t always best. Make sure you are using the most effective designs for your product before following any current trends.
Your packaging design should convey emotions, information, and personality to your customers – not be a carbon copy of what everyone else is doing.
- Do Not Compromise on Functionality
Ideal packaging design needs to factor in more than the looks. Keep an eye on the design elements that push the print limits and could affect reproduction quality. Avoid very detailed or fine illustrations, and also processes that need several applications.
It is advisable to avoid design elements that leave a narrow error margin in the production stage. For instance, complex patterns that go across a panel that will be die cut are more likely to cause challenges in the production phase.
Additionally, most industries have to adhere to regulations that could affect packaging design. So, if you’re designing retail packaging for highly regulated products, ensure you adhere to all the application regulatory requirements to avoid expensive delays in design verification, or worse a recall and redesign of the packaging graphics that go against the international, federal or local regulations.
- Streamline the Collaboration Process
Ensuring that things in the front end of the packaging design stage run in an efficient manner will get rid of unnecessary or unforeseen expenses down the line. Ideal packaging design starts by comprehending the goals it’s meant to achieve. Collaboration between the stakeholders and the designers will make sure the packaging design is in alignment with everyone’s expectations. Skipping or skimping through this process could easily result in wasted time, effort and money.
A creative brief is a powerful tool that ensures the packaging design process runs smoothly. In addition to helping communicate the objectives of the company or brand, this tool will provide a timeline, approval points, metrics as well as milestones all with the aim of measuring its performance.
Ensure you involve printers as well as the quality assurance team in the collaboration process to make sure the design meets the intended requirements and goals.