What is packaging?
Packaging is the brand you can hold. The box, the bottle, the bag, the label, the tissue inside, the way it opens. It has a practical job, protecting the product on its way to the customer, and a commercial one, making the product recognizable on a shelf and desirable in a hand. In many categories the package is the only advertising the customer sees before buying, and in some, such as luxury and beauty, the unboxing is part of the product.
Packaging design sits where graphic design, structural design and brand strategy meet: the shape, the material, the type, the color and the copy all have to agree, and they have to survive manufacturing, shipping and a crowded aisle.
Why it matters
Why packaging matters
It is the last message before the decision. Shoppers choose in seconds, from a few feet away, among products that often look alike, and the package is what makes one of them the obvious choice. After purchase it keeps working: a good package is kept, photographed and posted, which turns a customer into a piece of media.
It also carries the brand into places advertising cannot reach. The bag on the subway, the box on the counter and the bottle on the bathroom shelf are seen daily by people who never watched the campaign. Over the life of a product, the package is seen more often than any ad ever made for it, which makes it the most durable piece of design a brand owns.
In practice
How packaging works in practice
- 01
A packaging project begins with the product, the category and the brand system. Designers study the shelf and the competition, explore structures and materials with a packaging engineer or supplier, and develop the graphics: hierarchy, type, color, imagery and the regulatory copy that has to fit. Prototypes are made and tested in the hand and on the shelf before anything goes to production.
- 02
Once approved, the design is prepared for manufacture, with print specifications, dielines and color matched across materials. Then it meets the camera: product photography and film for e-commerce and social are shot against the same system, so the package on screen matches the package in the mail.
Watch out
What people get wrong about packaging
Designing for the shelf alone. Most products are now first seen as a thumbnail on a phone, and a package that reads at arm's length but not at thumbnail size loses the online sale. The other mistake is treating the unboxing as a cost rather than a moment; the inside of the box is where the brand gets its last word, and it is the part customers film.
A third mistake is designing the package after the campaign. The package is the one asset that will be in every product shot, every film and every customer's hand, so it should set the visual rules the campaign follows, not scramble to match them.
