8 Rules of Packaging Design that Dive Off The Shelf
Product packaging from a graphics design services company has long since stopped to have only the function of preserving the product. It is now a tool with which your business can reach your audience and perform other tasks. But how do you get your message across in the right way?
Knowing a few simple guidelines, you can make your product packaging serve your goals. Increase brand awareness, increase sales, stand out from your competitors, and entertain your audience.
Even if you’ve never thought about the role of packaging in your product sales chain, it’s never too late to turn around and appreciate the importance of packaging. Product packaging design will not only help to attract new customers but also to loyal interest clients.
Let’s take a look at eight packaging design guidelines that can help you add relevance to your product packaging right now, even if you have little experience with it.
Concepts for packaging design
The product packaging design basics should make it easy to introduce a new extension to the product line. When creating your packaging concept, be sure to keep in mind that in the future, you may have new variations of the product that will need to take their place in the line.
When designing your packaging design, also keep in mind that all products should fit together. It will affect your brand recognition and how customers will perceive you. In addition, respect the basic features of the packaging. These are practicality, convenience for the customer, and the ability to read your product’s composition and expiration date.
What is packaging design?
Packaging design is a process that allows you to make your product packaging not just a means of protection from the external environment but also a spokesman for your marketing strategy. Use all the potential opportunities of packaging. You can significantly increase the sales of goods, increase the competitiveness of your brand and achieve other goals, not less important for business.
If you consider packaging another opportunity to stand out from your competitors, it’s a great way to announce your product. Let’s move on to the basic rules of designing your product packaging. We hope that these packaging design requirements will help you create the perfect project.
Know your customer
For any business owner and marketing team, it’s obvious that audience analysis is one of the first tasks before launching a product. But do all business owners use the characteristics of the target buyer before creating packaging?
You and your designers should have a full and clear understanding of the buyer and who you need to target for sales. This knowledge will help engage your audience and get them to choose your product over your competitor’s.
Use all the facts about your audience to create the perfect product package design. Pay attention to your target audience’s interests, what your customers do in their leisure time, and what would interest them. Such simple and basic guidelines in designing packaging will help you not waste your efforts and not all audiences at once.
Form follows function
In designing your packaging, you need to keep your customers in mind and the product you will sell. The shape of your product affects the packaging and limits your options. No matter how creative you want to make your packaging, you must remember that form follows function.
For example, you are designing a package design for children’s juices. What is important to consider in this task? You should provide a simple mechanism for opening the juice because children are likely to do it independently. The packaging should be small so that it is comfortable for the child to hold the drink in their hand. Using this simple example, you can figure out what functionality your product packaging should perform.
Consider the specifics and remember that not every product needs to be creative at all. Sometimes it is enough to be a quality product with convenient and beautiful packaging than to introduce maximum originality.
Simplicity sells
A lot of bright accents on your product packaging can be confusing to customers. Such an excess of colors can also indicate the cheapness of your product or poor quality. In recent years, minimalism has become one of the packaging design rules. What does it mean?
Instead of using pictures, bright colors, original fonts, creators of goods began to be limited to the basic set. A standard font, one color, no pictures. It is minimalism. A good product does not need to shout about itself with bright accents. It is how your customer can think and choose the goods of your company.
Simplicity in package design and minimalism in design are all new trends that stimulate many companies’ sales. Your business could be the next one to boost sales, thanks to the principle of minimalism.
Think of the brand
In packaging design, you should also think about the brand of the business. Each package should have a direct or indirect connection to the brand. It is necessary to increase its recognition and ensure that customers do not confuse your brand with competitors.
The brand should be recognizable and different from the rest, so you should think carefully about your company’s branded design elements before creating your packaging. Packaging can include a company slogan, company colors and fonts, and a logo. All of this will help you firmly associate the product with your brand. The brand should be recognizable and different from the rest, so you should think carefully about your company’s branded design elements before creating your packaging. You can’t create a connection between product and brand if you don’t have a clear visual representation of your company.
Testing
There are a huge number of options for product packaging design. You don’t know which one to choose and which one will work best. It isn’t easy to develop and implement the perfect option if you don’t know if customers will like it.
To find out how customers react to the packaging before launching, you can do testing. Conduct market research and questionnaires to gather potential buyers’ reactions to the packaging. The more tests you conduct, the broader reaction you’ll get from users.
Use the results of the testing to improve and adjust your package design. If you decide to launch packaging without testing, you risk wasting money and time and the company’s reputation. There are many cases where companies have lost ratings and sales because of unsuccessful packaging choices.
Take a peek at your competitors
Another important package design basics before creating a project are to analyze your competitors. You have to set a goal to become more popular and better than your competitors. To do this, you need to know everything about them. Analyze what style they use for packaging design and how your product packaging will look next to your competitors on store shelves.
Won’t you pale in comparison?
Won’t you draw too much attention to the product?
These are all important actions that will help you create the perfect packaging and increase your sales. In addition to analyzing your competitors’ packaging, it’s also worth analyzing what sales and advertising channels they use. That doesn’t mean you have to copy their promotion methods and create plagiarism versions. You can be inspired, find their mistakes, and avoid making your own.
Stay in line
Develop a packaging design that allows you to link and combine the packaging of all your products in one line. If a single item does not represent your product, you should consider this by a whole line. You should also consider expanding the line and adding new products to it. What packaging design will you use for the new products?
It is necessary! You can draw additional customer attention to other, perhaps less popular products if they visually resemble your flagship product.
Prime printing
Pay attention to the quality of your printing materials and printers. Even if you have developed a unique and perfect design, all your efforts will be vain if you can’t realize it on the best materials. The customer will be more pleased to hold a quality package made of high-quality materials in their hands. Even if it raises the product’s price, use the best materials to implement the packaging design.
If you don’t have the right off the shelf packaging printing equipment, you can always turn to contractors who will do a much better job with your packaging because of their experience and professionalism. By the way, this is universal advice for other tasks as well. If you don’t have enough or no experience in a particular task, you’re better off going to experience professionals. Yes, it will cost extra money, but you can be sure of an excellent result.
Final Thoughts
Here we have figured out why creating a product package design is important in promoting a product and implementing a business marketing strategy. Of course, we could add to this packaging design guide many more rules that would be good to keep in mind when creating packaging. Nevertheless, for beginners, these basic guidelines are enough to create great packaging and increase company sales.
When designing your packaging, keep your sales and recognition goals in mind and the main purpose of the packaging. It should be convenient, simple, and easy to open. These simple principles make up half the success of your product packaging, so don’t forget them.
If you need help creating your packaging design, we at Fireart Studio are happy to help you. Thanks to our experience in developing designs of different complexity and products, we can create the perfect project to achieve all your promotional goals.
