Tips for Designing Your Product Packaging

There’s much more to packaging than meets the eye. Study and reasoning go into creating not only a container food item but also a marketing strategy. Packages must do more than inform of their contents. The difference between a good layout and an ineffective one is often as harsh as making sales or not. To retain a competitive edge, every business should learn effective tips for designing your product packaging.

The most important detail to bear in mind while approaching package design is the intended audience. While packaging can follow basic expectations—coherent visuals that explain a product—businesses will find a more responsive consumer base when they focus on a demographic. In terms of creating an informative layout, what is common sense to one group of people isn’t always true across others.

For instance, a toothpaste manufacturer ultimately wants to cater to virtually anyone interested in hygiene. However, even the most open-ended and useful item can still be geared towards lucrative niches by emphasizing ideas and designs that specifically identify problems held by smaller groups. We see this in packaging designs that target age groups. In addition, there are often vastly different price marks for products within the same type.

Brands can speak to their values by choosing visual traits that emphasize what they’re all about. Changes in shape, texture, color, and graphics are used to convey a subtle clue as to who is behind an item on the shelf. Like individuals, businesses are expected to have values and express them coherently. A company looking to emphasize high-quality production would likely choose professional-appearing hot stamp printing for their logo. Whereas a business looking to convey a homegrown and rustic character would probably choose a matte label with a rawer look.

More important tips for designing your product packaging include focusing on the key features. How does an offering solve the customers’ issues? Goods and services are solutions to a need or want of the customer. When packaging highlights a product’s contents through a clever design, customers respond. A hook is being thrown out to potential buyers.

This figurative hook is a feature that focuses on a demographic’s issue. In the previous issue, this is often a simple trait such as parents trying to encourage children to upkeep their hygiene. A quality feature of children’s toothpaste is the idea that this toothpaste is inherently “more fun.” The target demographic is parents with children, so manufacturers emphasize product features that appeal to children, like bright colors and fun flavors.

TricorBraun Flex is a leader in flexible packaging with decades of experience. We have a dedicated design and engineering team ready to tackle tough questions that entrepreneurs may have. Reach out to us today and we’ll work directly with you to find the ideal packaging solution for your brand.