10 Features of Good Packaging

Author avatar wrote on 06/11/2019

10 Features of Good Packaging

The way you design your packaging is just as important as the product itself, it attracts customers, makes your brand stick in their minds and gives customers the information they need to know to buy your products


1. Retail Requirements

Before starting the design process, it’s important to determine the requirements of retailers. A good place to start is by reviewing shopping data, taking note of what packaging works best for storage and store shelves, in addition to what types of packaging sell the most.

Specifically, design teams need to know:

  • Shelf dimensions
  • Rate of sale
  • Type of automated warehouse system
  • Distance traveled
  • Pallet type, weight, height, material, and signage

Understanding retailers’ specs in advance gives designers guidelines to conform to, decreasing the likelihood of needing to make changes as a result of material or production constraints.

2. Convenient

Good packaging should be convenient. Package should be made in a way that the product could be conveniently taken from one place to another and can be handled easily by middlemen or consumers. The size and shape of package also should be convenient for retailers to keep in shop or for consumers to keep at their home. The package design should be made re-use-able, if possible. 

3. Originality and creativity

One way of imparting an air of exclusivity and great quality on a product is to ensure that its packaging is awesome. The use of high quality, ingenious packaging tells discerning customers that a considerable amount of time, thought, and effort went into creating and realizing it; that the enclosed product is of great quality is more or less assured (this should be the case, of course). Thanks to great packaging you can easily differentiate your product by pricing it slightly higher than the competition.

4. The power of the end–promise on packaging

We’ve also noticed the benefit of illustrating the end-promise on the packaging. From shampoos promising beauty from shiny hair and skincare products offering eternal youth from radiant skin, to meal kits promising home bliss from a tasty homecooked meal, consumers are more easily persuaded by visual interpretations. Pictures, sketches, or structural shapes and lines offer powerful suggestion and emotional resonance.

5. It Must Make the Brand and Purpose Clear

Even the most generic budget brands make their product and purpose clear, or else nobody will buy them because nobody will know what they are. While the budget brand may simply state “Tomato Sauce,” other brands must make that clear as a baseline for all other packaging design considerations. People will not buy a product if they do not know what it is and what it does.

6. Style

Renowned designer, Lindon Leader, said it best: simplify and clarify. Change the pace from the visual hodgepodge consumers see every day, like in grocery stores, shopping malls, and media ads. A good design doesn’t need to be loud to get noticed.

Base the design elements’ layout on grid alignments. Our brains are familiar with grid-like patterns we see in urban landscapes and nature, so when designs are distributed between 3- and 4-column layouts, they’re easy to look at.

Don’t attempt to fill every available space on the packaging. Instead, use white space to help emphasize certain components and lead viewers to what’s important; clean, minimalist design is timeless.

7. Communicative

Good packaging should also be communicative. it should give information to the customers about the brand utility and quality of the product, which can stimulate demand. Good packaging works as silent salesperson and an effective advertisement.

8. Go green

Nowadays lots of consumers are becoming increasingly environmentally-conscious and this tends to reflect in their purchasing decisions. The use of eco-friendly packaging for your product will therefore appeal to such consumers, effectively helping to boost sales volumes and brand appeal.

9. It Should Awaken Emotions

Emotions are closely linked to memories, and brand packaging designs that provoke emotions are more memorable than those that do not. Precisely what those emotions are may vary. Some brands may appeal to consumers’ sense of nostalgia, joy, or aspiration, for example. Marketing that plucks at people’s emotions is more effective than marketing that simply touts features and benefits. That is because the emotional parts of the brain are key to forming long-term memories.

10. The necessary recipe ingredients for a successful packaging design

  • Category or product type
  • Brand
  • Variant: for products which offer more than one option
  • Functional benefit(s): what the product does
  • Reason(s)-to-believe: why the consumer should find the claimed functional benefit credible
  • Emotional end-promise or benefit: how the functional benefit fulfills a higher need
  • Call-to-action: why the consumer should buy it now
  • Size, weight, content details, etc.: practical information the consumer needs to know

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