Packaging & Evolution

By Jenny Chou

The book is a collection of 108 packaging designs. By exploring the inspiration and the story of each project, we hope to find the key to the evolution of packaging design, as well as its role in enhancing the value of the brand.
The book features:
-A clear presentation of various types of design projects including packages for snacks, candy, sauce, dairy products, beverage, living goods, household chemicals and medicines;
-Images of the package before and after the redesign, together with the designer’s narratives, expressly illustrate the evolution of the package;
-Analysis of the current and future trends of packaging design by senior designers to be shared with young men who have keen insight into the powers behind the design.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Design Media Publishing (UK) Limited
• Release date: Apr 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781838651046

Book preview

PREFACE

Packaging design has evolved beyond all recognition over the past 50 years. As a discipline it has grown to capture elements of psychology, sociology, creative art,digital technology, semiotics and is inspired and driven by a deep understanding of the cultural fabric and attitudinal trends of the world we live in today. Packaging is no longer a simple exercise in printing a logo on a carton, or a bottle, to provide recognition for consumers as they browse the busy supermarket shelves. It goes way beyond protecting the fragile contents against damage in transit or providing longer shelf life for fresh ingredients and giving functional benefits of resealability.Packaging is even more than a clear articulation of the functional benefits of the products inside and what they look like and when to use them.

Packaging has evolved in the last 50 years to a point where art meets science,where psychology meets intuition, and data meets emotion. Packaging design has become a complex and frustratingly unpredictable marketing channel that can either make or break a brand, and yet, at it’s core, it remains a skill that requires beguiling simplicity and clarity.

Brands look to redesign their packaging for many reasons. A decline in sales,a shift in consumer behaviour or consumer preferences, a change in product formulation, increased competitor activity or a cultural realignment of values and expectations. We have worked with many brand owners from artisan companies such as Little’s Coffee to global brand leaders such as Coca-Cola. For smaller start up brands, packaging is an opportunity to define a clear positioning and challenge category norms. Corvus Stout was redesigned to challenge the global stout category leader Guinness and communicate a story of mystical strength, from the ancient countryside where the brewery is based. Heath & Heather was redesigned to communicate the story of the founders who were pioneering herbalists in the 1920’s and originally sold packets of herbs for consumers who could not afford health care, to grow and brew their own healthy herbal teas.

The challenges in any redesign are significant. The danger of alienating your current consumers is a primary concern. Skillful re-engineering of the brands visual equity, i.e. it’s colour, typography, use of images and structure can minimize this risk. Schweppes have done this well in the recent redesign of their range of mixers,drawing on the fountain motif and Schweppes colour palette of black and yellow.Other challenges include identifying and prioritising your messages on pack.Consumers shop every category with a different set of priorities. Price, flavour,range, brand, convenience health may all play a role, and understanding what the key criteria are for your consumers is key. Do they buy by flavour first or are they looking for a healthy snack or drink? Is your brand making the most of those preferences in the way it delivers it’s message?

Teaforia is a healthy, delicious, ground tea that has a matcha base infused with natural flavours of ginger or lemon. The experience of drinking the product became the focus of our redesign as many other competitors focused purely on the healthy benefits of matcha. The ground green tea in the product, carries the flavour much more vividly than normal infusions so the packaging was designed to reflect an explosive and dramatic flavour coming directly from the tea leaf itself.

When packaging design is developed successfully it can transform a brands commercial success. By focusing your core message on a distinct consumer profile,a brand can create a deeper and more fundamental connection with shoppers and consumers. This connection strengthens loyalty, re-inforces recognition and allows brands to extend their portfolios with a better chance of success.

Packaging design is ultimately a shorthand or a signature that captures why a brand is unique and conveys that uniqueness in a relevant and distinctive way. For global brands such as Coca-Cola, Dettol, and Budweiser design is fundamentally about recognition. If they can stand-out and be seen before any other brand they have succeeded, as consumers already have a pre-conceived idea of what they offer. Their signatures are a shorthand to drive familiarity and reassurance.

For challenger brands, packaging represents an opportunity to share their story and break the rules. Packaging design is an opportunity for these brands to set out a philosophy or a vision and engage with a distinct target audience. Innocent, Tyrrells and Nak’d are all good examples of brands that have done this and redefined the categories in which they operate.

What is for certain is that Packaging Design is one of the most powerful tools in the marketing arsenal. It is a pure distillation of why your brand deserves to be picked up from the shelf and why consumers should align themselves with your brand.

Chris White

Managing Director - This Way Up Design

CHAPTER 1

SIMPLE & PRACTICAL PACKAGING

Based on our experience, we know that although people from marketing are well educated, they sometimes miss the real point of the work itself. We have attended many meetings with marketing workers where packaging was discussed. However,if we followed their requirements, nothing would be achieved and the result would be only a jumble filled with much information, benefits and legislation. We always advise them not to approach it so scientifically and complicatedly, but to follow their feelings, intuition and to approach the problem more naturally, with a more detached view.

Packages before redesign do very often suffer from too much useless information,icons or other non- functional elements. The first thing we do is to try to clean the layout. One option is to prepare a completely minimalist concept, only with a few mandatory elements. It is always very refreshing to discover a product with minimalist design in a mass of over-combined products. There are commodities where clear and simple design is a duty, e.g. cosmetics or pharmacy, but there are also commodities where it is difficult to apply this simplicity. However, the one who manages this is always more visible among the competition.

The problem is that a customer does not always need as much information as they are given from marketing departments. Therefore, the biggest problem of bad current packages is that they inform a lot but communicate little. A good design should not only be nice and catchy but mainly functional. And it means that a customer not only recognizes their favourite brand but also easily finds their favourite flavour on a full shelf without having to study it for long and easily understands how to open or use the product. We can give an example of a global producer who launched a simple package world-wide, but customers did not understand at all how to open the product, which part should be twisted or slid out, what should be pulled out.

And how to deal with client´s demand to make their goods jump out of the shelf

Clients usually demand higher colourfulness compared with competition. But the problem can be more complicated. The package does not have to be exactly colourful. More important for it is to be more effective in communication. The other important aspect is the place where the product will be displayed. If it is a supermarket or a luxury shop or a boutique, where there isn´t such direct competition. The kind of competition the product will have to face is also crucial.We created, e.g. a recent premium box for Jack Daniel's Single Barrel whiskey.The aim was to create a minimalist box which will allow the product (bottle itself) to be well visible. The box was supposed to be made of cardboard, with high load bearing capacity and minimal gluing. The result depended mostly on the solution of construction and its practical production. I think we finally succeeded as we were granted A' Design Award for his product.

But there are different demands for fast-moving goods. In this case, ingredients the product contains must be emphasized. It is necessary to consider complexly where the product will be found, in which market will be sold. What is considered a clear and simple design in England is regarded low cost in Africa. What is considered a portentous kitsch in central Europe is regarded premium and opulent in Russia.

One typical example