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6 Guidelines for Creating Powerful Packaging

founder / creative director, THE APARTMENT Recent Posts

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November 1, 2010

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Your product’s packaging is its first line of communication. It should speak to potential customers loud and clear and make them feel as if your product belongs in their home. That feeling means a product can quickly become part of a consumer's buying habits.

Here are six guidelines to help create powerful packaging that will speak to your customer:

1. Make it Clear. What your product does should be apparent from the packaging. Give your product an edge by making it easier for your customer to understand at one glance what the product can do.

2. Keep it Simple. Packaging design should immediately convey the product's unique features and function to your potential customer. Consider whether some information can be shown, not just told.

3. Think Shape and Texture. It’s not only the feel of the product, but also the format of the bottle or box that a customer will remember.

4. Unify Packaging. Consider using a well-defined color code or unique nomenclature to unify the package design within the brand and product line. Each product should stand comfortably alone but also fit within a wider brand family.

5. Focus on Functionality. Create solutions that respond to the core problems experienced by users. Innovation should not be exclusively about newness, but rather about rightness.

6. Think about Life Cycle. When designing packaging, do not simply look at beauty, look at your product's life cycle, or how it impacts the earth. Can the product and its packaging be re-used or recycled? Streamline the design to reduce waste and help the environment. Packaging your product in a simple, yet functional manner is the best way to quickly communicate your brand's message to your customers.


This article is a part of our Project RE:Brand web series in which small businesses undergo brand makeovers with design experts. 

Please leave your branding questions as comments below and check back for responses from our experts. (Note - this feature is currently not available on mobile devices.) 

Stefan Boublil is the Creative Director at The Apartment, a NYC-based creative agency offering fully integrated branding, marketing, architecture, packaging, and interior design services. 

Watch Stefan and his lead designer Lisa Simpson provide branding advice to an OPEN Cardmember in our special web series, Project RE:Brand. 

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