By designing custom packaging that reflects your brand styles, you can increase your brand visibility and sales. One of the most effective ways to do this is custom packaging. Creative packaging is the best way to grab your customers’ attention. It should protect your products from damage. You can design the best custom packaging that shows your brand styles by using strategies such as understanding your packaging needs and choosing the materials wisely. This blog will provide you with the strategies to design your custom packaging reflecting your brand styles.
1.Understand your Packaging Needs
Before you start picking out your Pantones, hold fire: First, you need to nail down what you’re aiming to accomplish with your product packaging design.
Whether you’re a brand that’s just launching, or one undergoing a refresh, this is the most important step in the design process. Custom packaging small business is a method of transporting products, building a brand, and delivering on a marketing strategy, all rolled into one. Ask yourself the following questions:
What selling channels will I be using my packaging in?
Every selling channel has its own requirements, and this determines what your main priorities need to be when designing your custom packaging. Practical considerations, such as how protective your packaging is, outweigh aesthetics in some channels and vice versa in others.
If you’re an ecommerce businessman, for example, you need to factor shipping considerations (weight, distance, etc.) into your packaging design. Whatever design you choose, it needs to facilitate transporting your goods safely and efficiently.
Shipping is less of a concern for brick and mortar retailers, where the packaging is more about enhancing the appearance and aesthetic of products and the in-person shopping experience.
What kinds of products do you require packaging for?
You can’t start planning your design until you know what you’re using your packaging for! Your product range will dictate what packaging elements are the most suitable for your needs. For example, if you’re a coffee shop, you’ll be looking at packaging for coffee beans, beverages, and merchandise.
What brand values do I want to communicate?
Your packaging is one of the biggest canvases you have available to you as a brand. For this reason, custom packaging involves more design considerations than you might think.
While you want it to be consistent with your other branding materials on elements like color palette and typeface, you also have a lot more room to get creative! Consider sitting down with a notepad and pen and asking yourself:
2. Choose Your Branding Elements Carefully
Custom packaging is a visual pitch to your customer to help foster brand recognition. For this reason, many brands make their logo the centerpiece of their packaging design.
But it’s by no means the only way of creating a unique design. Your design should aim to engage and delight your customer, so this means thinking a little outside of the box (pun intended!).
Aim for simplicity to stand out
Because you want to be noticed, it can be tempting to go for a design that has a lot going on. However, this can backfire; too much visual noise, and it’s difficult for your customer to take everything in.
When competing brands are trying to outdo each other in terms of colors or patterns, a pared-back design can actually make you more noticeable!
Variations on your brand elements and theme will keep your design fresh and unique. In your branding strategy, it’s easy to get stuck in a rut of using the same symbols for the sake of consistency. But changing this up a little ensures your brand stays dynamic as it grows and evolves.
Focus on what makes you different
Even though retail is a saturated sector, it’s important to remember that your brand is still unique. Why? Because the people behind it bring in their own experiences and skills that no one else has! Especially for those who run creative businesses, custom product packaging presents a fantastic opportunity.
Custom sticker for branded package
Stationery brand Notely deliberately keeps their packaging design simple, so their branded stickers with their name and Instagram handle take prominence. This is a smart post-purchase marketing strategy because they’re targeting the customer right when they’re feeling the most excited about the product and are likely to share it, increasing the odds of repeat purchases or word-of-mouth recommendations.
3. Consider how you can use your small business custom packaging design to tell a story
In the age of social media, packaging isn’t just packaging; it’s a storytelling device for your brand. Not all that long ago, your product packaging would only have been seen by your customer. Today, it has an audience of thousands.
On platforms like Instagram and YouTube, a picture needs to say a lot to really gain traction. Our feeds are so crowded with brands that it often takes something out of the ordinary to grab our attention — and your packaging design is an excellent vehicle for some more imaginative content!
- Try flat lay photography
Flat lays, as seen below, are a fantastic way to showcase your products by theme or collection.
It’s also a much-used content style, which can make it difficult for your offerings to stand out. Regardless of what you sell, a flat lay photograph needs to tell a story about your brand to be effective.
- Colorful packaging design flat lay
Textiles designer Eleanor Bowmer uses her bright yellow custom tissue paper to create a strong focal point in her visual content. The inclusion of her packaging tells a story about how she puts together her customer orders.
Instead of only showing off her product range, this narrative is far more unique and engaging to an online audience.
- Be quirky
Something that’s sure to get attention online is using your packaging in novel ways. When you can’t interact with customers in person, it can sometimes feel challenging to get the essence of your brand across. A bit of creativity goes a long way towards showing your audience what kind of brand you are.
4. Keep it Green
When brands think about product packaging design, they usually jump straight to decisions about aesthetics. However, the sustainability of your design is just as important a consideration.
In 2019, nothing says “out of touch” like saddling your customer with packaging materials they can’t responsibly dispose of!
Last year, a social media campaign against Walker’s Crisps encouraged consumers to send their empty crisp packets (which aren’t recyclable or biodegradable) to the company’s headquarters in protest, which resulted in a pledge from the brand to make all their packaging plastic-free by 2025.
As we move into the future, more and more brands will be adopting green practices. Just take a look at design and illustration company Dear Prudence, which takes an eco-friendly approach to their product and packaging with reusable tissue paper.
Conclusion
Looks do matter, but it’s also essential to ensure your best custom packaging for small business is still protecting the product. You could have the most stunning custom packaging on earth, but if the product is stale or broken, people will talk and leave reviews thanks to poor packaging. By following these strategies like understanding your packaging needs, choosing your materials wisely, and keeping it green. You can design the best custom packaging for small business that reflects your brand’s styles. Consider “The Custom Boxes” for the best custom packaging. They will guide you how to get custom packaging for small business. They offer free shipping all around the world.
