Visual information is what connects the consumer with the packaging design. Once the consumer develops loyalty for a product, at some point they will recognize its package from far away. New brands and products need an extra spark to get people's attention and develop familiarity. Here are essential points for packaging designers to remember when creating designs that must convey visual information.
Catching the Consumer's Eye
Presenting product information in a captivating way as part of the packaging can be challenging since there's only so much space available. The objective is to come up with a design that speaks for itself while projecting the product's benefits with graphics and text. Due to space limitations and people's natural attraction to simplicity, short phrases must speak volumes.
One of the main ways to get a target customer's attention is to use terms that summarize the product's value associations such as "healthy," "nutritious" and "tasty." The terms become building blocks for crafting short positioning statements or tag lines. These words are emphasized because they represent core values of consumers, who develop connections with brands that trigger positive emotions.
Since competing products are often placed side by side on retail shelves, it's important for the package design to stand out in a way that it differentiates from its competitors. Trying to mimick a popular brand's layouts and color schemes can lead to distrust among the public and legal trouble. It's better to be original anyway, as well as simplistic and meaningful all at once.
The idea that visual stimuli communicates information isn't really taught in schools and it doesn't come up often in conversations. So the techniques of communicating visual information tend to be understood mostly by professionals who specialize in visual arts. While there have been deep studies on consumer psychology over the years to understand buying decisions based on visual information, much is still unknown about this interesting link.
Information Displayed on the Package
The visual information people perceive from the package needs to match the consumer's curiosity level about its contents and what the product delivers. It needs to accurately portray the product so that trust is built with the buyer, who then decides if they like the product enough to purchase again.
Food products carry nutritional labels on the packaging to help consumers know what they're putting into their systems. These days nutritional data is what's driving the sales of the booming organic food industry. Millions of people who became overweight are now aiming for ingredients that contribute to weight loss. Displaying this information accurately in a way that's easy to read and understand is a major prioritity for makers of health food products.
Layout and Overall Design
Deciding on the layout of the package design is a crucial initial step that may involve creative thinking, brainstorming with marketers and considering how the market already perceives the product category. The placement of text in relation to images has a big impact on how the package is perceived. Colors and shapes are also influential design factors that can make a difference with consumers.
Conclusion
The packaging design must communicate product information visually. That means balancing graphics with text in a way that makes the product's identity and its main benefits clear. Once a brand becomes established as familiar in the market, the visual information on packaging can become more flexible and explore new directions to stay fresh.
References
[1] "Product Development; Packaging Design(2019)", by Azhar Abd ,Ghazali Daimin, Ruslan Rahim
