Well-designed packaging is essential to product marketing success, robust sales, and a healthy bottom line. We know that packaging design influences consumer behavior. Specifically, packaging affects our choices and how we experience and interact with a product—factors that can lead to product and brand loyalty.
Attractive, engaging packaging differentiates your product from competitors and helps influence and entice customers to buy your product. But it does more than that: Beyond the aesthetic, quality packaging creates a perceived value, which can help consumers justify their purchase and ultimately drive product sales.
When you consider the power of that brand impression, there’s a lot riding on your product packaging. Does yours hit the mark?
On-trend packaging design is a moving target: To ensure your product packaging is on-point, we’ve gathered the latest in packaging design to help you keep up with current trends that are capturing consumers’ attention now.
Here are the latest product packaging trends to explore in 2023.
Bold, splashy graphics.
Combining bold, fun colors with eye-catching illustrations of ingredients is a trend that blends wow-factor with transparency. By highlighting flavors, scents, or special ingredients, this design trend is ideal for helping your brand stand out among competitors while boosting consumer appeal.
Texture.
Using raised typography, embossing, or a specialty finish like foil creates a luxe, upscale finish that can increase your shelf conversion rate. In addition, the tactile packaging element encourages interaction with your product—a unique selling point. But, because textured printing can be more expensive than traditional packaging or labels, some brands use unique textured effects for specialty or milestone product releases to create an elevated or exclusive feel.
Unique typographic elements.
Typography that looks handwritten or “scrawled” is on trend, lending an authentic and casual air to packaging. This design style is the opposite of the perfectly polished brand look, creating a more personal and approachable vibe.
Source: https://99designs.com/
Playful touches.
Whether a whimsical cartoon drawing or a lighthearted graphic treatment, adding an unexpected design element gives your product an appeal, helping it stand out among the sea of sameness in basic product packaging.
Minimalist.
Packaging simple and ageless designs provide a sense of brand clarity and authenticity. Opposite of the splashy graphics or cartoon drawing approaches, with minimalist packaging, everything is straight to the point. It’s a simple, organic approach to packaging that shows cleanliness, neatness, and organization— things that appeal to consumers.
Nature-inspired colors.
Right in step with eliminating environment-harming plastics in packaging, many brands are turning to natural, earthy colors to embrace and reinforce their eco-conscious brand values.
Storyline.
Instead of packaging design relying solely on the use of colors or other visual components, the storyline tells a narrative about the brand so that people can feel a connection to it immediately. Marketing Brew recently highlighted the successful rebrand of a Sichuan-inspired sauce that demonstrates the technique:
Fly By Jing
Marketing Brew’s Katie Hicks writes: “Packaging on Fly by Jing’s Chili Crisp jar reads, “Food by Jenny, who increasingly goes by her birth name, Jing, and was born in Chengdu but grew up everywhere and uses her experience as a trained chef to share meaningful flavors that open people up to new ideas and conversations.”
The brand packaging tells a story and talks casually to customers like friends, which makes an instant connection and lends to brand authenticity.
Interactive.
Thanks to new technologies, customers can learn more about a product or brand before opening the package: You can tell whether a pizza is hot by looking at the box’s color. When placing your smartphone near the product, it begins to communicate with you. Interactivity is the key to fresh innovation in packaging trends: Most popular is AR-enabled packaging which provides better engagement with users by introducing them to product content, discount codes, video tutorials, and more.
Transparency.
Aligning with today’s consumer demand for greater transparency in advertising, data collection, etc., product packaging that shows all is an excellent way to put your brand and product out there while building trust: Clean, clear product packaging emanates honesty with your consumers. From food to personal care items, transparent packaging is a trend worth adopting.
A final thought about packaging design.
The rule of thumb for successful marketing is to stay up to date with what’s current while tempering those trends with an understanding of what works best for your brand and your audience. Some of these packaging trends might be spot-on for your product, whereas others might miss the mark. Keep that in mind as you approach your product packaging design. And if you need a partner to help you with design and product packaging, reach out. We’re here for you.
