How you design and decorate your packaging is an opportunity to promote and legitimize your brand. Aligning your product packaging with your brand makes a connection from your company to the customer and provides a feeling. That feeling can be fun, dark, luxurious, bold, relaxing, or whatever description you want.
It all starts with learning how to promote a brand through packaging. Here is a detailed guide on how to create custom branded packaging.
Print your brand front and center.
The most obvious way to promote your brand singularly through its packaging is by having your logo right at the center of the presentation. An unmarked box isn’t anything special. A logo-adorned box or another form of packaging immediately assigns it to you.
Use your brand’s color palette.
Through the logo and graphics you probably already have, chances are you have defined a colour palette for your brand. Take that colour palette and apply it to your packaging. Be sure to stick with your palette and further that brand identity instead of trying to come up with something new.
Print worded descriptions.
Promoting your product and brand, you may opt to keep a fairly clean and sleek look. It’s trendy right now to opt for text over graphics. A simple description of the product that’s direct in its identification and with one or two flourishing phrases to highlight the sort of feeling a customer can expect to receive from your brand proves to be very effective.
Be abstract with the packaging design.
High-quality, unique packaging will likely remind customers of your brand long after opening it. A great way to remember and carve out brand identity is to settle on an abstract shape. Abstract packaging is becoming more popular, whether that’s in colour, shape, texture, or construction.
Make the custom packaging relatable.
Try to tell a story with your product. Make it relatable to your target customer. Think about their story. Think about what their values are. If there’s a way to blend that into your packaging or labelling, that might be a way to relate to them and foster a more emotional connection than simply a transaction.
Use custom tape.
Custom tape is great because you can brand it with logos, graphics, colours, and more. Brands like Amazon use custom tape to help box up common items and brand any form of packaging with their logo. Although you don’t need to use custom tape similarly, strategically applying it to your box can further emphasize your branding.
Make the packaging tactile.
Think about how you can make your packaging more tactile and textured. If it’s high-end packaging, this may be more of a priority. A portion of the popular love textures, and from embossing to creating raised patterns, there are all sorts of ways you can create textures that emphasize branding.
Make unconventional packaging.
To promote your brand, you want people to be talking about your brand. Don’t hesitate to think outside of what ‘standard packaging’ is and come up with something more than average. Especially if you are shipping directly to the customer, you can make your packaging look like almost anything.
Use unique imagery on packaging.
In addition to playing with the shape of your box, think of the unique imagery you may be able to blend in. In liquor stores, brands promote a great category with one-of-a-kind, eye-catching packaging. Walk the aisles and see all the different types of bottles. Apply that same experimentalism and openness to your product.
Design playful packaging.
Don’t hesitate to have some humour about your product or brand or the packaging itself. A cardboard box that converts into something else is unique. Think about what you can do, using humour and invention to make your package fun and playful. This sort of thing inherently helps shareability online through channels like Instagram and Facebook.
Create interactive packaging.
Hundreds of thousands of videos of people unboxing various products are online. Some of these unboxings demonstrate just how interactive some packaging has become. Interactive packaging can be as simple as wrapping paper of some kind to specific folding instructions, reusability, converting the box into something usable, or incorporating a QR code.
Relate your brand to a cause.
Charity organizations are always looking for partners. Relate your brand to a cause. Use the imagery to gain the charity’s exposure and inform customers about what’s important to you. Choose a cause that matters and has a personal connection. Anyway, you can tell a story and connect to the customer emotionally. It can form a real bond and highlights a brand in a positive light.
Add references to social media.
A final word of advice is to include a business card inside concerning your social media accounts. Redirect any customer who has purchased a product to your brand’s social media accounts and connect them to your brand for the long-term, with the possibility of repeat purchases, upselling, utilizing them to boost sales during special sales events and more.
