A book from from an industry veteran on the principles of jewelry display, image, layout and planning. Author Larry B. Johnson takes you through every facet of creating and maintaining effective jewelry ...
By Linda Casey
Increased competition, higher costs, and challenging markets are enough to make any package designer emotional. But when designers talk about recent trends, it’s the customer’s emotions that are in the spotlight. Now more than ever, designers are focusing on how packaging can best create an emotional connection between products, brands, and customers, and then use these relationships to help their products stand out from the competition, move to better profit margins, and serve the changing U.S. marketplace.
Simplicity has dominated design for plenty of recent product launches and redesigns. It’s being used by boutique brands to put the focus on the product and by private-label brands, such as Walgreens Nice!, to create sophisticated packages that aim to attract consumers across several income levels.
Some package designers and strategists are beginning to question if the pursuit of simplification has been taken too far. “From my very subjective perspective, packages got overly stripped-down,” says Eric Ashworth, chief strategy officer for Anthem and its parent company, Schawk. “Everything went stark white with sans serif, lowercase type. I loved white when it first came out, but I’m sick of it now.” Adds Lor Gold, Schawk/Anthem’s global chief creative director, “Packaging was once incredibly emotive and wonderful. We can head down that path again, and packaging can be more emotive than it’s ever been!”
How are designers making the first moves toward bringing back that lovin’ feeling? “Color’s back,” Ashworth asserts, noting that this trend is especially evident in the new packs being introduced for gum.
Wrigley’s Orbit brand certainly couldn’t be accused of being insensate, with its Dirty Mouth commercials. The confectionary giant supports Orbit’s branding with vibrantly colored packs that are easily recognizable even from a distance. Gold calls this packaging attribute its “badge quality” and describes it as what lets products make a statement about the consumer using it.
Perhaps a more familiar context for “badge quality” comes from the fashion arena, where designer clothes are sought as an extension of the wearer’s personality. Gold asks, “Why can’t package designers take what works in fashion and marry that to package design?”
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