At One in Taiwan

By Jennifer Tsai

In today's highly competitive business environment, Taiwan is successfully competing with great package design. With economic clout that belies its small geographic size, Taiwan is the 17th largest economy in the world. One of Asia's "Four Tigers," Taiwan has a dynamic capitalist economy and holds fourth place in market share in Asia.

In the past, one of the pillars of Taiwan's economic strength was O.E.M. manufacturing, and during the 1990s, manufacturing accounted for approximately 37% of Taiwan's gross domestic product. With large segments of its manufacturing moving into China and other countries in Southeast Asia, Taiwan has responded with its characteristic resilience by seeking to capitalize upon the entrepreneurial strengths of its service sector to maintain Taiwan's economic expansion and presence in global markets.

Taiwan's design and marketing firms are part of this economic evolution, and they have responded by developing thoughtful and targeted marketing strategies, including product and packaging designs that respond to the needs of consumers and the marketplace. Central to this marketing and design philosophy is the critical importance of a consistent identity and brand image.

Brand identities a premium

In the past, a large segment of Taiwan's packaging for common products was plain, unadorned boxes. This type of packaging was strictly utilitarian and, as long as it adequately protected the box's contents, it was considered quite satisfactory.

Today, Taiwan packaging has evolved into a critical part of the marketing mix, a crucial link in connecting one-on-one with the consumer. It presents the public "face" of the product, reflecting its unique personality and identity on-shelf to cut through the competitive clutter and stand out from the crowd. Packaging's visual impact—the way it presents the product's personality—is the key to marketing success, particularly when a product is first introduced to the market.

Taiwanese designers understand that the overall brand personality that packaging conveys must be consistent with the brand's essence, character, values, and positioning and that the brand's personality must be conveyed through the total package, with all elements working together to create the desired personality.

In 2004, Taiwan had 6,583 design services firms and studios with a total of about 11,300 employees. Taiwan's design services sector has been targeted for development, with the prime areas within the design services industry being industrial product design, computer-assisted design, packaging design, contemporary fashion design, industrial arts product design, brand visual design, graphic visual design, advertising design, website and multimedia design.

The Taiwan design services sector development strategy focuses on nine areas that include strengthening public awareness of the value of design, enhancing professional education and training programs for designers, and strengthening the overall competitiveness of Taiwan's design services sector.

There are marked cultural differences that exist between China and Taiwan, and the Taiwanese design community is proud of its rich culture and heritage, unique personality, and distinctive artistic forms. Taiwan designers express the country's individuality and makes unique contributions to international packaging and product design through the creation of design with a distinctly Taiwanese flavor.

Distinctly Taiwanese packaging takes ancient forms and modernizes them into an elegant presentation. As this package suggests, Taiwan design can express aesthetics that are both old and new simultaneously. Artful package designs, not flashy colors or bold type, are what often create "charismatic personalities" for Taiwanese products.

Environmentally friendly materials

Taiwan's Environmental Protection Agency has formally announced full restrictions on packaging for all items effective July 2006. The new legislation places restrictions on packaging materials based on the percentage of empty space in a package, the number of packaging layers, and the type of materials used.

The goal is to reduce packaging by at least 30% by the end of 2007. In addition, Taiwan has revamped its entire recycling law to require fees on all kinds of packaging for appliances and electronics, and has placed new restrictions on plastic disposables, including a controversial ban on plastic bags.

Taiwan's design community supports and promotes the use of environmentally friendly, recycled, and recyclable materials in the production of brand packaging to help to maintain the ecological integrity of Taiwan in the country, and wherever Taiwan-produced packaging ends up on the shelves.

The Taiwanese design community is proud of its rich culture and heritage, which they feel has an individuality and personality apart from other Asian countries.

Unique designs generate sales

In the past in Taiwan, food packaging's primary emphasis was placed upon the packaging having sufficient strength and durability to ensure product integrity and purity, and secondly on communicating product ingredients and attributes. Back then, if brand stewards felt it necessary to refresh the product's personality, they frequently responded by changing the entire look and feel of the product's packaging.

Today, designers strive to portray the distinctive personality of each product through total product packaging with all components combining to support the product's positioning and unique personality, while still maintaining a consistent line look for all products that fall under an umbrella brand. This strategy reinforces both brand and product positioning and facilitates the shopping process.

Compared with yesteryear, when food was sold in a limited number of venues, today's food packaging in Taiwan must compete effectively in many different retail environments with packaging that meets consumers' functional needs, such as being easy to carry, hold, open, close, store, and reuse.

With a variety of innovative and visually stunning packaging on the market today, today's Taiwan package designers must produce fresh, inventive, and breakthrough concepts to attract consumer attention and create sales success. Designers cultivate partnerships with printers and packaging manufacturers to develop new and innovative ways of making the ordinary extraordinary to create eye-catching, charismatic on-shelf personalities. In not going far enough in package development, package design in Taiwan runs the risk of competition copying their packaging's look and feel with copycat packaging that steals market share.

Jennifer Tsai founded Proad Design in Taiwan in 1987, and has won numerous design awards since starting her design career in 1982. Proad has developed product identities for many Taiwan manufacturers, and Jennifer is dedicated to making Proad "the link" in forging cross-cultural communication. Her interest in cross-cultural communication is further evidenced by Proad's membership in Global Design Source, a creative network of six international strategic branding, product, and packaging design firms that share and exchange ideas, knowledge, expertise, and resources to promote design excellence. Jennifer can be reached at jenny_proad@yahoo.com.tw.