Let’s face it! Product packaging is not everyone’s cup of tea! Most companies don’t even understand the importance of good packaging. Their myopic attitude views packaging only as a tool to protect and ship the goods till they reach the end-consumer. Yet, increasingly, this trend is seeing a shift where product packaging is becoming a powerful tool for interacting with customers and fulfilling a series of organisational goals. For eons, this has been a scattered service that needs coordination with multiple teams, vendors, and agencies. From graphic designers to procurement companies, material vendors to logistic experts, the process of creating the perfect package is a bumpy ride with glitches, road blocks, and delays. No wonder companies dread it completely.

Here is a list of five reasons why packaging design can cause nightmares for brand builders

• Design & Aesthetics: Imagine a high-end designer bag delivered in a brown paper bag or a premium chocolate sold in a lush velvet box. It’s odd, right? While designing the perfect packaging, there has to be the correct sensibilities in place. One must keep in mind the colour schemes, logo units, and branding elements, amongst others, to ensure the design fits what the product is pitched to us. A logo unit too big or too small can disturb the design, a colour too light or too bright can confuse the customer, and an environmentally sensitive product sold with a plastic cover can weaken the branding. All these are part of aesthetics that need mindful consideration and long-term strategy.
• Material Sourcing & Sampling: Once it’s decided on what has to be made, then the decision on how follows on. Brainstorming the best packaging material, sourcing it, creating a sample line, and conducting a feasibility study all necessitate a collaborative effort from a group of experts. From pricing to durability and logistics to product safety, there are several boxes to be checked. Finalising the packaging layers and finding the perfect material is of the utmost importance. That means justifying deadlines and logistics.
• Artwork & Approvals: Creating an artwork that optimises the shape, size, and design is a mind-boggling task that has innumerable back and forth, causing unnecessary delays. Ambiguity or no consensus results in conflict in seeking approval as well as reduced efficiency of the whole team. Just like too many cooks spoil the broth, too many brains spoil the pace of designing fantastic product packaging.
• Industry Compliance, Competition, and Innovation: Today, if you look, the shopping aisles are bursting with products from each possible category. Inevitably, each industry has its own norm and compliance when it comes to packaging. From food to pharmaceuticals, and health to home-improvement, each industry has a long list of must-haves and best practises for their packaging. Besides, several variants and their SKUs make product packaging a hard nut to crack. Let’s not ignore the single most influential factor that gives brand builders sleepless nights – competition! With glossier and sleeker coverings, packaging wars are fought brutally to grab the customer’s attention. This has led to a new packaging trend called innovation. Thinking out-of-the-box without overstepping the boundaries of cost, company values, and compliance adds further pressure on companies to rely on specialists.
• Deliveries & Deadlines: While creating a perfect prototype is a challenge, another set of critical skills is needed to put the packaging into regular production. Keeping multiple SKUs in stock across multiple locations, ensuring logistic costs are kept to a bare minimum, and creating a seamless chain of smooth operations can be a nightmare for an operations manager. Moreover, the bottom line of the company is grossly compromised in the event of packaging disasters.

Conclusion

Minute attention needs to be paid to every aspect of packaging design in order to stand out on shelves and be memorable to consumers. Creating packaging to carve a niche and unique brand identity needs true expertise, especially if you don’t have the time or money to burn on trials and errors.

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