What makes an ideal brief for a packaging design company?
Nowadays, the challenge for many product manufacturers is to make their product packaging provoke desires and clearly stand out from the competition. To achieve this attraction, it is necessary to combine elements such as the logo of the brand, typography, images – photography or illustrations – and the correct mixture of colours.
Once you have taken into account these aspects, reflect if they are combined systematically. In this way, you will have clarity about what you are looking for and you will be able to give your opinion. What you should never do is allow your “taste” to be imposed on the professionalism of the packaging designer.
Insight and understanding of the product
As a designer for packaging design companies, the brief that I would like to receive would be from the entrepreneur himself or the person in charge of accepting the design. Ideally, they would describe to me how they perceive the product themselves, to what audience they are directing it, how they imagine it, how they themselves see the product; this provides valuable insight and a perspective that is important in designing the packaging.
Avoiding clichéd packaging
The reality is that most of the time the design responds to how the owner wants their product to be seen, rather than the function and aesthetics capable of differentiating it from competitors. This affects the client’s perception, since a project often ends up falling into clichés and common pigeon holes that are considered appropriate because they have already been used and liked by the owner of the brand.
There is more to packaging design
A graphic designer seeks an aesthetic purpose capable of communicating specific characteristics. They create a visual abstraction of the concept to be developed. Unlike engineers, designers must discover how to make functionality graphically represented with quality and artistic appreciation that benefits the product in terms of competition in the market.
Differentiation by design
Even if the most practical solution for the employer is a container, box or bag of generic pre-established molds by the packaging and bottling industry, graphic design may be the most viable option in terms of product differentiation in the market.
Therefore, an ideal design brief must include:
- An understanding of the company, brand, and particular product
- A well-defined target audience, and their characteristics
- Detailed packaging requirements
- Clearly outlined production details
- The desired materials
- The initial design direction
With such a design brief it becomes possible to fully conceptualise the functionality and messaging required, and from there develop the optimal and most cost-effective packaging solution based on the budget allotted for the project.