Dozens of creative package designs surround human beings. Be it from gifting hampers, breakfast cereals, and shampoo bottles to online food delivery. Packaging is everywhere and product label design involves many layers. These layers are integral to the reputation of the brand and each layer is crucial from the outermost to innermost packaging of the product. This layer needs thorough research to be done the right way. Below are the explanations of these layers in detail.
Outer Packaging
Usually, the outer layer is made of plastic wraps or cardboard boxes to endure the transportation and shipping of the product. It guarantees the item protection from damages or spill along with ensuring the safety of the product inside. This can be a shopping bag with a color of the brand along with the logo for a cloth brand or a plain, thick cardboard box that contain an electronics brand.
Inner Packaging
Inner packaging guarantees the product safety from tear and wear of the outer packaging; these can be in form of plastic wraps, shredded paper or bubble wraps, or sealed bags.
Product Packaging
This is the final stage of packaging that holds the product. In most cases, the product might be incredible, but the consumer product’s good packaging could deteriorate your enterprise before the consumers have an opportunity to try it. To be more precise, consumers judge the book by its cover thus ensuring CPG packaging reflects a positive image of the product inside is significant. From missed ingredients and too many plastics to wrong labeling, CPG packaging designers act a great role in your bottom line. Here are the top mistakes to avoid when designing your product packaging.
now that we’ve explained the main packaging solution components, let’s get back to the mistakes you need to avoid!
1. Misleading Packaging Design
Misleading packaging can also put you at risk of a lawsuit if overdone. In some spaces such as the food industry, each piece of packaging is thoroughly examined by the regulatory authority and can cost suspension of your license for misleading consumers. Moreover, any company or industry can be sued by the customers in the consumer court for under-delivering and over-commitment. The information can unmask how bigger the product size is than it actually is, or even fake promised benefits from the product.
Packaging is termed misleading packaging if does not live up to the product’s will. This creates ill will among consumers believing what they paid for is not what they got. If the customers are making a purchase based on the package and lack the details in small print, they may make the initial purchase but probably end up losing the client forever.
In other cases is where some industries or companies attach product packaging with misleading images. They use these images to build an impression that the product is of high value than its actual worth. This may earn the company a quick sale but not for a long period. Making use of tricks to customers is always ill-advised practice that is a bad idea. It kills trust in the brand and not only keeps off from purchasing the product but also warns family members and friends across social media platforms.
2. Mislabeled Packaging Solutions
Wrong labeling is one of the common mistakes in CPG packaging. This can trigger a wrong interpretation of the product to the consumer regardless of how incredible the product is. For instance, failure to place proper ingredients on the food label can trigger a serious problem for a person with food allergies. Think of mislabeled pharmaceutical products; imagine how serious the slip-up can really be.
3. Confusing Packaging
Though we are not suggesting that the packaging design of every product be simple or minimalist, it should not be too busy or complicated to understand. However, a too colorful package having too little white space may not look enticing. Packaging with too many contrasting colors or fonts may distract the eye or make it actively turn away from the product. Consumer products’ good packaging significance is identical to the product inside.
4. Boring Packaging
The consumer product’s good packaging design should have emotional conveyance. Does the item or product convey health or joy, or other emotions that drive the customers to purchase? Consumers want to love your product and you can build this feeling by using an eye-catching, emotional lifting design of the package.
5. Packaging that’s Hard to Open
Packaging solutions need to be fit for purspose. So if it’s hard to open you’ll lose trust and sell less. This is because everyone hates packaging that can’t open. Toys are for instance notoriously tough to open and no one wants to grab the scissors and cut the plastic off the package. In addition, the plastic edges can be sharp. If you make your product hand open is a bad form that your consumer will first notice.
6.Typos in your Label Design
To keep off the backlash, build credibility, and breed trust, it is crucial to keenly proofread every single word on your packaging label design before the final printing. Unfortunately, once an obvious error is out, it’s almost impossible to take it back and re-build the trust of the consumers, and recalling the product will be an expensive exercise. So the severe will be the damage. Consumers are unwilling to spend their hard-earned money on a brand that fails to get its simple packaging details right. Consumers are perfectionists, grammar critics, and digital savvy who can’t condone wrong spelling and questionable layout design. These are the top packaging design mistakes you will want to avoid at all costs.
To win your consumers’ trust and build brand authority, your package must contain clear, honest, and precise communication from its label. A customer can’t invest at all in a product if a company itself does not seem to. It is recommendable to put effort and time into brand communication along with attention to detail and customer value. Ensure a double check of your package design always. Typography is the best thing to use to steal the attention and communicate the brand’s messaging to stand out in the marketplace. The use of different font sizes and colors to direct consumers’ attention to crucial information is known as typography. Typography will differentiate the product, define the packaging and as well attract the consumers toward purchasing the item. However, packaging design is not an easy task and requires the design agency’s involvement to help you choose the correct font and typeface. This depends on the specifications of your product and target audience.
7. Labels that are Hard to read
In most cases, brands make use of clattered text or tiny fonts that are practically impossible to read in an attempt or arrange a lot of information in a small space. In this case, consumers are prompted to squint their eyes else use a magnifying glass to read the labels. Nutritional information and labels that are unreadable, take away the willingness of the consumers to purchase the product. This is a huge blow to the sales. Moreover, the regulatory authority requires all the information on the packaging to be in accordance with normal sight. This is to ensure proper readability to most of the consumers. The size and shape of the packaging design of the product ensure correct font size determination.
8. Not using Colour Palettes effectively
This is an effective lesser-known field of psychology. Color psychology assists to establish your brand in just the right space. The target audience identification, preferences, and expectations from the product, brands make use of colors that are appropriate to make the best combination. For instance, bright and bold colors are utilized in kids’ products to be appealing to them. Using the wrong color combinations will succeed in making your package design irrelevant. It will also make it hard for you to position the brand among the consumers in a target.
The product’s nature is also a crucial factor to consider before you can select the color. The preferences of color differ across the age, geographical location, gender, and preferences of the individual. if the consumers in target prefer eco-friendly, green products and lead a sustainable lifestyle, making use of natural colors like brown, green, and blue will be an incredible call for your brand. It’s a challenging and tedious task to identify your target audience and be able to adopt the right colors to steal their attention.
However, you will need to thoroughly research competitors, and industry to understand the market’s current trend. This will nourish you with different color ideas. By involving expert creative designers, companies can build a well-researched strategy for their brand and utilize the creative element combination to their advantage.
9. Not Standing out from Competitors
The package design that attracts the potential buyer’s eyes and existing customers recognize it at the first sight is the most creative. However, if the design of your package is identical to that of your competitor may not be able to stand out and make an impact. In most cases, companies try to draw inspiration from their successful competitors’ designs incorporating the same in their packaging to be successful like them. This is a mistake and may backlash the reputation of the company disabling their audience reach.
Confusion arises when consumers are trying to select identical products. The similarities with the products may course the consumers to pick up competitors’ products instead of yours as they pay little attention to details. So, ensuring that your product is visually distinct will offer you a chance to stand out striving to blend in. consider other crucial factors such as brand guidelines, target audience, size, and unique selling proposition. Every company contains its own unique approach to building its products. Maximum sales can only be triggered by aligning all the branding collaterals.
10. Impractical Outer Packaging Shape
To make the product stand out and look appealing, most company brands utilize unique shapes. This works for many products but eccentric and impractical packaging shapes do quite the opposite. It’s hard to design, print, transport open, and maximizes the product cost. It increases the complexity that it should be and affect the reputation of the company. Impractical-shape packaging is hardly perceived well and can create a barrier to sales.
We believe that simple design can build maximum impact. Making things simple is the hardest and most complicated part, but this can be achieved with the right effort. Moreover, brands can build a convenient, impactful, easy-to-use design that conveys the right information. Complicated and unnecessary details will only succeed in confusing and distracting the audience and keep them off from making a purchase. It keeps off the focus from the product.
How can you achieve the perfect packaging solution?
You’ve seen how perfect packaging needs a lot of care, planning, dedication, and creative thinking. We can help you put all these steps you’ve read about into practice and produce packaging that makes a difference for your company. We’ve been in the printing industry for almost 30 years, here in Carlow, Ireland. With your amazing products and our experienced and creative designers, your product is in safe hands. Prices are catered to your needs as well. We have partnered with stellar print partners too so rest assured you will get a high-quality, solution tailored to your needs. Get in touch with us today. We’re real people, on location, and we can’t wait to hear from you
