Differences Between What You Like About Your Packaging Design vs. Your Customers.

Look at some of the most popular packaging design blogs and publications. You’ll notice a large proportion of highlighted branding and package design is dedicated to product packaging that you simply never see in Walgreen’s or Ralph’s or any other store in which your customer shops.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to graphic or package design; clothing design enthusiasts drool over fashions that regular folk don’t wear. Fashion designers can get away with designing outrageous concepts because they design for an elite category of shopper. Package designers get the occasional prestige project, but must make a living designing protective vessels for industrial ceiling mount lighting fixtures and other depressingly unstylish products.

We don’t want to discount the achievements of other designers with interesting, bold and brave concepts floating around – we want to encourage innovation. But the consumer essentially wants familiarity with only a trace of novelty. How can we as designers give the customer what he/she wants while satisfying our innate desire to create something new and beautiful? The answer is: Serve our egos with divorce papers.

It’s the Market, Stupid

We’re not designing for ourselves; we’re designing for the consumer. It’s okay if we’re not the sort of people that would ever buy a calking gun or industrial coolant, but we must nonetheless come up with a packaging concept that would appeal to those who would buy those items. Hint: The concept does not involve the Aphrodite Slim Pro font.

Our packaging design ideas and tastes, while brilliant, don’t serve everyone equally. Designs that cause excitement and win awards might not really work in the market place, plain and simple. Customers don’t need a packaging concept to make a product alluring – just because we can unfold a package like a piece of origami doesn’t mean that the drill bits inside will be more effective.

The package designs that are the most celebrated are typically for luxury products – products that are already largely for the purpose of fun. So, we can design a feisty cookie box, or sports drink bottle or styling gel and be reasonably certain that the market will support the branding and package design choice. But if we go out on a limb with items of utility; items that we need rather than want, then we’re in danger of rubbing the consumer the wrong way and diminishing the product’s image. No one trusts a gimmicky infrared temperature gun.

Focus Groups

If we only accepted projects that thrilled us, most graphic designers would starve and die. We love designing wine and liquor bottles, packages for gourmet chocolates and containers for the latest incredibly expensive handheld media devices, but those projects are few and far between. We may have to earn our keep designing boxes for fruit fly traps.

The first step in creating a branding and package design triumph is self knowledge. We must admit that we don’t know everything about every market and then make the specific effort to learn. Suppose we’re unfamiliar with the needs and habits of the kinds of people who buy durable Foundry siding. In that case, we have to take time to actually familiarize ourselves with who does – duh.

Consultancies for different industries will help you understand the public’s response. Get different perspectives and opinions about what works and what doesn’t. When we are focused on designing, we often lose the ability to see our work from another point of view; outside opinions will jerk ourselves out of our own heads.

So, what have we learned today? We learned that we can’t always design to excite ourselves about a product – we must first excite the client and the public. We learned that just because we might not be intrepid do-it-ourselves people, we can still acquire the necessary tools to design for that market. Most importantly, we learned that the world of design is a world of compromise – not every single project will be coated in glamour. Do you need a package designer for your 50-count interior wood screws? Come right this way!

Data-Driven Brand Development

Want a best-selling brand? SmashBrand is a brand development firm for FMCG and CPG companies. From brand strategy to packaging design testing, our Path To Performance™ process guarantees a retail performance lift. Book a time to discuss your project with our team.