How To Create A Supplement Packaging Design.

The supplement market is vast, covering sports nutrition, including amino acids, vitamins, herbs, and extracts. The low barrier to entry makes this category competitive, making the product packaging critically crucial for catching the target consumer’s attention and driving purchase-making decisions. But no matter if you need a dietary supplement packaging design for health or sports nutrition, designing good packaging that resonates with the target audience involves multiple factors.  

Companies can’t rely exclusively on the creativity of a skilled graphic designer. To ensure market penetration, they must combine creativity with a perfect brand development strategy. 

In this comprehensive guide, we will learn about the importance of supplement packaging design for every sales channel. We will also learn how good packaging conveys the brand message and make an impact. 

If that sounds interesting enough to you, then keep on reading!

Importance of Design

As an old saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words,” therefore, design is an essential element of branding. It helps to convey the brand message to the target consumers by grabbing their attention from the shelf. 

Therefore, designing attractive packaging is always a top priority of a well-reputed Supplement Brand Strategy Agency. The company must ensure the following key elements within its product packaging.

Visual Appeal: To create a visually appealing product packaging design, the design should use essential elements intelligently that resonate with the nature of the product and the brand values. For example, certain aspects of the sports nutrition category are considered “hardcore”; therefore, it uses a lot of colors, strong angles, and intense styles. In contrast, the vitamin and herb supplement industry uses pastel colors and curvy styles.

Branding and Messaging: Whether it’s an in-house process or you work with a supplement brand development agency to promote brand values, strategic branding, and messaging are how you grow sales and develop a strong brand presence. It also helps convey the company’s core message and communicates the unique selling proposition. 

Functional Design: Good supplement packaging must not only be visually appealing, but it also needs to be practical. Therefore, a packaging design strategy must consider easy-to-open sturdy packaging that maintains the look from the first to the last use. It should also clearly state the recommended portion control and dosage.

Sustainability: Sustainability speaks mainly to the vitamin and herbs space compared to sports nutrition. Sustainable product packaging aims to reduce the negative impact on the environment. Furthermore, it helps to demonstrate the brand’s commitment to environmental responsibility that resonates with environmentally conscious consumers. 

Key Design Elements

When working on the retail packaging design, a Supplement Branding Agency must focus on key design elements to make its packaging stand out. Incorporating the critical design elements will help ensure that the design resonates appropriately with the target audience. These elements work together to convey the product’s messaging and drive brand awareness.  

Typography: typography is crucial in design as it directly engages with the intended audience. It is imperative to ensure that the typography is clear, legible, and easily understood even from a distance. In the case of sports nutrition supplements, the typography must be clean and dynamic to convey energy.

Colors and Graphics: The next thing is color and graphics. Specific to sports nutrition supplements, a Supplement Packaging Design Agency will test energetic and vibrant colors against other strategies. The coloring and graphics may be more calm and pastel for the vitamins and herbs industry but always test to see how to position your brand to stand out. 

Shape and Structure: The packaging must be convenient for the consumer. It must protect against environmental challenges such as sunlight and humidity.

Material and Finish: Material and finish are essential when designing an efficient packaging label. For vitamins and herbs, a package should consider eco-friendly materials. Companies can also use a product box as secondary packaging, but if they do, they must create it strategically to justify the added cost.

Supplement Packaging Trends

The trends in CPG packaging design have been growing exponentially to match the ever-growing needs of the target consumers and build a solid brand presence. 

Here are some product design trends for vitamin and herbs and sports and nutrition supplements industries:

Minimalist Designs

Product designers utilize a simple but effective strategy, i.e., “Less is More!”. Even though sports nutrition packaging often involves more energetic and inspirational colors and fonts, in many cases, these come in simple layouts. 

Packaging designs are becoming more sophisticated by reducing excessive design clutter and decorative elements. The trend of using minimal and clean typography is also increasing. Especially in the vitamins and herbs industry, fonts tend to be more calm and soothing. 

Sustainable Packaging

Sustainable packaging design is a critical trend as the world is becoming more concerned about the environment. Therefore, nowadays, supplement packaging designers must consider how to promote the brand’s investment in recycled material for product boxes. 

The use of eco-friendly packaging is also becoming popular. Natural packaging design trends are growing exponentially, whether it be sports nutrition supplements or the vitamin and herbs industry. 

Interactive Packaging

Interactive packaging is the key to promoting sports nutritional products. With technological advancements, the sports nutrition supplements industry tends to innovate way before others. 

For instance, companies use QR Code integration for smart packaging to access additional info, workout plans, and nutrition facts. Also, gamification is a strategy companies use to enhance the brand experience. It makes an engaging user experience by including puzzles and challenges. 

Personalized Packaging

It involves tailoring the packaging to create a unique and customized experience for the consumer. This trend has gained popularity, allowing supplement brands to establish deeper connections with their target audience. 

Custom supplement packaging incorporates personalized messages to consumers to create a sense of individuality. Creating personalized packaging must align with the brand’s aesthetic while catering to consumers’ needs. 

Types of Supplement Packaging

As mentioned, the supplement market is vast, and multiple supplements are available for consumers’ needs. Each type of supplement product requires packaging material according to its nature.

Let’s look into various types of packaging for supplements:

Supplement Bottle Design

A bottle is one of the most commonly used packagings for supplements in powder, tablet, and liquid forms. It is because bottles offer convenience, protection, and ease of use. 

It often features handy, portable designs and is most common for sports nutrition products. For instance, pre and post-workout supplements that one can easily take to the gym in their bags. 

Supplement Pouch Design

Pouches are becoming a go-to for sports nutrition, vitamins, and herbs. It offers better protection against air, extreme temperature, and humidity. Supplement pouches are lightweight and take up less space, making them suitable for on-the-go consumption. 

They are also often used for single-serving or travel-size supplements allowing the consumer to take required dosages in their pockets any time, anywhere. In addition, pouches are also good at accommodating various forms of supplements ranging from granules to capsules and tablets.

Tips for Effective Packaging Design

After learning about the critical design elements and trends in supplements, let’s discuss some packaging design tips. These design tips will help enhance your branding and make the product design stand out. 

Know Your Target Audience

The first step in designing adequate packaging for supplements is knowing the target audience and their needs. It’s a crucial brand strategy that helps to uncover the secrets to win the market. Most supplement brands aren’t fully aware of their target consumers, which results in poor shelf performance. Understanding consumer preferences and designing packaging is necessary.  

Showcase the Brand

Showcasing the brand is also an essential aspect of successful marketing. Unfortunately, many sports nutrition products, vitamins, and herbs companies fail to focus on it. While inspirational graphics and colors are necessary to drive the initial purchase-making decision, showcasing the brand logo helps develop brand memory. 

Emphasize Product Benefits

After identifying the target consumers, the next thing is communicating the product’s benefit to the desired audience. It includes the nutritional and health benefits of the supplement and its outcomes. Emphasizing product benefits provides Answers to the questions consumers have about a product. Lastly, highlighting product benefits can stir the consumer’s interest and intrigue, increasing their interest in trying the product. 

Simplicity and Clarity

Simplicity and clarity are vital to remember when creating a supplement label design. The design must be clutter-free and mention all purchase drivers in the proper hierarchy. When you leave enough white space on the packaging, consumers can clearly understand each word and visual element, increasing the likelihood of clarity over confusion.

Test and Iterate

Brand testing and iteration are crucial to improving product packaging and aligning with the target consumers’ needs. Testing new product design ideas help to gather essential data, such as surveys. After collecting data, it is necessary to identify the patterns within the data along with the areas of improvement.  

The Future Of Supplement Packaging Design

Supplement packaging design is a consistently evolving field to match the needs and requirements of the target market. Here are some key trends that will shape the future of supplement box designs: 

• Sustainable and Eco-Friendly Packaging: Due to the ever-increasing environmental awareness, supplement brands will focus on biodegradable materials, recycled packaging, and eco-friendliness. 
• Innovative Packaging: Smart packaging solutions are likely to become more popular. It includes integrating sensors, NFC, or QR codes on packaging to provide consumers with real-time information. 
• Minimalist and Clean Designs: By focusing on simplicity, clean typography, and uncluttered layouts, supplement brands can convey a sense of elegance, clarity, and trustworthiness. 
• Enhanced Safety and Protection: Supplement packaging may include tamper-evident seals, child-resistant packaging, or innovative barrier technologies.
• Smart Dosing and Dispensing Systems: Future packaging may consist of additional info that indicates accurate dosage info, for instance, premeasured compartments, smart caps, or tracking consumption patterns.  

Data-Driven Brand Development For CPG Brands

Want a best-selling brand? SmashBrand is a brand development agency for CPG brands looking for a performance lift in retail. From brand strategy to packaging design, we can help you strengthen your position, increase shelf performance and capture market share.