The Conversation

The old aphorism says that you should not judge a book by its cover, yet humans often do exactly that. In fact, book manufacturers in recent years have branched out in their cover designs, altering the tactile texture of covers to help differentiate them from the traditional slick covers to which most people are accustomed. 

Likewise, packaging design for consumer products is reaching out in new directions, and the term synesthetic design encompasses a lot of packaging design choices. In short, synesthetic design addresses more than just the visual appeal of packaging, connecting with consumers’ other senses as well to differentiate products from those of competitors. 

However, although technology allows more scope with packaging design than ever before in history, there are certain constraints that will always apply. 

People judge the (real and metaphorical) book by its cover all the time. 

Innovative packaging design allows brands to make products more convenient, more appealing from store shelves, and safer. Flexible pouches in particular have grown tremendously in importance over the past few years. By the year 2021, flexible packaging is expected to be a nearly $22 billion per year industry, with almost $16 billion of that being accounted for by food product packaging. 

Flexible food packaging designs are expanding to a broad range of food products.

Flexible pouches offer a higher proportion of product to packaging than cans and trays, and their very flexibility allows package designs tremendous scope and creativity. Not only that, flexible packages are easy to handle, take up less space than traditional packaging, and are easy to transport. 

Manufactured glass has been around seemingly forever. While alternatives to glass jars and bottles did not exist until more recently, glass is still considered an excellent container material that does not have many of the detrimental environmental effects that other consumer packaging design types may have. 

Balancing product protection with packaging sustainability requires different techniques with different retail channels. For brand owners, this increasingly means packaging products for a specific sales channel, whether that is retail or e-commerce. Sustainability requires different approaches for different sales channels, which means the entire packaging paradigm is shifting.

In the classic 1967 movie The Graduate, Mr. McGuire famously recommends that Benjamin Braddock, Dustin Hoffman’s character, consider the plastics industry. “There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?” 

It is fortunate that supply chains are becoming shorter and technology is making advances in consumer packaging design, because consumers are demanding more and more from packaging design as time goes on. The sheer quantity of data to which they have access about the foods they eat and other products they buy means that they are making choices based on more factors than the traditional ones of price, convenience, and taste. 

While there are plenty of options in consumer packaging today, a few types dominate in consumer-facing products. Currently, PET bottles, plastic pouches, and metal beverage cans make up almost 60 percent of the packaging material types in North America. 

Flexible packaging is appearing on store shelves for an increasing number and variety of favorite consumer packaged goods. Everything from pet food to baking ingredients to cosmetics can be found in flexible packaging, and more consumer products are shifting to it because of both consumer and producer preferences.  

Consumers like that flexible packaging keeps their (and their furry friends’) food fresh with minimal effort.

The information age has given consumers more detailed information than ever about what goes into the products they buy. Brand positioning in today’s marketplace cannot rely on providing only the information required on a package design and trusting customer loyalty to sustain strong brand relationships.

Nobody likes wasting food, but in some cases, it is all but unavoidable. Food waste is any raw or cooked food, whether solid or liquid, which is discarded, or intended or required to be discarded. It is generated throughout the processing chain, from harvest through processing, handling, storage, transport, cooking, and serving.