Packaging design is about far more than just containing and protecting a product. It’s a crucial component of brand identity design.
Excellence in brand identity design elevates a brand across all channels, from the retail shelf to the Instagram snap of someone using the product.
By the same token, weak brand design needlessly dampens the brand experience and leaves opportunities for exposure on the table. Brand identity design incorporates the basics like logo, colors, and fonts, but it is integrated throughout the brand so that every element contributes to a cohesive brand narrative. Here are six examples of companies that are doing brand identity design right.
1. YOLO
YOLO is a brand of sweet treats including brownies, cookies, chocolate covered coffee beans, and coffee flavored milk. Its fun and indulgent brand identity is captured through simple, bright typography and colors that conjure up mental images of the ideal candy store.
2. Ekberg
Ekberg, a Finnish bakery and confectioner must be doing something right with brand identity design, because the company has been around since 1852! Packaging designs are “homey,” yet clean and bright, and the founding year is included in the logo design to remind people that the company knows what it’s doing.
3. Chobani
Greek yogurt brand Chobani entered the U.S. market in 2008 and revamped its brand identity design for its 10-year anniversary in 2018. In its redesign research, the company found that consumers saw the brand in a “wellness” context and designed a cohesive brand identity for its 11 product lines with that sentiment in mind.
4. Glossier
Beauty brand Glossier launched in 2014 on a philosophy of simple self-care. Packaging is simple, yet beautiful and useful – perfectly designed for Instagram. Not only is the packaging well-designed for shipping and unboxing, it aesthetically holds up both in person and in the digital space. People see a Glossier product on social media and instantly recognize the brand.
5. Moccato
Moccato is an e-retailer and subscription box service for coffee lovers, and among its product offerings are coffee pods. The brand combines tradition (with a stencil-like typeface echoing coffee sacks of old) and youthfulness (with bright color accents). It’s an excellent combination for attracting both long-time coffee aficionados and younger consumers who are newer to coffee culture.
6. Rogue
Oregon-based Rogue is a farm-to-bottle brewer that grows many of the ingredients in its beers and spirits. Its brand identity reflects local color through hand-drawn illustrations and an overall “eager startup” aesthetic. Product names are fun and irreverent too. Who wouldn’t want to offer good friends a can of “Batsquatch” or a bottle of “Combat Wombat?”
Clearly, there is no singular way to do brand identity design right. The brands represented above represent characteristics ranging from elegant sophistication to youthful bravado to smart self-care. Getting it right requires keen understanding of both the brand and the consumer audience, plus the right experience, tools, and expertise. PKG Brand Design is always on the forefront of new CPG branding and packaging initiatives; please subscribe to our blog for the latest package design industry news!
