A fantastic promise-fulfilling brand means nothing when you don’t have the packaging design to get it off the shelves and into your customer’s hands. Excellently strategic packaging design is the powerful bridge between your brand’s sales potential and actual revenue.
Good packaging attracts, informs, incites curiosity, and ultimately becomes the recognizable visual element loyal customers look for whenever they need to restock your product.
What’s the psychology behind successful packaging design?
Good question! That’s precisely what we’ll be exploring in depth below.
Product Design Psychology 101
Perception is everything. What you communicate outside the box is what customers associate with what’s inside the box; this goes both ways — for good or bad.
For example, if your color scheme clashes, the design appears chaotic and unprofessional, and customers are likely to question the quality and authenticity of your product itself. In other words, they may doubt what your product claims to do, and the results it proposes to deliver.
Every customer scanning the shelves and scrolling the list of products asks themselves the same question: “Does this really work?”
Due to the delicate nature of the skimming process, products need to answer this question quickly, enforcing trust before a customer skips to the next competitor brand out there.
The Winning Elements of Good Product Design
Understanding the psychological pull of your product via design is broken down into exploring the following main areas:
Color Scheme
Colors have emotional resonance. For example, green is often associated with environmentally conscious brands, products, or services. Specific colors can short-cut through the written meaning of something. In other words, customers won’t have to read “environmentally friendly” on the product; the color green already foreshadowed this concept in their perception.
Shapes Matter
Product shapes vary from culture to culture and from trend to trend. For example, there was a time when sharply angled product packaging was more in-style than the modern, sleek, and rounded-edged design we see today. It’s the same with automobile shapes throughout the years.
Interestingly, product packaging designs that appear slim and narrow are associated with health. Therefore, you’ll see more health product packaging designs that evoke these associations. In addition, thin-lettered typography, even prescription-like designs, help communicate the authoritativeness of the product by the seller.
Typography That Sells
Finding typography that matches your brand style and assists in communicating a cohesive visual message to your target audience is critical. It’s obvious when you scroll through your options which ones are not on point (e.g., comic sans) and which ones have potential (e.g., Helvetica, Montserrat, etc.).
Either way, the best font, and typography is most readable and aligned with your brand style messaging.
Best Materials
The tactile element instantly influences the psychological interaction with a brand’s product. For example, a customer is visually examining its surface while the tactile characteristics can simultaneously communicate value and authenticity or poor quality and cheapness.
Have you ever been skimming through a rack of clothing, and just by touching a piece of clothing, do you recognize quality right away? It works the same way. Using well-constructed materials potentially becomes the tipping point for a customer to try your product and eventually become loyal.
Gaining steam with continual, repeat purchases is easier when customers have taken the plunge to try out your product. All aspects of the packaging design either help or hurt in this respect. That’s why it’s so important to consider each element of your final design carefully.
Pioneer Packaging Custom Designs Product Packaging
For over 35 years, Pioneer Packaging has been the go-to source for designing product packaging that sells. Our creative designers work closely with you to ensure your brand is recognized for quality packaging design and materials.
So whether you’re looking to get your paper product packaging at affordable prices or attract new consumers, we can create a design fit to meet all your demands. We strive to keep costs down to help our customers keep their brands moving along production lines. Contact Pioneer Packaging today and learn why we’re a leader in packaging innovation.