As print design specialists, our approach to packaging design is to protect and promote your products.
Using premium materials and print techniques, we work with a broad range of suppliers to create sustainable solutions that feel unique while causing minimal impact on the environment.
Packaging design, a specialist discipline within print design, has been integral to how we interact with products for thousands of years. From simple daily items to premium clothing, all modern packaging disciplines can trace their origins to how early civilisations preserved, sold, and distributed resources.
Examples of glass and ceramic ‘packaging’ containers from ancient Egypt date back over 3,500 years. We believe these were used at markets to sell many materials, such as precious oils, dyes, and common grains. Coloured glass pots were used to differentiate between these foods, ingredients, and materials, creating a practical visual system that helped people understand the contents. At the same time, the glass pots also helped preserve and protect the contents for long periods.
This system is essentially the basis on which packaging works—first, to protect and second, to advertise. While some basic packaging systems were in use worldwide, it was only in the last century that product packaging became a fully developed discipline in its own right. Advances in literacy, resource availability, manufacturing, and product design have led to an explosion of packaging possibilities, each designed to protect and promote the products it holds.
Recent examples of packaging design work include bespoke jewellery boxes for Heath Diamonds, on-shelf cartons for Georgina Day, shipping bags for The Feather Company and wax tin cases for Halley Stevensons re-waxing solutions.
The two fundamental principles of packaging design are protection and promotion.
For a piece of packaging to be successful, these components must work together. For example, if a perfume box looks beautiful but the glass bottle inside is damaged, it has failed to safeguard the product. Conversely, suppose a product is held within a poorly designed container.
In that case, it is unnecessarily overpackaged or uses low-quality materials. It is unlikely a customer will pick it up in the first place. The second point is crucial for products stocked in a shop — shelves are an incredibly competitive environment with potentially thousands of similar products competing for attention.
Appropriately designed product packaging will always give a reasonable amount of protection. A packaging designer considers the entire lifecycle of a product, taking into account its journey from manufacturing to warehouse or shop, the process of being displayed or picked, distribution across a range of delivery networks and finally, how it will be stored and reused by the end-user. A designer will test and iterate on different concepts to ensure it performs to an acceptable degree before signing off. Many clients opt for formal mass-produced packaging testing to ensure it withstands real-life handling.
Several additional considerations come into play when designing the packaging for premium products such as clothing, jewellery or electronics. These include:
When developing any pack design, it is essential to consider the audience, where the product will be sold, its key USPs, the appropriate brand image and materials, and many other factors. For in-store FMCG products, an eye-catching design may be deemed essential. However, high-end products such as jewellery, fragrances, or makeup can often benefit from restrained design, instead focusing on the confident use of high-quality materials.
When designing a product pack, we recommend weighing up the following elements:
We recommend that all packaging materials considered for a project be sustainably produced. We believe it is the job of a creative agency to specify and explain the most appropriate materials. For example, we refuse to use plastics that are not quickly or widely recycled in the UK—and there are many!
It is essential to consider the level of accreditation of a material. For example, a paper may be certified by the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC), while textiles may be approved by an organisation like the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI).
