Objects of Desire tracks the explosion of wild creativity that happened during the ‘designer decades’ of the 80s and early 90s. By addressing wants rather than needs and allying themselves to the blatant consumerism of ‘retail culture’ designers emerged from the back rooms to claim a starring role in the shaping of modern life.
According to David Berman,
“Designers have enormous powers to influence how we see the world, and how we live our lives.”
He thinks that we should constantly be aware of what we do, affects for whom we work, and how our work affectsothers.But whatever our good intentions may be, we cannot ignore the reality that deisgn is a business and has to live by the rules of business. It is another fat that those rules need to be rewritten.There is hope for more awareness and responsibility, even in the world of commerce that we’d rather not belong to but cannot escape from.
What is the role of packaging?
According to the publication "Private Label Buyer," studies show that packaging of products can increase customer satisfaction, increase visibility and set one product apart from its competition. In essence, packaging plays a pivotal role in the branding process of the product, attracting customers and providing customers what they’re looking for when they take the product home.
The true function of product packaging is to protect the product during shipment from the manufacturer to the store selling it. Packaging is also a form of protection as the product sits on store shelves waiting for consumers to come along and purchase it. In marketing and market development, packaging is the “dress” on the product, which can play a role in whether the product sells in a new market or to new customers.
Product packaging also plays a vital role in the branding process of the product. InvestorWords defines a brand as a symbol, wording or another type of mark that differentiates a product or business from its competition, and branding is an essential part of marketing for many products and companies. Some products carry different branding, depending on the market in which they are sold, especially in different countries.
Packaging can help sell the product because it provides space for sharing information about the product, such as nutritional information, usage or directions. For example, some packaging contains marketing messaging on the front to attract customers to pick it up and look at the product. In essence, the packaging can help to paint a picture of how the product benefits the customer. When developing a product in a new market, it is important to conduct market research, such as focus groups, to determine what is appealing to the new market. For example, preferences of colours, pictures and labels on products can differ from one country to another or from one group of customers to another.
Packaging also can share information on the features of the product. Size, measurements, uses and more printed on the packaging of a product can help customers decide if the product fits their needs. For example, if a customer is shopping for an under-the-sink garbage can, he needs to know the measurements of a product to make sure it will fit under his sink. A package box or label that details the height, width and depth of a garbage can on a store shelf can help the customer quickly determine if it fits under his sink--ultimately helping him make the decision about whether to buy it.
Packaging also can help customers identify the products or companies they are loyal to. For example, if a local restaurant decides it wants to sell its famous salad dressing in retail stores, the salad dressing packaging and label may carry the restaurant's logo, name and colour scheme. Using packaging that carries the same brand helps customers of the restaurant identify the brand when shopping at the local grocery store. Once consumers start buying the product, packaging helps them quickly identify the product when shopping. When introducing a product in a new market, packaging can help to garner the attention of a prospect. For example, vibrant colours may prompt a new customer to stop and look at the product because of the bright colours or because the design is one she has seen before.
Discuss the aesthetics, graphic information systems and ethics that are critical for packaging design today and for the future.
"Good design looks good, but good looking does not make good design." Prof. Michael Hardt (University of Lapland Rovaniemi, Finland) looks at the impact of unethical design on current global issues, and our growing recognition of the role designers play in this process.
There is an increasing number of New Designers looking for creative and innovative ethical design concepts. The design students of the University of Lapland added 25 new projects. The astonishing learning is that behind nearly every ethical project idea there are promising new business ideas.
Advertisement and packaging of alcoholic products were also seen as very critical. But regarding the results of the Prohibition in the United States in the 20ies of last century, forbidding alcohol was not seen as an appropriate method. The solution for alcohol misuse problems is not NO alcohol but LESS alcohol. It could be so easy: Dosing devices (a used in pubs) and clear advices that the consumption of more than x-units per hour is not smart.
The students concluded that ethics should be a must in the design education. The international designers organisations should develop a code of conduct for ethical behaviour and implement means to protect their members against attempts from clients to force the designer to create unethical designs.
Good-looking packaging design – such as the curvy Coca-Cola bottles or the Altoids mints tins – significantly increases the likelihood that a consumer will choose the product even if it is more expensive and an unfamiliar brand, a USC study has found.
“Consumers appreciate and are willing to pay more for something that is new and different and visually pleasing to them,” said Martin Reimann, the study’s lead author and a USC doctoral candidate of psychology.
The implications of the power of aesthetic packaging could level the playing field for new products entering a competitive market and suggest that investing in beautiful packaging pays off, Reimann said.
Who do I consider to be a good packaging designer?
Let’s see what makes and breaks good packaging design.
1. Clarity and simplicity
Next time you go to a supermarket, pick a random shelf and browse through some products. Glance at each and ask yourself two very simple questions:
What’s the brand behind it?
So remember rule number one: be clear about the product, be clear about the brand.
By depicting a product ten times better than it actually is, you’re misleading and ultimately disappointing the consumer, which only leads to poor sales performance and very bad brand image.
Consumers have nothing against simple, inexpensive products, as long as they know what they’re buying! Of course they expect “face lifting” to some degree but not to a point where product appears to be something entirely different.
As a designer, your task is to represent the product in the best way possible but keep in mind that consumers – you included – deserve to be treated right.
Originality, character and memorability are at the heart of great brands and of course, great packaging designs.
This packaging design from Colin Porter Bell is a great example of authentic and memorable packaging design.
Be bold, be different and look into other product categories for unexpected sources of inspiration – spirit label designs can be a great way to brainstorm ideas for that new chocolate packaging project.
From a shopper’s point of view, a product is never seen alone and never in great detail. Because of the viewing distance from shelves and the fact that products are arranged in rows and columns, all we see are veritable patterns made of various products. It’s not until a certain pattern attracts our attention that we decide to take a closer look.
Shelf impact is something you need to test and explore in your designs. You can do this by imitating the placement of your design on an actual shelf and surround it by other products (for best results, use several rows and columns of each product). The more distinctive it looks, the better it sells.
A product packaging design concept should allow for an easy introduction of a new line extension (product variation) or a sub-brand.
Good packaging design allows for easy variations without loosing visual appeal.
To avoid this, you should always design product packaging with the future in mind. This means creating a visually systematic design which allows for easy changes of product visual or other information, so you get a fine looking family of products in the end.
Practicality deals with the actual shape, size and functionality of the product container, not just the label or wrap. The more practical the product, the more sales it gets – when Heinz turned the ketchup bottle upside down, sales skyrocketed.
Turning things on their head helped Heinz sell more ketchup when ketchup industry was in growth crisis.
Packaging design is a large and demanding design field always looking for designers who can deliver both product originality and sales performance. Packaging is the last message a consumer sees and a last chance to convince him to buy the product. Clarity, honesty, authenticity and other rules described above play an important rule in this process but are by no means the final word on the subject.
MAKING PACKAGING SUSTAINABLE
By definition, packaging encompasses every sector of the economy – everything needs packaging, from herbs and spices to nuclear reactors. As a result, it is a huge market, set to reach almost $1 trillion by 2020, up from $839 billion in 2015. There are five main segments – paper and board, rigid plastic, glass, flexible plastic, and cans.
All these materials are among the biggest sources of waste and recycled material, and sustainability is one of the key challenges for packaging companies. The sector is at the forefront of the fight to reduce waste, to lightweight products and to introduce a circular economy.
For some products, this is easy – everyone knows they can recycle cans, cardboard and bottles. However, when it comes to plastic packaging it can be a bewildering experience, not just trying to work out what type of plastic the packaging is, but also whether your local authority accepts it for processing. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, just 14 per cent of plastic packaging is recycled and at least eight million tonnes a year leaks into the ocean.
The newly heightened awareness of the problem of ocean plastic and the speed of recent developments in the fight against climate change, such as the signing of the Paris Agreement in the past few weeks, mean it is inevitable the industry will face growing pressure to make packaging more recyclable and degradable both by simplifying the materials involved and through innovations in design. Plastic, in particular, is likely to be in the spotlight, not just because of its impact on pollution because it is made from oil, a fossil fuel that contributes to climate change.
But at the same time, technological advances in digitisation, sensors and the internet of things are pushing in the opposite direction to make packaging more complex so products can be better tracked, secured and monitored.
“I think we’re at a tipping point: the intersection of e-commerce and sustainability,” said Marianne Rosner Klimchuk, associate chairwoman of the Fashion Institute of Technology, at the recent DuPont Awards for Packaging Innovation. “This moment in time is that pivotal point in which sustainability and e-commerce are coming together [with] people looking to reduce use of materials and thinking about innovation in terms of e-commerce.”
Although the technology is too expensive to be widely adopted at the moment, many millennials expect 3D printing to transform the world of packaging in years to come. In the same way that many products will become increasingly bespoke, so will the packaging. Coca-Cola and Nutella have led the way in packaging with people’s names on, but in future individual designs may be possible as well and packaging may play an even more important role in marketing products as a result of augmented reality.
Ultimately, packaging will have to respond to the same challenges that retail as a whole has to face. In addition to megatrends such as the ageing population, changing household sizes and increasing urbanisation, packaging will increasingly have to tell a story to consumers who, thanks to the spread of social media, are ever more inquisitive and proprietorial about the products they buy. The packaging of the future will carry more information than ever before.
What is all this fuss about carbon footprint?
The total amount of greenhouse gases produced to directly and indirectly support human activities, usually expressed in equivalent tons of carbon dioxide (CO2).
What is Green Packaging and Why is it Better than Conventional Packaging for Humans and the Planet?
While green packaging, which is also known as sustainable packaging, are commonly known terms in use today, a significant number of people struggle with their meaning. Green packaging is the use of manufacturing methods and materials for packaging of goods that has low impact on the environment and energy consumption. In other words, sustainable packaging uses environmentally-sensitive methods, including energy efficiency, recyclable and biodegradable materials, down-gauging, reusability and much more.
The importance of green packaging to humans and our environment is incalculable. A great deal of energy is used in the production of traditional packaging such as plastics, corrugated boxes, plastic bags, and other packaging. Most often, the source of that energy is fossil fuels that add millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere per year while discarded conventional packaging ends up in landfills or oceans causing soil, water, and plant contamination.
By using sustainable packaging, manufacturers and consumers can eliminate these contaminants that destroy the atmosphere, soil and water of our planet. This can be done via use of lowering packaging content, creation of recyclable or biodegradable packaging, and use of alternative energy means such as wind, solar and biofuels in the production and transport of the packaging.
Plastics made from polyethylene are among the most widely used packaging today and among the greatest threat to our environment. Increasingly, manufacturers are utilizing recycled, recyclable and minimalist packaging wherever appropriate. Biodegradable plastics are also in use with mixes of plant-based plastics that replace some or most of the non-renewable petroleum or fossil-based resources used in conventional PET plastic (A type of plastic resin widely used in plastic bottles).
Today’s plastic bags from an increasing number of manufacturers are meeting the sustainable packaging threshold with use of Post-Consumer Recycled Polyethylene (PCR PE), which are plastics made from the consumer stream of waste such as bottles, caps and recycled plastic bags collected in commercial and residential recycling programs. Additives are used by some manufacturers to make the plastic bag biodegradable so that it breaks down over a shorter time when disposed of in a landfill.
When it comes to cardboard packaging, major manufacturers are creating corrugated cardboard from 100-percent postconsumer recycled fiber or virgin mixed with recycled fiber to create corrugated cardboard that is also completely recyclable and biodegradable. Many more are reducing or even eliminating the amount of corrugated cardboard they use in packaging, replacing it with foam blocks at corners and bands around the product. The foam is lighter than the corrugate and reduces shipping costs and damage that can occur during loading/unloading and transportation.
There is even sustainable packaging in the areas where molded packaging is used such as egg carton containers and consumer product packaging. The use of 100-percent recycled newspaper, which is mixed into a slurry with water, and vacuum-formed on screened molds creates molded fiber packaging that is resilient and strong enough to compete with most vacuum-formed plastic, expanded polystyrene (EPS), and corrugated designs. The used product has a high recyclability factor and significantly cuts the energy consumption needs in the production over conventional packaging.
This is really only a primer on green packaging and the materials and uses that make it sustainable packaging. As more Americans increase their understanding of the importance of sustainable packaging and more manufacturers increase their use, we can ensure a future with clean water, air, and soil for all.