11 tips and ideas for successful branded packaging

Branded packaging can play a huge role in the success (or otherwise) of your business.

But what goes into successful branded packaging?

Branded packaging is any bag, box, tape, or other packing material that features a company logo, name, or supporting text (such as a slogan or strapline). It can quickly help consumers identify specific products and influence purchasing decisions. Branded packaging should be consistent in terms of colours and typography and reflect a business’s ethos and personality.

As such, this guide offers 11 actionable tips for creating branded boxes and packaging.

Before ascertaining the best way to brand your packaging, it is essential to consider what branding actually is.

As such, a good definition of branding is that it “is the process of creating the brand identity of a company. This process also delivers materials that support the brand, like a logo, tagline, visual design, or tone of voice.”

How these elements – logos, taglines, etc. – are used on your packaging can have a significant impact on sales, customer loyalty, and repeat purchases.

The number of different forms of packaging that you can brand is often surprising.

Arguably, the most common types of branded packaging include bags and corrugated packaging. The latter, in particular, has an almost infinite range of options and finishes, including full-colour print, varnishes, spot laminates, embossing, and more.

But items such as tapes, foam inserts, and labels can also carry branding. Even industrial materials and solutions, such as Correx boxes, Euro containers, protective cases, and wooden shipping crates, can feature basic branding.

So, if you are considering branded packaging for your business or looking to update your current designs, these points are a great place to start.

Tips for successful branded packaging include:

• Choosing branding appropriate for your packaging.
• Consider visual impact.
• Look at your competition.
• Be honest and reflect your brand proposition.
• Choose fonts carefully.
• Stick to your core brand colours.
• Use colours that are appropriate for your product/market.
• Be consistent across all touchpoints.
• Test your branded packaging designs.
• Ensure scope for product extensions.
• Consider sustainable packaging.

The first point to consider is how you apply branding to different forms of packaging.

For example, for a retail product, your brand must stand out amongst a sea of competitors. As such, bold, full-colour print, catchy straplines that resonate with consumers and designs that capture attention are all vital.

Yet branding is no less important for a business shipping industrial parts. This branding, found on corrugated transit packaging, for example, would likely consist of one or two-colour print that helps identify products but also provides free advertising as it passes through the supply chain.

The best type of branding for your packaging will always depend on your target market, consumer, and specific application.

If you are using your packaging primarily in retail environments, then it is vital that your branding helps to capture consumer attention.

However, this does not necessarily mean you must include garish, bold colours (although that would be sensible for specific markets and sectors). You can stand out from your competitors in numerous ways, for example, using dark, rich hues to convey quality and position yourself as the luxury option in your segment.

It is also essential to consider that important branding elements should be clearly visible. Using a red strapline that makes important claims about your product on an orange background will not provide the visual impact this element requires.

It is vital to consider what your competitors are doing with their printed packaging for several reasons.

For example, assessing your competitors’ packaging, particularly if they are dominant in the market, can give you a steer as to what is popular and attracts consumers. Similarly, however, it can also help ensure that your packaging is not too similar in appearance.

Besides this, looking at the category you are in as a whole can help ensure that you do not alienate customers.

For example, very few laundry brands use bold reds on their packaging, sticking to blues, greens, and lilacs alongside white. Similarly, you do not see many (any) Coca-Cola brands using green for their packaging. Sometimes, you have to use colours that your potential customers associate with a specific product, or you risk being overlooked.

Your brand – and, by extension, your branded packaging – should reflect the ethos and character of your business.

Whilst this is difficult to define, if you take care to reflect your brand’s position within the market, how you differentiate yourself from your competitors, and what your business stands for (e.g., if you have a specific mission statement), this will all help.

On a more practical level, it is important not to make unsubstantiated claims about your products on your packaging. Displaying images that are not accurate representations of your product will leave customers disappointed at best and angry at worst. Either way, they are unlikely to buy from you again.

There are several important considerations when choosing fonts for your packaging.

Firstly, if your brand identity and logo have a clean, minimal design, overly elaborate or cursive fonts (e.g., script/handwriting-esque) will look out of place. Choose one that complements the other elements of your branding.

Secondly, use at most three fonts (as an absolute maximum) on your packaging design. Ideally, two fonts that complement each other well provide a good balance.

Thirdly, ensure that font sizes and colours are fully legible. Do not make them too small, and ensure their colour provides enough contrast against their background.

Finally, ensure that your fonts cannot be misread. There are countless examples on social media of text using typefaces that are supposed to look like they say one thing but can easily be mistaken for something entirely and unintentionally different!

Whilst it can be tempting to pick bold colours to capture attention or to mimic those of your successful competitors, sticking to your core brand colours is a must.

However, it may be the case that you use multiple different colours to differentiate between differing product lines (e.g., different flavours, strengths of product, scents, etc.). In this case, there must be enough brand colour included in your logo and other elements, as well as consistency in fonts, etc., so that even taken in isolation, all of your branded packaging is easily recognisable.

As mentioned earlier in this guide, your choice of colours can significantly impact how consumers view your brand. Do you want your branding to appear confident, fun and adventurous? Or to portray elegance and premium quality? This is why it is vital to take colour psychology into account.

Choosing the wrong colour can also mean consumers overlook your product entirely. If you have chosen branding in a colour not typically associated with a product, it can confuse your potential customers and lead to lower sales.

Choosing complementary colours also helps avoid a jarring, unattractive appearance. Using the colour wheel for packaging can help when branding packaging specifically.

Finally, you can also leverage the colour of the packaging material itself. The perfect example is using a kraft brown material to convey an organic, eco-friendly message.

It is no use having beautifully designed branded packaging if it does not match the rest of your branding.

Ensure that your packaging is recognisable when compared to your website, social media profiles, delivery vehicles, point-of-sale display stands, and even your employee uniforms. From colours to typefaces, tone of voice and use of product imagery, you should consistently brand every potential touchpoint for your customers to help with recognition and awareness.

For big or important product launches, conducting consumer research and testing beforehand can often yield surprisingly useful insights.

It is possible to test your branded packaging (and products themselves) with consumer groups using surveys, in-person interviews, questionnaires, and giving out free samples in exchange for feedback.

Doing this can help you avoid pitfalls you may have yet to uncover during internal meetings. Sometimes, just having fresh eyes on the packaging can help you perfect your packaging branding before launch.

Can your branding be successfully applied to other product packaging?

Depending on their sales success and your company’s development work, you may add additional variants and options to specific product lines in the future.

As a result, it is important to create branded packaging that is flexible enough to be reused with some minor changes. This may include slightly different hues of the same overall design or just changing specific elements.

Whilst not traditional branding, the sustainability of your brand is now critical to many consumers. As such, it is vital that you communicate your sustainability efforts through your packaging and other branded collateral.

This could include using natural brown cardboard, white and green inks, and completely eschewing plastic (including void fill and tapes).

It could also mean including logos of various accreditations and schemes of which you are a member or which your packaging complies with. For example, if your corrugated packaging is FSC certified, it is a great idea to communicate this by printing the FSC logos on your boxes.