really good packagINg explaINed
10 Mistakes Designers Make
When Designing Product Packaging
by MarIaNNe klIMchuk
1. Failing to discuss money up-front.
Would you work with a plumber, carpenter, dentist,
doctor, or lawyer if you didn’t know how they bill?
Money, sales, and contracts are not what designers are
trained to discuss and therefore, it’s a matter too often
avoided until countless hours have been invested in
a project and the desire for fair compensation creeps
in. When designers can clearly identify their strategic
process and how their creative value serves a client’s
identifiable needs, then the value creation is clear.
It is only then that they can define the variables that
determine fee structure.
2. Jumping onto the computer before brainstorming,
researching, sketching, collaborating or
experiencing.
Thinking that the Internet makes up for real-life
research and experience is a mistake. Actually, it’s
called laziness. Certainly there are thousands of
inspiring works right at our fingertips, but nothing
can take the place of interpersonal, experiential, and
sensory experiences. In fact, the mindset that makes
us jump onto the computer—being overwhelmed,
feeling a lack of creative thinking, not having a clear
sense of direction or organization—is precisely what
often leads to a great sense of frustration (or even
design plagiarism.) With the breadth and diversity
of information at our fingertips, we are bombarded
by sensory overload and time is lost in this Internet
vacuum. This is also when design plagiarism can occur.
A great brainstorming session, researching analogous
or dissimilar subjects, or collaborative mind-mapping
can increase productivity. Designers make better
decisions when they have a clear, well-informed, well-
organized, yet varied problem-solving process.
3. Failing to design with the end in mind.
Not only is this all too common, but add to that failing
to work with a printer or production professional
at the onset of a project. From size, material, and
production processes to retail environment, lighting,
shelf positioning, and consumer demographics, too
often designers move forward in the design process
uninformed. Designers should not be afraid to have a
backward design process, to ask questions and advice
from manufacturers and production professionals,
and to use all potential recourses and collaborative
opportunities to advance a design process. There is no
road map for the designer who fails to understand or
articulate the essential outcomes of a project.
4. Thinking that design aptitude can compensate for
communication skills.
Designers need to be not only walking visual
thesauruses but also world citizens. On a macro level,
they need to be informed about the workings of the
global business world, the financial transactions,
management, and business environment of
their clients, and the impact the global economy
has on design. On a micro level, they must be
able to articulately communicate a clear design
strategy behind an aesthetically pleasing solution.
Communication skills, including writing, speaking, and
critical thinking, have been significantly altered with
the integration of new communication technologies.
Although new ways to express ourselves have
emerged, the ability to articulate effectively in an
oral or written format will always be an essential and
highly regarded value in our society. Young designers,
in particular, should be given opportunities to witness
great orators presenting or reading exceptional
examples of business writing, and they should be
provided with plenty of opportunities to practice these
skills themselves.
5. Losing touch with innovation and creativity and falling
prey to the same design routine or a stale design
process.
Too often, designers and design firms lose perspective
on themselves and their work. They produce similar
work for a wide variety of clients. Certainly, directors
and peers are critiquing designers internally, and
clients externally, but among external designers
and design firms, there are few opportunities to
share and receive feedback. The speed of innovation
breakthroughs in the technology sector far surpasses
any minute advances in our own profession. Designers
need to change perspectives, turn processes around or
even upside down, look at the designed environment
from a new, younger (or older) perspective, and
take risks. Common sense and pragmatism have
been drilled into us over the years, and the sense of
imagination, playfulness, inventiveness, and rule-
breaking that were hallmarks of childhood are lost to
systems and rigid processes.
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THE AUTHORS
6. Thinking that taking responsibility for the
environment and humanity is their clients’ issue.
Certainly for many designers, this issue has changed
their process, business focus, and mission; however,
creating lasting and positive change is critical for the
future and direction of our design profession. We need
to look at clients and designers as partners and share
common goals in this effort. Information relevant to
health, environmental and production considerations,
alternative materials, technologies, and processes
should be shared freely. One more thing: Designers
should not let more violator labels—FSC (Forest
Stewardship Council) or otherwise—infringe on
the face of good design. Once these labels get into
packaging design, it will be hard to get them off.
Designs that are environmental friendly should live it,
not wear it.
7. Devaluing their craft by participating in spec work.
Other than doing pro bono work, which in packaging
design is a rare opportunity, doing spec work (free
design work) cheapens our profession. Any designer
willing to work without a guarantee of appropriate
compensation should consider a career change. I have
heard plenty of potential clients argue that viewing
a project submission by a number of firms allows
them to compare evenly. Can you imagine asking five
painters to each paint one wall of a room to see who
has the best approach? If a capabilities presentation,
portfolio, and interview are not evidence enough, then
the client is fishing for freebies.
8. Taking themselves and their work all too seriously.
Comic relief—or at least a bit of wit—in our everyday
environments is desperately needed. I truly believe
that humor and wit (used with good judgment) not only
sell but also add levity to tension-filled existences.
What I am referring to is the visual marriage of ideas
that communicate in a clever, visually interesting,
artful way. Although there are psychological, social,
and aesthetic differences in the interpretation of wit,
using humor and wit in ways that are open to common
interpretation by audiences of globally disparate
perspectives can make for highly effective visual
communication tools. Although there would be nothing
worse than every design attempting to be funny, I
believe that consumers are beginning to slow down
and appreciate the nuances and expressions of creative
thinking that witty designs communicate.
9. Designing based on an old set of rules and
philosophies.
Design is about creating new experiences, not
simply conforming to the competition or to pre-set
parameters. Don’t get so caught up in a project, a
style, or a philosophy and forget to cultivate a new
perspective, a new relationship, or a new approach
to thinking about the world in which the design
and consumers live. Reframing a problem and the
approach can often make it more interesting and
solvable. Designers should be encouraged to break
away and break rules. With the utilization of clear
communication skills, based on innovation, designers
can collaborate with clients on solutions that are part
of a more meaningful consumer experience.
10. Thinking that anyone with any design background
can do it well.
Packaging design is a focused discipline that takes
education, experience, and a lot of hard work. It takes
an extensive breadth of qualities beyond the ability to
graphically lay out a pdp or create a three-dimensional
structure. With all the requirements and functions
that are integral to packaging designs, it is not simply
about the what but about the how. Yes, as Primo Angeli
asserted, it’s about making people respond, but there
is nothing simple about that.
Marianne Rosner Klimchuk has been the chairperson of
the Packaging Design Department at the Fashion Institute
of Technology for the past fourteen years and an instructor
of design for over nineteen years. She has been a visiting
lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School’s
Jay Baker Retailing Initiative, is a contributing writer to
industry magazines, and co-authored Packaging Design:
Successful Product Branding from Concept to Shelf. She
is a design consultant with a focus on design strategy,
integration, and best practices. When not at work, she is
carefully navigating her kids through their teenage years,
herself through life, and her husband through all these
phases.
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More than beautiful eye candy
So what makes good package design great? Great package design
speaks directly to its consumer’s heart. It delights. It tells a story. It
gives the brand a sense of place. It authenticates a brand and makes
it relevant. It literally creates the brand experience well before the
consumer experiences the product in use. But as a designer, you
already know all that. That’s what all good design does.
As a package designer, you know that great package design also
needs to drive a sale. Great package design actually creates value
even when the product inside it is perhaps of a lower quality and
a higher price than its competition. To me, truly great package
design transcends taste. It speaks to folks both inside and outside
the visually literate. Great package design generates an immediate
visceral impact with you, your next-door neighbor, your great-aunt,
your idiot frat brother.
That’s not to say that the same design should appeal to everyone.
Quite the contrary. Like a great brand, great design needs to be
polarizing. Creating the package that the greatest number of people
hate the least is not your goal. In its need to mean a very specifi c
something to a very specifi c someone, a great package can often piss
someone else off. And that’s OK. In fact, if seven out of ten people
hate a package but the other three would drive to another store to
fi nd it, most brands could triple their market share!
There are lots of examples of great package design in this book.
While some of the work for smaller, entrepreneurial brands may be
the most ground-breaking, I’m actually more impressed with the
great design done for really big brands. Work done for Coca-Cola,
Absolut, and other global icons is truly great in, that in, these designs
rests the success of billion-dollar brands. No single design-literate
brand owner gave the green light to this work. No compelling
salesperson convinced his or her client that this was the right way
to go. Rather, this work had to pass through layers upon layers of
management, often with very different aesthetic tastes. It had to
be proven in lots of “qual” and “quant” research with consumers
who don’t know or care about color and type and composition. It
had to transcend global cultures. It had to speak to those who can’t
articulate why great design moves them, those who are not aware
that design has the greatest infl uence on their brand affi nity.
And so, great package design and great package designers must
also be great educators. They must work exceptionally well in
incorporating confl icting criteria among people with different
perceptions. They must make compromises while still maintaining
the integrity of their strategic idea. And while they must become
diplomatic consensus builders, they can never marginalize their
passion for their work.
So, to me, great package design is more than just great design. It’s
much more than beautiful brand eye candy. It’s an exceptional idea,
exceptionally articulated and fueled by passion.
There is some great work in this book. May it help fuel your passion.
To me, truly great
package design
transcends taste. It
speaks to folks both
inside and outside the
visually literate. Great
package design generates
an immediate visceral
impact with you, your
next-door neighbor, your
great-aunt, your idiot
frat brother.
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really good packagINg explaINed
A
Q
&
My favorite package design inside this book is…
Chivas Regal 25-Year-Old Original (page 94). It is
often much more challenging to evolve an existing
identity than to create a new one. I admire how
well this design pays tribute to its heritage while
recasting it in a contemporary, relevant, and ultra-
premium context.
You know a package design is really good when…
It drives an initial purchase, it serves as the key
visual mnemonic of the brand, and it unifies all other
brand communications. At the end of the day, it all
comes down to engaging the consumer at the point
of sale. Now, if a package can do this and elevate
consumers’ sensibilities at the same time, then the
design is truly great.
The best thing a client ever said to me was…
They wanted me to help make them more
courageous in their design choices. Large
corporations are often too conservative. They
are looking to make significant change in their
consumer perceptions, and yet they only allow us to
tweak their existing identity. Now more than ever,
consumers not only embrace change, they expect it!
Keeping your brand relevant often means periodic
re-invention. And only design-led, synthesized brand
communications and courageous clients can do that.
And the worst …
I showed this to my wife, who is an interior designer,
and she thinks that it lacks a certain something.”
While everyone is entitled to their opinion, non-
specific, subjective design direction derails an
otherwise efficient process. How do you prevent this?
Every design project should be initiated with a visual
positioning. If you predetermine the visual strategies
that best evoke the consumer experience and get
consensus on these strategies with the client, the ad
agency, the promotion firm, and all your consulting
counterparts before you start designing, you’ll never
have to deal with your client’s interior designer’s
opinion again!
For creative inspiration, I…
brand analogies. How can we make this brand the
Dyson of its category? What would Apple do to this
brand? Who owns the Venus positioning in this
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with Rob Wallace
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