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Choosing the right packaging materials for your products
Choosing the right packaging materials for your products
Your product packaging design is about more than just protecting your products during transit. It also impacts the sensual experience you provide for your customers and needs to be practical for your target market. You mustn’t overlook the power of packaging materials as part of your brand story and experience.
So, when you’re choosing the types of packaging materials to use it’s vital to think about your brand’s story and how to reflect it in your packaging design. (Luckily, our expert design team has more than a dash of experience creating remarkable packaging!)
Any creative process in business is exciting. Who doesn’t love breaking out the coloured markers and having an epic brainstorm session?!?
It’s easy to get carried away thinking about all the cool ways you could package your product. But the first step to a successful product design is to put what you want aside. Sorry, it’s not about you — yet. Instead, you need to consider your customers and what they need from your packaging.
After doing a little customer research, it’s time for the fun part – choosing the packaging materials. Like the way you touch the fabric of an expensive suit, your customers will let their fingers explore your packaging. So, choosing the right material to reflect your brand is a vital step in creating a memorable unboxing experience.
From fabric to stone paper, there are so many options available. For some brands, the choice will be obvious, an eco-friendly yoga wear brand won’t be using loads of plastic wrapping, they’ll want environmentally friendly options to choose from. For other brands, the best way to narrow it down is to think about how you want people to perceive your brand.
Paper
When it comes to paper it’s all about thickness. But unlike choosing how thick or thin cut you want your chips, the weight of your packaging paper involves a little more thought.
A thicker paper has a more luxe appearance, like a business card. The weight is also dependent on what’s going to be inside. It needs to be able to bear the weight of the product without bending.
Plus you need to consider what type of texture suits your brand - silky smooth, uncoated, luxury textures or a sensory texture? We’re using a grainy paper at the moment that feels like running your hand over a sandy shore.
You’ll also want to think about what base tone suits your brand. Like paint colours, there are a variety of tones to choose from - warm whites, blue whites, bright whites, pearlescent whites. Or maybe your brand needs a solid pop of colour. When in doubt, our expert design team can make some rocking recommendations to get you started.
Fabric
Wrapping your product in fabric inspires such a strong tactile sensation it’s worth perusing the huge range of textures and finishes to choose from.
With options ranging from natural type fibres to plastic meshes, there’s sure to be a fabric blend your customers will fancy. It’s best to keep in mind that any fabric is usually mounted to card or thick paper, so it’s typically thin and flexible.
Stone paper
If you’re looking for waterproof, grease-resistant and washable packaging materials, stone paper is ideal. The bonus of using this unique paper is that it can also be returned to calcium carbonate and essentially upcycled and recycled infinitely. Cue the cheers from eco-friendly brands.
As you can see, it’s not only possible to create custom packaging worthy of holding your product, it’s an exciting process.
Creating custom packaging ignites our mojo. So, if you need help figuring out what to put your product in, let our expert design team flex their creativity and find a solution that’s perfect for your brand.
Doing things differently starts with a conversation.