Food packaging is a tricky thing to get your head around. First and foremost, it absolutely has to be practical – without this, your product becomes useless and everything else becomes redundant. Once you have that covered, the next stage is to make sure that your food packaging is appealing to your customers – perhaps the best way to stand out from the crowd is to be a bit quirky.
If you’re looking to create quirky, practical food packaging then here’s what you need to know:
Quirky Food Packaging
What are you considering as quirky? Is this a completely innovative new type of packaging or just something to make your product stand out from the crowd? Do you want to draw in potential customers or appeal to an entirely new audience?
Pick a target and design your packaging around this goal. Not only will this make it easier for you to decide on a design, but it will help to tailor your ideas around a singular point meaning that you’re less likely to let the ‘quirkiness’ run away with you.
Know Your Packaging Material
This is vital as your food packaging needs to be practical – we cannot state this enough. However, you could use a range of different materials for your food packaging, each of which will carry different characteristics and benefits.
For example, if your product is confectionary then you could use block bottom bags or cellophane bags as a packaging solution although there are very different things that can be done with each. Block bottoms bags allow you to use quirky printed designs but maintain a normal shape, while cellophane can adapt to practically any shape imaginable.
If you don’t already know what type of materials will work for you, then talk to one of the packaging specialists at Charlotte Packaging today to get a better idea of your options.
Be Different
It can be easy to get sucked into the norm when it comes to food packaging design, but it’s imperative that you take the time to think of something new. Take a look at what you’re currently doing, what your competitors are doing and what other people in the industry are doing. Once you’ve analysed all this, do something completely different!
Being quirky takes some work and you need to figure out what exactly you’re going to do to be unique. Try to stay true to your brand’s values and the overall design of your company, but do enough so that people know exactly what they’re getting when they pick up your product.
The key points you should take into account here are:
- Don’t overcrowd the design – keep it simple and clear, but make sure that you’re doing enough to make your product stand out. This could be as simple as using bright, bold colours and a large font or even using unique photos for the packaging. Whatever it is, make sure your customers can identify it straight away and aren’t bombarded by information from the packaging.
- Practical design – never underestimate practicality, if your packaging can also be used for something else, offers mess free eating or can just be opened quickly, then people will favour your packaging design over others.
- Careful planning – many people think of quirky and spontaneous in the same category, but you need to make sure that your designs, material and even wording are carefully planned for maximum impact.
- Experiment – it may work, it may not if you don’t experiment then you’ll never find out. If you’re brave enough then you could be onto a winning formula that could completely change the face of the industry.
If you’re looking for ways that you can be different then talk to Charlotte Packaging today. With over 40 years’ experience as food packaging suppliers, we have the knowledge you need to make sure that your quirky packaging solutions go down as well as possible.