You choose consumer-centric design for your product packaging, but how do you make sure your design is technically correct? You need to add brand alignment, clarity, differentiation, emotional connection, protection, and functionality in custom boxes without compromise on cost effectiveness. Cardstock, cardboard, corrugated, kraft, and chipboard will help you craft sustainable packaging. For better aesthetics, you need to know how colors, shapes, and typefaces work together to give you unique designs that stand out your product among others. Here comes the principles of packaging designs, stay with us to explore them.
Principles of Design in Custom Boxes
Balance
Your Packaging design should be balanced on the boxes, as it should not appear as if it falls or inclines on one side. Balance in packaging design makes it grounded. You can use a symmetrical balance technique to check your custom box design. If your text and content are placed vertically, draw a vertical line in the middle to see where your text is. Text in the center and an equal number of elements on the left side and right side of the vertical line means your design is balanced.
In case of flair, if you place an element like a pineapple image on the right side of your flyer, it could be balanced by placing your brand name on the left with a bigger typeface.
Unity
Unity is signified by the harmony created by all design pieces on the Custom boxes, where these pieces have an organic and close relationship with each other. If you are designing posters for your museum, you can have huge typographic numbers with the image in the center and the caption of the image on the right. Put months vertically to create differentiation so visitors can easily notice them first. The relation with numbers, image, and caption looks organic and natural here.
You can do the same with custom boxes, where you can use the same colors of illustrators for various elements in your design, and they work beautifully. Lack of unity makes your design disorganized and cluttered. On the contrary, unity delivers the right information to your customers at once.
Contrast
Contrast refers to the visual hierarchy of design elements due to differences in colors. Your customers can see certain things first in your design as they stand out more among others. The instruments of contrasts are shapes, colors, and textures. You can use a yellow and purple combination in your custom boxes designed to bring your packaging into the spotlight. The size and type of fonts in your boxes also create contrast. The shapes and blocks in the design play the same role as various fonts and colors do.
Always make your brand or product name bigger, as it hints at the main thing to focus on in your packaging. All the other text in a smaller size makes it supportive.
Emphasis
Custom boxes have many design elements, but one of them gets the attention of customers first due to emphasis. It could be created by changing the colors, adding lines, or creating positive and negative relationships. You can add lines around your product name, as it will direct the customers to what the most important element is in the packaging boxes.
Repetition
It creates consistency in your product packaging design through repetition. Designers use the same typeface, graphic elements, and a grid to produce this effect. If your brand design has any wavy shapes, you can put it on your letter pad, product packaging, or envelopes for better representation and recognition.
Pattern
When multiple design elements help enhance the customer experience in your packaging. In the case of Christmas packaging boxes, you can create the pattern by using ornaments of various shapes and colors. Pattern is different from repetition as repetition only has one design element. You can use this design technique by creating a pattern of multi-color lines in your product packaging and putting simple information in white in one place for better attention-grabbing.
In business card design, you can create a pattern by using various design elements relevant to your brand.
Rhythm
It’s a tempo of a combination of design elements used repeatedly throughout the design with the same variation. It gives an organized sense of movement in your product packaging design. You don’t need to have any design system in this technique, like you can have a thicker triangle with your product name and logo with specific colors in the middle, and put smaller triangles with various colors around to create a movement and rhythm.
Movement
If we have a dynamic combination, it will help to take the customers to the most important information in your custom boxes. For your natural products, use kraft boxes as they are made of unbleached paper and give a rustic look. Create movement in your kraft packaging for soaps, use simple branches, taking the customers to the product name.
Proportion
Proportion creates a sense of unity in your packaging design through balance and harmony. Designers use different sizes for typography, where the large size shows your brand name or product name, while the smaller sizes show the supporting information. The same important information will have the same sizes that lead to a proportion in design. Absence of proportion in your custom boxes design makes it more static, where all the information will have the same weight.
Harmony
It’s a sense of cohesiveness where all the elements in design represent one thing and organize the central point very well. Harmony does not mean everything in your custom design must be the same, but they have some relation with each other. Harmony can be produced through the same color patterns, typeface, and simple styles.
Variety
Variety is the combination of contrast and tension in your custom boxes design. You can create variety with the dichotomy of typeface. The compartments in your design show the variety due to color variation; they look close in design but not similar.
Takeaways
- Use the right packaging material based on cardboard, kraft, corrugated, and rigid for your boxes.
- Choose the right packaging style and shape.
- Follow all the principles, like balance, unity, and harmony, to create a design that represents your brand properly.
- You can consult The Packaging World experts for a better idea about your packaging design.
We at The Packaging World have great empathy for our clients, which helps us to listen and feel what they are looking for in their packaging design needs. Contact us and make your packaging journey seamless.
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