In a world of ultra-processed snack packs and endless cereal aisles, brands need more than a perfect product to gain supermarket stardom. Quality is often a fraction of what establishes certain products for the cart and condemns others to the compost — memorable packaging can be the key to establishing notability, easily turning even survivalist provisions into a sophisticated hot commodity.
Art teacher Brian Chow has explored product design through several avenues, including his experience creating surfboards and working with screen printing on fabric. Although he believes product packaging is often excessive or misleading, Chow recognizes how crucial it is to the marketability of products.
“I find it wasteful, and I think that’s a huge problem,” Chow said. “But if you’re looking at package design, it’s great for protecting the product and it’s great for marketing purposes. It’s going to add value to the product in terms of how consumers perceive it.”
Similarly, Business teacher Lenore Espanola’s experience with product design dates back to when she took an interest in sustainable fashion, collaborating with weavers in the Philippines to create handbags out of materials like newspapers and incorporating striking headlines to make statements with her pieces. She notes that this type of shock factor is one of many ways that products capture the attention of consumers, gesturing to a bag of Trader Joe’s Organic White Truffle Potato Chips on her desk as an example of the different facets that come together to create an effective package design.
“All aspects, like design, color and texture, play a role in distinguishing yourself from a competitor,” Espanola said. “If you’re trying to sell a product, you need to be eye-catching — the design should always have a potential customer in mind.”
That prospective customer, however, isn’t a monolith — Espanola notes that different brands will explore different types of packaging styles in order to appeal to specific demographics of consumers.
“If you look at luxury products, the higher-end products will have better packaging, because they can increase the cost,” Espanola said. “Whereas you can cut down the costs if it’s a very generic brand and make it accessible to many more consumers.”
Chow has noticed a similar pattern, recognizing how food products incorporate specific colors, health-focused labels in order to appeal to their customers’ priorities. For example, some products are labeled as gluten-free or hormone-free, when the original product would be free of those ingredients regardless.
“If you’re looking for a healthy choice, you’re going to look for things that are green and clean-looking,” Chow said. “Those are things that have a very clear visual hierarchy that plays into the psychology of what human beings perceive as being healthy. A lot of packaging will play into consumer interests, but also their fears or worries.”
One of the most recognizable brand-wide packaging design styles is Trader Joe’s, a grocery store incorporating colorful graphics and quaint designs to create cohesiveness and appeal across its products. Matt Sloan, Vice President of Marketing at Trader Joe’s, explains the role of packaging in the chain’s relationship with consumers.
“For Trader Joe’s, the appeal of the food and the drink that we offer in our stores really starts with the package or the label,” Sloan said. “We want to give our customers information to help them in their decision making, in their shopping. And we want that shopping to be adventurous, to be friendly and fun. It absolutely applies to our product designs and the work to make those packages look great.”
When Trader Joe’s begins conceptualizing its packaging, package designers begin with information compiled by the category manager and the nutritionist — this includes the information necessary for the package, as well as the shape and size. From there, the artists make creative choices concerning the specific colors and illustrations on the products, keeping consumer demographics and preferences in mind.
In her own grocery shopping, Espanola prioritizes being able to easily see and understand what the product is. She recalls noticing an increased emphasis on attractive food packaging when she lived in Japan, and remembers appreciating a noteworthy bag of potato chips abroad that was transparent so she could see the product she was purchasing. Chow, on the other hand, prefers to look over ingredients and key labels on the packaging of the food he buys.
Despite this, packaging is not solely a tool for customer clarity. Recently, Chow has observed many brands using deceptive packaging to maximize profits by appearing to sell more products per unit than they actually do. This strategy has been dubbed “shrinkflation,” and Chow cites an example of fruit juice brands selling containers that appear to be quart-sized but are less.
“Some of the premium brands, like Whole Foods, are notorious for this,” Chow said. “You’ll notice that they’re starting to cheat consumers. The bag of chips you might buy used to be eight ounces, and instead of raising the prices, they’ll just change the amount they put in their bag. You lose three ounces, and you think you’re getting a pretty good deal because the prices haven’t gone up that much, but no, the prices have gone up, they just put less in the bag. And I think that’s just dishonest.”
However, Chow acknowledges that the nature of packaging design is much more restrictive than that of traditional fine art, and padding profitability is just part of the job.
“When it comes to commercial design, you’re creating things for the consumer or for your client, who’s also presumably producing things for a customer,” Chow said. “It’s not for your own person, it’s because someone wants it a certain way or they’re going to like it a certain way. If you’re a fine artist, you’re making art for your own career satisfaction. If somebody wants to buy it, wonderful, then buy it, but the fine artist will just make the work for themselves and not cater it to anybody.”
