Packaging and photography go hand in hand: illustrations and symbols are not the only graphical elements to design a box. Simply thinking about the packaging design of food products you can notice that they often show images of the whole product or only some ingredients. When customers have to buy a product they are mostly attracted by box with images – even if the pics aren’t used in a creative way – because they prefer to see in advance what they will go to buy. They find them more reliable, although the photos not always show the real aspect of a product. If customers don’t like what they see, they can change opinion and item to purchase, that’s the reason why product photography is spreading in the packaging industry.

Photography has become an important part of the marketing strategies, useful to describe and publicise products, or to communicate specific corporate messages in a simple and efficient way. In fact, the most important characteristic of images, not only photographic, is that they are able to communicate complex things at just one look. As you might have heard: “a picture is worth a thousand words”.

Usually pictures are used to show the content of the box, sometimes simulating windowings that show off the interior of the packaging. That is their descriptive use. It’s also possible that they don’t want to represent the product but only aim to amaze and recall emotions. In this case we talk about an emotional use of photography.

Of course their effects, the message you want to give and the evoked emotions depend on the photographic style: a black and white picture generates different sensations from a photo full of colours. The choice of the images determines the perception that a person can have of a product or of a brand. That’s the reason why you have to pay extra attention during the packaging design process: a wrong choice could lead to a wrong perception of the corporate message or, worstly, to consumers confusion.

In this post you can find 10 examples of the synergy between packaging and photography and its marketing potential shown through boxes with photos of faces, that favor the human emotional engagement.

What are you waiting for? Personalise your packaging with Packly: put your face on it!