In this article I’m going to tell you about graphic and packaging design trends for 2018. If you deal with packaging production or more generally with design, this is, therefore, the right place for you. Find out the new trends and take on the new year at best. Let’s get started!
A lot of consumers think, or hope at least, to be free from trends that, over the years, overcome them. Many of them surely know how not to be overwhelmed by tendencies and commercial strategies, by preserving a kind of awareness and autonomy while purchasing. Others, instead, totally trust the word of trends guru.
The question is – and must be – different for those who handle the creation, marketing or promotion of mass products. Specialists, in fact, should always be updated about new trends. To achieve success is then essential to know, understand and take advantage of the tendencies in order to offer goods and services always in line with the requests of their own target, without becoming completely anachronistic. Unless the purpose is exactly that.
Remember: the evolution of a business, as for the biological one, is always a case of adapt or die.
And now let’s get started! Here below 4 trends for 2018 to look at:
1. Healthy foods
An already well-known trend, characterised by a strong attention to healthy and good food. Most of the consumers prefers, by now, purchasing products whose ingredients can be easily recognised and seen on packaging. A feature that can affect the perception of that food and make them appear more healthy than others.
As for food packaging design you should, therefore, take special care to this aspect. Always focus on information clearness and transparency. Plan your labels and nutrition table in a systematic,accurate and effective way in order to be immediately read by people.
To learn more you can have a look at our previous articles: “Mandatory information on food packaging” and “Packaging and labelling”
2. Extreme customization
Another upward trend thanks to the increasingly diffusion of e-commerce. A buying and selling process that is progressively changing the consumers habits, who are always more likely to buy products directly online. Commercial activities with no physical intermediary whom success and brand awareness strictly depend on the structure and user experience of website, first, and on shipping packaging used to show products to clients. The package, in this case, is the very connection between user and company and should be designed in order to create one-to-one relationships with customers. An essential tool to give a first successful impression that all companies should use at their best.
This is the reason why a lot of brands are investing money and energies in extreme packaging customization: from simple branded box to limited edition packaging. Their goal? To offer a unique unboxing experience, that allows not forgetting the brand.
How to? You need just to surprise and get consumers curious when they receive the box, properly (and necessarily!) customized, and then win them over while opening it. You may, in addition, give a boost to share buying experiences through proper marketing campaigns which should be cleverly conveyed by packagings.
3. Creative design
The need of creative solutions, never ordinary, able to catch the attention of observers goes hand in hand with the extreme product and packaging customization. And it is always an evergreen trend.
Shapes that reflect the content and its main features to let people find out, at a glance, what is about. Nature-inspired shapes, more or less complex, or minimal packaging able to achieve the success with simplicity (aesthetic, at least).
The creative aspect, not necessarily complex, will keep a special place throughout 2018 as well.
4. Sustainability
Once again this year, who deals with design will have to focus most of the attention to the environment. Every project is meant to be realised in order to reduce as much as possible its environmental impact, perhaps promoting its reuse instead.
Realising packagings with a double function that will allow empting them out and then to use them again is a great sustainable choice to take always into account, even for packaging design trends for 2018.
Conclusions
These are just some of the trends for 2018 you certainly should remember while planning your custom packaging. Integrating innovative solutions, customization and attention to environment will be the challenge of designers in the coming months. Try to put them into practise with Packly: you can check any prototype you want thanks to no minimum quantity required!
Colour of the year
Do you want to know which will be the colour of the year 2018? Ultra Violet! A colour that “communicates originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking that points us toward the future”, word of Pantone®!
