06
IAT 102 Graphic Design
06
Packaging + Branding
Colour (used in packaging)
Break
(TA) Colour Theory
Review
“There are both conscious and unconscious levels of looking.”
“Practices of looking are intimately tied to ideology.”
“Ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures.”
Content taken from: Practices of Looking: Images, Power, and Politics, (pp. 10 and 21).
Reading - Week 07
Practices of Looking: Pictures, Symbols + Signs
Written Assignment
Maximum 4 pages
2 pages of text
1 image page
Font size: 11 or 12 pts.
#1: past example
Double-spaced
#2: current example
Reference page
Use APA style
Packaging
Content and images taken from: Meyers and Gerstman’s The Visionary Package
History of packaging
A few thousand years ago, packages
were primitive bundles, baskets, or
earthen containers that were created to
hold and transport food, beverages or
objects valuable to members of
communities.
Numerous antiquarian discoveries of
such containers have been made all over
the world, especially along the ancient
silk roads that led from Asia through
Persia, Phoenicia (Lebanon), and
Mesopotamia (Iraq, Turkey).
The Greeks stored food and beverage in elaborately decorated
containers,such as this amphora (jar) with cover, c. 540 B.C.
Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art
Containers were created for utilitarian purposes
e.g. holding and transporting food, beverages
and condiments.
Later, containers were created to store wine,
jewelry, perfume and a wide variety of
personal possessions.
In time, many were produced by artisans to
please the eye. Examples include painted vases
from the fourth millennium BC at the Egyptian
Museum in Cairo and the bronze wine vessels of
ancient China.
The ancient skills of combining storage and art is evident in this
Assyrian storage jar, from Zawiyeh, Azerbaijan,
700 B.C. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art
Glass as packaging
The Phoenicians invented glassblowing, which
was the ability to create a wide variety of glass
shapes that gradually migrated from the Middle
East to Europe.
In the 1700s, the growing population in North
America and Europe changed glassmaking from
that of a luxury good to mass production for
wine and drug storage.
The addition of paper labels on bottles and glass
vials to identify their contents and production origin
gave birth to a thriving industry of commercial
glass containers.
Metal packaging
In 1810, Peter Durant developed a method for
packaging meat, vegetables and fruit in airtight,
tin-plated cans. They required a chisel and
hammer to open them.
The growth of the canning industry was aided
by the progress made in printing technology.
The earliest efforts of identifying the can contents
or or decorating cans required soldering embossed
labels to the cans or hand-painting the surfaces.
Eventually, transfer printing was developed,
followed by lithographed paper labels and last,
lithographic and flexographic printing on the
metal can surfaces themselves.
Flexographic printing required much
experimentation with colours and lacquers,
and the invention of rotary presses. The latter
simplified the adhesion of inks to metal can
surfaces and allowed for a greater variety of
graphic applications.
San Remo Coffee Can (circa 1920s)
The Plastic Revolution
Plastics have initiated a genuine
packaging revolution. Their translucency,
formability, and relative low cost means
that plastic is poised to replace most other
packaging materials.
Plastics was discovered in the 1800s,
but did not reach its visionary status until
the 1930s, when refinements by German
chemical firms created styrene foam for
use in cups and food trays.
Other notable events in packaging history
Flexible packages: It was in England that the first ‘flexible’ packages were produced,
starting with the production of paper bags produced from flax fibers and linen rags
(circa 1817).
Corrugated cardboard: This was followed in 1851 with the introduction of corrugated
cardboard, first in single layers, and eventually using two faces.
Corrugated cartons soon began to replace wooden barrels and shipping
crates and dominated the packaging spectrum until the 1970s.
Power of packaging
As early as the mid-1800s, many storeowners
began to understand that handling and offering
merchandise in pre-packaged form was the
most efficient way of merchandising and
maintaining their stores.
It did not take long for manufacturers to realize
the importance of packaging (e.g. typography,
colour schemes) to provide a platform of
recognition for their brands and catching the
eye of the consumer.
Brands such as Arm & Hammer, Mennen,
Gillette, Heinz, Nestle and Campbell’s were
among the packaged goods that survive to
this day.
Early grocery stores created a jumble of barrels, can and bottles
covering every inch of their limited space, some merchandise
even hanging from ceilings.
Origin
A brand began as a permanent sign of ownership of an animal made with a hot
poker. It was subsequently used to burn a mark on casks of wine. A “brand-mark”
came to mean a “trademark” or “brand.”
Brand was formally adopted as a term in 1929 when Standard Brands (now Kraft)
resulted from the merger of several food manufacturers.
Content and images taken from: White’s Advertising Design and Typography and Gordon + Gordon’s
Digital Graphic Design
What the Logo/Logotype tells the consumer about your product
A uniquely styled brand identity creates a recognizable ‘signature’ that
creates recognition among consumers and enhances their familiarity
with the product.
A uniquely shaped signature is also referred to as the brand’s logo.
The logo can take many forms. It can be based on the brand name in a
unique typographic format.
The logo can also take the form of a symbol that has an association
with the product or can also be an abstract shape designed to achieve
brand recall.
There are many well-known logo that serve as examples of styles ranging
from simple letter forms to elaborately styled icons and signatures.
simple lettering
company initials
representative symbols
script lettering
abstract symbols
modified lettering
stylized lettering
symbol and signature combinations
Maintaining the integrity of the Logo
It is important to keep logo as constant as possible.
The logo style and proportions should be maintained on all packages, regardless of
packaging form, shape, and size.
Many companies do not follow this rule. They allow the proportions of the logo to be altered
depending on the package proportions, on the vertical or horizontal orientation of the
packages, or to accommodate variations in the packaging graphics.
This only serves to dissipate brand recognition and can weaken the franchise of the product.
In packaging, typography acts as the voice of the product…
Using type wisely in packaging
An important element of packaging is text or the ‘verbal’ communication elements.
The words that appear on the packages identify the product and various information
about the product.
Challenge: verbal communication must be accomplished within extremely limited
confines of the label or package proportions.
The package only has a few seconds to identify its contents.
The styling of the text can tell the consumer much about the product:
• Bold sans-serif typefaces can communicate strength of product performance
• Serif lettering can convey high quality
• Delicate script styles can suggest softness, femininity, discretion and elegance.
The identification of weight, fluid contents,
and product counts are all important to the
consumer.
In addition to such package design
elements, certain text content on packaging
is regulated by federal laws and industry
controls.
Designers must also consider:
• Usage copy to instruct the buyer how to hold,
open, dispense, assemble or store the package.
• Nutritional copy for food and beverages to guide
the consumer regarding dietary concerns.
• Directions, indications, warnings and dosage
instructions for pharmaceutical products to
ensure that they are used properly.
• Storage instructions, transport instructions,
and various warnings for chemical products
to avoid accidents.
• Contents statements, such as net weight,
fluid ounces, and piece count for products
purchased by weight.
A Package is not an Ad
Keep it simple:
Determine your priorities and resist the
temptation to tell the consumer everything
about your product.
• Identify the real benefits of your product and
be sure that your package communicates
these quickly and clearly.
• Determine precisely what is most important
to communicate, what is secondary, and
what is less important to the consumer.
Keep it Short: The fewer words or text the easier it is for the
consumer to absorb the relevant information about the product.
Package and Meaning
How does packaging form a product personality?
The options are limitless.
The shape of the package, the size of the package, the graphic
images, the colour and the text -- all can be combined in several
ways to tell you something about the product and shape the
product’s personality in your head.
The form of type can instill meaning in a product or brand
No-nonsense boldness
communicates to the
consumer the perception of
no-nonsense effectiveness.
That is why detergents such as
Tide or Cheer have labels that
scream their names in bold
lettering and multi-coloured
hues to grab the consumer’s
attention.
Using imagery in packaging
Photos and Illustrations on packaging identify the products, describe their use, make
them desirable, or create an emotional response by the consumer to the product inside.
Photographs and Illustrations are powerful design tools for:
• Identifying product differences or suggesting
the end usage.
• Communicating product functions, such as
describing step-by-step assembly of a
modular product or procedures for applying a
fixing compound or preparing a meal.
• Showing the end result of using the product
in the package: such as a beautiful cake
made from the flour contained in the
package, a toy assembled from a construction
kit, or the appearance of a room after the
product has been installed there.
• Imparting emotional imagery: by creating, for
example, a feeling of speed (a runner) or
relaxation (a sunrise), even though the product
in the package has no direct relationship to
such visual portrayal.
Sometimes images are inappropriate
There are instances when the need to
convey information about the product can
only be accomplished through text, and
images are inappropriate.
An example would be Campbell’s Soups.
Its bold and oblique type, as well as red
and white colour scheme presents a
prime example of superb brand identity.
However, for many years Campbell’s
Soup consumers complained about the
difficulty of finding their favorite soup
among the sea of red and white.
Case Study:
As early as the 1970s, Campbell’s Soup
management toyed with the idea of adding
illustrations of a plate of soup to make the
selection process easier.
Campbell’s Soup managers later realized
that adding an illustration would compete
with their brand identification, so strongly
emphasized by their selection of type styles
and colour.
Solution? hybrid?
Colour
“Building Blocks” essential to good graphic design:
 Shape and Form
 Spatial Awareness (layout and grid systems)
 Typography: understanding what type is and how to work with it
 Dynamics, Emphasis and Contrast
 Using Colour as a powerful tool rather than just decoration
e.g. emotive: to arouse intense feelings in viewer
CMYK
cyan, magenta, yellow and black
RGB
How to apply colour meaningfully:
show differences
show similarities
emphasize something
play something down
encourage viewer to move through information
convey meanings - inherent, assigned, or both
Content taken from: Lipton’s The Practical Guide to Information Design
Using Colour in Packaging Design
There is no question that colour is the most
emotional and also the most subjective
aspect in package design.
Consumers are passionate about colour.
Colour on a package (e.g. background, illustrations,
text) plays a part in the communication of your
product.
The challenge with packaging design is that the
choice of colours need to relate to a wide variety
of consumers.
Designers can not choose colours on a personal
basis because the colour perceptions of consumers
is too diverse.
Some generalizations that can draw intellectual/emotional feedback from consumers:
• Colour can identify a particular brand
(e.g. red Kit Kat chocolate bar, can of Coke)
• Bright colours tend to communicate lightness,
festivity, relaxation and joy.
• Darker, richer colours suggest a more serious
frame of mind.
• Colour can help identify the colour of the product
inside the product (e.g. Sunlight dish soap)
• Green, a colour unacceptable for food packaging is
now a standard colour for health-oriented products.
• Bright, lively colours are often used on cereal
packages, because cereals are usually consumed
in the morning, a time associated with brightness.
• White or light coloured packages suggest attributes
such as diet, light, salt-free or low-calorie.
• Gray and black on packages usually are reserved
for high-tech consumer products (e.g. digital cameras).
• Deep, rich colours suggest good taste, and appetite
appeal (e.g. gourmet chocolates.)
• Pastel shades, as well as black and gold are often
utilized on packages associated with fashion and
elegance.
Colour Typecasting
Consumers have become so accustomed
to colour cues that identify certain
product categories that they respond to
these cues almost automatically.
A prime example would be soft drinks,
where red cans and labels signify most
colas, green stands for ginger ales,
yellow for tonic water, and blue for
seltzer.
Colour Typecasting
While it is not impossible to break out of this colour ‘typecast’,
try designing a green package colour scheme for a new cola.
Gender
Gender
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0
SIAT Branding
http://www.sfu.ca/iat102gillymah/SIAT_concepts.pdf
http://www.sfu.ca/iat102gillymah/SIAT_branding.pdf
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