Designing for the shelf, not the screen
Written by
Mara Ellis
Filed under
Process
Published
Reading time
4 min read
Process
Excerpt
Packaging lives under bad light, next to louder neighbors, in the hands of someone in a hurry. A few habits for designing work that has to survive a real shop.
Most packaging is approved on a laptop. That is a problem, because nobody buys a jar on a laptop. They buy it under fluorescent tubes, from a shelf crowded with forty competitors, often from two meters away and usually in a hurry.
Print it early, print it badly
On every packaging project I print the first rough layouts at actual size on cheap paper by the end of week one. They go on a shelf in the studio next to whatever is in the kitchen cupboard. It is humbling. Details that looked refined on screen vanish, and a logo that felt timid suddenly becomes the only thing you can read.
I also photograph the mock-ups with my phone under the worst light I can find. If the hierarchy survives a blurry photo in a dim corner, it will survive a supermarket.
Design the side panel first
The front gets the attention in presentations, but the side and back carry the real information: ingredients, instructions, legal copy, recycling marks. If the system can’t handle those gracefully, it is not a system. Starting with the hardest panel forces decisions about type size, grid and tone of voice that make the front easier, not harder.
Respect the hand
A pack is held, turned and opened. Weight, texture and the sound of a lid matter as much as color. For Norrø we spent a full week testing papers that soften with use, because the founders wanted the bottle to look better after a month in a bathroom than on the first day. You can’t judge that from a PDF.
None of this is new. It is just easy to forget when every review happens in a browser tab.
Written in Lisbon