Marketers have done a pretty good job training consumers to recognize visual signals on packaging. Green indicates freshness, white cues purity, hand-rendered typography means a product is “artisan” and so on. But what happens when most consumer packaged goods companies play by the same rules in the packaging playbook? It’s a recipe for uniformity.
In 1996 my parents finally figured out what I did for a living. They saw my adolescent sketchbooks and journals come to life on the walls, fixtures, furniture and packaging of Starbucks.
There’s a lot of “good” packaging out there: packaging that might move some products but doesn’t build category-owning brands. In other words, it’s adequate, but it isn’t great.