A strong brand is crucial for business growth and maintenance in today’s highly competitive market. Building a solid brand is necessary to differentiate your business from others.
Branding encompasses all visible elements of your brand, including your logo and values, and is crucial in creating a consistent and recognizable image for your customers.
Successful branding is a marketing tool that involves more than just a logo and requires the use of various elements to build cohesive branding.
Custom packaging design is a great place to start in creating a consistent and strong brand story.
Consistency is key in branding, and constantly changing styles and colors can confuse customers and make it difficult for them to recognize your brand.
The Personality of a Company
As mentioned before, by definition, branding is all the visible elements of your brand, but it’s deeper than that.
Branding is your company’s personality. It defines your business’ values and shapes the image customers see. It embodies everything your company is and does, so a strong brand identity is crucial to standing out from the competition.
But standing out from the rest of the competition isn’t the only thing branding does for your company.
Why Is Branding Important for My Business?
Deeply Connected With Your Company
Branding is the “face” of your company. When consumers see your logo, It shouldn’t be just a cool design and arrangement of colors, but something deeper.
Even though your logo is only part of your branding, it is still an important piece of the puzzle.
When customers see your logo, they should immediately be able to recognize and connect it with your company.
Builds Credibility and Trust
Associating a logo with your company doesn’t just mean memorability for potential customers but also adds credibility.
If you’ve successfully created strong branding, customers should automatically know the quality of your company’s products simply by seeing your logo. Branding builds trust in consumers who know they are purchasing a quality product from your business.
Assists Advertising
Branding also provides a template for future advertising of your product and business, making planning more straightforward.
Establishing solid branding equips you with the tools needed to attract potential customers through advertisement, whether through print, online, or a YouTube commercial.
Represents Your Company’s Mission
Similar to being the “face” of your company, branding will also define your company’s purpose or heart.
For example, Coca-Cola’s mission statement is to refresh the world and create moments of optimism and happiness.
Their “Share a Coke” campaign perfectly highlights this mission and their branding by replacing their logo with the names of people or professions to share a Coke with.
Through this campaign, Coca-Cola showcased its strong branding and didn’t even need to include its logos on the bottles!
Generates New Customers
Finally, solid branding will inevitably lead to more customers.
Yes, a good product creates sales, but strong branding creates connections with your customers.
A company with a good face, credibility, and mission will always attract more customers that support your vision.
When these customers feel a sense of belonging and loyalty to your brand and its message, they will naturally become advocates for your business and attract even more customers!
Eight Elements for Consistent Branding
Now, with the importance of branding in mind, you might be eager to learn how to strengthen your branding through packaging.
However, one more thing needs to be covered before we get to that: brand elements.
Name – Probably the most crucial element. Your brand name is what customers are going to know you by!
We all can agree that the first impression is important, and your brand name serves as your first impression to customers, so consider this element carefully.
A great brand name can have a significant impact on your branding and brand packaging!
For example, Band-Aid is a brand, not a product. The actual name for the product is an adhesive bandage, but no everyday consumer uses that term. They just ask for a Band-Aid!
Logo – The next most crucial element is the logo.
Your logo is the visual trademark of your company and should be just as, or more, recognizable as your brand name.
Or even better, consider making a wordmark where you skillfully combine your logo and brand name, like Google or FedEx.
Color – There is a lot of psychology behind color, but for simplicity, different colors mean different things.
In the eyes of the consumer, seeing specific colors also elicits various emotions.
So as a business, it is up to you to decide what color combinations best fit your branding and the message you wish to convey.
Slogan – The slogan is a memorable and catchy phrase representing your brand’s personality and tone.
If you have a serious brand, you don’t want a silly slogan and vice versa.
Your slogan should last through the evolution of your brand but can and should change over time to reflect your values better and refresh your image.
However, do not overdo it with yearly changes, as it can confuse customers!
Image – Any images used for advertising, marketing, or posted on your website should be consistent and of similar quality.
Image editing styles and brand filters should be the same throughout.
Shape – The shape plays more of a role in packaging and the product. Differentiating yourself by designing a non-generic packaging or product shape is a great way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
Graphics – Graphics are separate from the logo but somewhat similar. Graphics use the same color pallet or model of the design of certain aspects in your primary logo.
Typography – The final element is typography. Typography plays a big part in branding as well! Make sure the type you use fits the style of your logo and other aspects of your brand identity.
Packaging Design Tips: How to Brand a Product
With the different branding elements covered, we can now move on to the role of packaging in branding.
Like a logo, name, or slogan, how you package your product is also part of your branding.
As mentioned earlier, packaging is a great place to start implementing consistencies and strengthening your branding, as it is where customers will most frequently interact with your brand.
But how do you make your brand packaging design?
Start With Your Story
Before designing any brand packaging for your products, defining your company’s story is essential.
Branding starts with a company’s history, values, mission, and vision.
Determine your company’s beliefs, the audience you intend to market your product to, what makes it unique, and how it can change consumers’ lives. Once you’ve determined this, you can move on to brand packaging.
Consistency With the Use of a Branding Package
To begin, let’s look at a few key considerations that you must make when planning your package design to fit your brand.
Consistency is the first and most important thing you must consider when building branding through packaging.
This does not mean rehashing the same design on all your products; doing that will get boring quickly.
The key to consistency is to develop a style guideline that will be the foundation for all your future endeavors, whether packaging or advertisements. This is known as a branding package.
Do not confuse branding packages with brand packaging. They are different, but at the same time, they go hand in hand.
A branding package can and should be applied to your brand packaging!
With a branding package, your business compiles all the visual assets needed to create a consistent and cohesive brand image. Branding packages can be used for advertisements, emails, or in this case, your brand packaging!
A branding package is about establishing your brand’s visual identity and creating guidelines to maintain it consistently.
The most common items included in a branding package are the logo design, color palettes, brand typography, and a brand style guide.
Note a branding package’s similarities with the eight elements for consistent branding; this is not a coincidence!
Let’s look at logo design first.
A distinguishable and unique primary logo is excellent, but that doesn’t mean it can work design-wise with all mediums. When creating a branding package, consider making logo variations or including smaller submarks in your branding package.
Having variations or smaller sub-marks makes it easier to maintain consistency throughout your packaging and other branding material!
However, make sure that the color schemes and font are consistent throughout the variations and submarks to ensure easy brand recognition.
This leads us to the next consideration and branding package essential: color palettes.
Color palettes are crucial to maintaining consistency across all forms your brand might take.
A color palette should contain all the colors your brand will use across all mediums, be it social media, promotional material, or product packaging.
The colors should represent your brand’s personality, so be as detailed as possible
Being specific about your colors also significantly helps with consistency when it comes to design.
The next consideration is brand typography.
Typography isn’t just about choosing the right-looking font. The font is significant, but you must also consider the text size, capitalization, and placement. Negative or empty space also plays an essential role in creating a specific look for your brand.
Ensure that your branding package includes guidelines on typography, including instructions on capitalization, spacing, and size for consistency.
With all the above in mind, you can now create a brand style guide to serve as a solid foundation for future packaging designs and any other material you might need to further your branding.
The last thing to consider when developing a brand package is don’t over-design it.
A good branding package should help prevent this but don’t overload your consumers with too many flashy graphics and colors.
In terms of brand packaging design, less is more.
The Common Challenges and Solutions
Building consistent branding through packaging doesn’t come without various challenges.
These challenges come in maintaining consistency between your branding and packaging but can be avoided with thorough planning and thought.
Avoid mixed messages. Confusing your consumers is the last thing you want to do with your packaging, so carefully consider the language and visuals to convey your message as clearly and concisely as possible.
Don’t copy your competitors. Though it may be tempting to copy your competitor’s successes, do not fall into that temptation. Take their successes into account, but put your twist on them!
Maintain Consistency between online and offline. It is a given that things are going to look different in an online form than offline. However, sticking to your branding package’s guidelines will help you keep online and offline material as consistent as possible.
Do not fall into the temptation of chasing trends simply because it’s the most popular thing at the moment.
If the trend does not align with your branding, don’t do it. Scale your identity in line with your original values and beliefs, not on what’s popular.
Finally, monitor your brand. Keep a close eye on analytics, surveys, comments, and other forms of feedback. Know what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong.
Consumer feedback is integral to fixing any other challenges you might face!
Example of Successful Brand Packaging Design
Let’s change pace and look back at the example we used earlier with Coca-Cola.
For simplicity, we’ll only look at the three standard Coca-Cola cans: the regular, diet, and zero.
Officially, Coca-Cola’s primary brand color is Coke Red, and its secondary color is PMS Process Black C.
However, you’ll notice that all the cans are different colors. One is red, one is silver, and the other is black.
Why aren’t all their packaging red or black? They aren’t being consistent!
Consistency doesn’t just mean using the same color for all packaging. Yes, you should incorporate similar colors in your palette and designs, but it doesn’t mean you just copy and paste everything onto your packaging.
Let’s look closer at how Coca-Cola maintains consistency without rehashing the same packaging design choices.
The red aluminum can mainly uses the primary color associated with Coca-Cola with a white logo font. Everybody knows that a red Coca-Cola can is the main product because of the primary red color associated with Coca-Cola.
The silver can doesn’t showcase the primary brand colors, but does feature them in the font. The logo font utilizes the red and black brand colors, but everybody knows silver is the alternative Diet Coke.
Finally, the black aluminum can uses the secondary black brand color with red logo font. This has become synonymous with Coca-Cola Zero.
Notice how all cans are designed differently and have different variations of color for the Coca-Cola logo.
However, consistency is still achieved as all cans’ logos, designs, color palettes, and typography are variations of Coca-Cola’s primary logo and color palette.
The colors of Coca-Cola cans are also consistent with the type of product offered, making it easy to recognize which product you are consuming just by the color of the can!
Benefits of Building a Consistent Brand Personality
Now that you know how to build consistent branding through product packaging, what are the benefits of doing so?
As mentioned earlier and showcased in the Coca-Cola example, it garners brand recognition and awareness.
Packaging is where the consumer most frequently interacts with your product. The package is just as important as the product itself.
If your product was featured in a generic box, how would the consumer know it was a product from your company?
Consistently featuring your branding with your packaging also improves customer loyalty and the product’s perception.
With your branding on the package, consumers will know what your business represents and the message you are trying to convey. You will no longer be a generic company but a company with a personality behind it.
Customers are more loyal and willing to support a company that showcases their values and beliefs than a faceless one without an identity.
And with brand loyalty and recognition comes a competitive advantage over your competitors.
Incorporating your branding with your packaging will allow target customers to recognize and single out your brand over the others on the shelves.
The Package Is Your Brand Too
Brand identity should always be a part of your product packaging.
Take your time developing your brand identity before designing brand packaging for your product.
Create a branding package to assist you with this endeavor and help avoid the common challenges of maintaining a consistent brand identity throughout all mediums.
Keeping your product packaging in line with your company’s values, beliefs, and identity is integral to maintaining a consistent and solid brand identity that customers will recognize, appreciate, and support.
Consistent brand identity and packaging will only serve as a benefit to your company!
