Before you dive directly into designing the packaging for your hair products, make sure you spend sufficient time in planning it. Here are 10 tips for designing great hair packaging:
1. BENCHMARKING
Benchmarking is the marketing term for setting a standard for your self. The best way to do that is by carefully evaluating your competition. Analyze the packaging designs and strategies employed by the market leader in your category and look at the general conventions in packaging design. Once you’ve done that, you can incorporate your competitors’ strengths into your own packaging and take it to a whole other level by improving on it and adding your own brand of uniqueness and differentiation.
2. TARGET MARKETING
What is your target market? Who does your product cater to? Is there a specific demographic your product appeals to? Or does it cater to many different demographics? Are your potential customers young or old? Are they male or female? Profiling your prospective customers by answering such questions will go a long way in designing great hair packaging- as it will be created by keeping the customer’s preferences in mind.
3. CONVENIENCE
Your packaging design should be inventive and appealing- but it should never be unnecessarily complicated. There is only so much patience a customer has with troublesome packaging. The ideal hair packaging is attractive, protective and convenient to use and store.
4. APPEARANCE
From creating a great logo for your company to incorporating it into an eye-catching design onto the packaging print- the design process for your hair packaging starts with your company’s visual identity and ends with the final look of your product and packaging. Everything from your choice of fonts, themes, colors and styles will determine your packaging’s attractiveness. Make sure that your company’s name/logo is well-displayed on your hair packaging and your design motifs and color palettes are highly attractive for your target customer.
5. THEME
Closely related with the individual appearance of your product’s packaging is the overall theme for your entire range of products. While all of your products can carry your company logo and the same motifs, you can use an overall theme for a product family (with slight differences to signify variations). In the same product category, you could tweak the design and color choices to indicate a difference between prices and types of your products.
6. COPYWRITING
Your promotional text- from the brand slogan to the product description- is known as your ‘copy’. Your packaging design will include a good chunk of your copy and you will need to make sure that it is appealing, professional, comprehensive and easily understandable. If your product requires instructions for use, detail them in an easy-to-follow manner. If you are not sure about the best way to communicate with your clients through the written word, hire a professional copywriter.
7. PROTECTION
Depending on the exact nature of your hair product, you might need to design packaging in a manner and material that protects its content. A sturdy packaging will protect your products from damage which will mean less trouble for you (when shipping) and for your customers (after their purchase).
8. ENVIRONMENT FRIENDLINESS
Customers are increasingly appreciative, and demanding, of green packaging- which means that you should use as little resources and material in creating your packaging as possible. You earn bonus points with your customer if your packaging is made of recyclable material.
9. LEGALITIES
Before you decide on the material, size and other attributes of your packaging, ensure that your packaging design will be compliant with legal requirements.
10. QUALITY
Don’t compromise on packaging material and print quality. There is no use of designing great looking packaging if it will be transferred to poor quality material (that is ineffective in protecting its contents) and passed through low-quality printing.