While it may appear that the best food product sells the most, it is not entirely true. Customers’ perception of what is best might differ and include other factors than just quality and product benefits. In fact, this perception is shaped even before they have opened and consumed the product. What we are discussing here is the design of food packaging.
An effective food packaging design is essential for success. In this blog, we will discuss why it is so and what factors make for an effective food package design. We will also elaborate on what a typical food product packaging design process looks like and why it is a good idea to hire the services of a food packaging design agency.
In the end, we will share some of the food packaging designs that we have created as an agency so that you have a reliable choice available if you are searching for an agency offering food packaging design services.
So let’s begin, and first discuss
Why Does Food Packaging Design Even Matter?
Okay, let’s be honest here. We have learnt not to judge a book by its cover, but we all have been guilty of doing it otherwise. And most often, we judge the food by its packaging design.
Think about it, while in a grocery store or a supermarket, our eyes often wander through hundreds of products, but still, only a few stand out. And among these is the one product that compels us to buy it. The reason, time and again, is its impactful food packaging design – one that has the power to make an impression and influence consumer behaviour.
A strong and strategic food package design is also important to secure and maintain a place for the product on the store shelves.
What this implies is that if your product fails to catch the buyer’s eye and struggles to yield the desired sales and profit, grocery chains might end up removing the product altogether. Since stores have limited display space and your product has failed to survive the competition, they will replace it with one that has better chances of performance. A strategic and creative food package design ensures that your product gets purchased by the customer and thereby retains its spot on store shelves.
The Connection Between Food Packaging Design and Sales
Here are a few statistics worth considering.
According to research conducted by Ipsos, 72% of people agree that a product’s packaging design can influence their buying decisions.
Studies also indicate that around 81% of consumers purchased a new product because the packaging attracted them.
Let’s see a couple of more related statistics.
Approximately 63% of consumers repurchased a product, and 52% of consumers switched to other brands because they liked the packaging design.
Though these statistics are not specifically related to the food industry, they are powerful indicators of how your food box packaging design can influence your business sales.
This means that even the product of a renowned brand won’t sell if it has an unimpressive, inconsistent or confusing packaging design. Always remember that packaging design is often the first element that draws consumers to a product, and if it is not impressive, the final sales figure is going to be impacted.
Factors You Must Consider for Creative Food Packaging Design to Increase Sales
Now, here’s what you’ve been waiting for. These are the key factors you must consider for your food product packaging design if you want to achieve impressive sales results.
Your Brand Identity
Your food product packaging design is the first thing your consumers see. So, it is essential that it clearly communicates who you are – your brand identity. Every element, from the colour palette to the typography and brand messaging, must demonstrate your brand and its personality.
Begin by understanding your brand. What personality does your brand convey? Is your brand about a fun personality like Amul or a premium one like Starbucks?
If you’re a luxury brand, your design must speak of premium, elegance, and high quality. On the contrary, if you want to present yourself as a fun brand, your packaging design must appear lively, playful, engaging and full of personality.
With that, it is important to maintain brand consistency. It doesn’t matter if you have a single product or an entire line; what is non-negotiable here is to maintain the same brand identity throughout. Consistency creates recognition and trust and ensures the best food packaging design experience for your consumers.
Your Target Audience
How can you create a resonating packaging design for food products if you don’t understand your audience? So, it is imperative to understand your target consumers, their concerns, and what is it that they are looking for in the packaging.
Are they adults, children or Gen Zs? Are they people from all over the country or world, or are they specific to any particular region? What is their background, and what matters to them more? Is it taste that they are looking for, or is it health that is more important for them? Are they concerned about calorie count and nutritional information, or do flavour variations appeal to them?
Once you understand your audience and their preferences, you can successfully create a visually striking and informative packaging design that connects with them and encourages them to choose your product over competitors.
Clarity and Simplicity
‘Less is more’ – this phrase is very well known, so you must have heard it. It perfectly fits in the context of packaging design. Your buyers must not struggle to find what your product is truly about or what makes it special. Avoid overcomplicating your food package design because this would only confuse and deter them from purchasing. Always remember- a simple, clear and creative food packaging design wins.
Go with clear, compact and captivating brand and product messaging, don’t be too descriptive. Mention important details like your product’s name, unique selling proposition (USP), nutritional details and other benefits clearly. Remember to follow a well-defined structure when working on your package design and focus on keeping the important information in the front and centre.
In the end, simplicity doesn’t mean boring; it is more about designing strategically to effectively communicate your product’s essence in just a glimpse.
Shelf Impact and Differentiation
In a retail environment, your product will directly compete with your competitors’ products (remember, it will be placed just next to yours). Customers will assess and compare all the options in a matter of a few seconds and pick just one. Therefore, your food packaging and label design must be made with the retail scenario in mind.
You should ensure that your food packaging designs command attention and make a lasting shelf impact. It means standing out from all the other products in the product aisle and making people actively select it. Brand differentiation is the way to gain this competitive advantage. Your packaging should effectively communicate how your product differs from other products in the market.
While positioning your brand as unique and different from competitors, you can go bold and innovative; however, you must always keep in mind that this differentiating factor is actually significant and worthwhile for your target customers. A unique factor (no matter how attractive it may appear) which doesn’t add any value or solve a customer’s problem is pointless.
Packaging Design Trends
Customers and markets are ever evolving, so designing food packaging also means staying updated with these evolving trends. What worked a decade ago may no longer resonate. Following these trends strategically gives your brand a competitive edge and keeps your packaging design for food products relevant in a fast-changing market. Current trends include minimalism, sustainability, interactive elements, and smart packaging design with QR codes or AR experiences.
While staying abreast with changing design trends is a good idea, it is also important that you do not overdepend on trends or force them into your packaging design. Instead, choose a design that stays relevant for a long time and appeals to your target audience.
Resources at Hand
While you may aim for the moon for your food product packaging design, the reality may be a little different. Practical factors like budget, timelines and overall project scope may not allow you to spread your wings as much as you want. So, you must be aware of your resources and constraints from the very beginning and plan accordingly.
Clearly understanding the resources in hand and constraints enables you to create the best food packaging design within limits.
The Complete Process of Creative Food Packaging Design You Must Know
Designing a food pouch design transcends beyond aesthetics. It demands thorough research, planning, and maintaining the balance between aesthetics and function. Here’s the complete process of creating a creative and effective food product packaging design:
Research
The first step in designing food packaging is thorough research. Here, the market, audience, and competitors’ information are gathered. Comprehensive research and the use of all information are crucial in determining the success of your packaging design.
Market research gives you an idea about the opportunities and risks – what works in the market and what is outrightly rejected by customers. It also helps you find the market gap, which you can utilise to reach a new audience segment (not targeted by your competitors until now).
Competitor research can help you find and highlight your own unique differentiating factor. This, in turn, can help you stand out on cluttered store shelves.
So, this research phase lays the foundation for the entire process, gathering essential insights to guide every design decision for your food packaging.
Ideation & Design
Once all the necessary data are gathered, the next stage is ideation and design implementation. This is where you or your food packaging design agency brainstorms design concepts that align with your brand identity and vision, and create a packaging design.
Key considerations include:
- Design Goals: The first aspect to be considered here is the design goals. Whether you aim for luxury, minimalistic, bold or fun designs, this clarifies the design direction to go forward with.
- Actual Design: Here, the design, along with crucial brand communication elements like logo, typography, graphics, and colour palette are finalised. The layout, the information, the design hierarchy and the white spaces, too, are taken into consideration.
If you are availing food packaging design services, your agency will share its design ideas and direction with you for your feedback at this stage.
Prototyping & Testing
After the design phase, prototyping brings your food package design into a tangible form. This phase identifies potential practical issues that can affect the performance of your design and ensures the packaging works effectively in real-world scenarios.
Important factors considered during prototyping:
- Physical Form: Does your packaging complement the key line drawing (KLD)? Does it show the design clearly, or does it disturb it?
- Aesthetics: How does your packaging design for food products look when placed on a shelf? Does it blend with the competitive world or stand out?
Testing design with some real target customers is also important since it gives you an idea about how your consumers will respond to packaging design.
Final Design
The final design is ready after multiple design, prototyping and testing rounds.
It is now time to do a final check before the printing.
Aspects contemplated upon here are:
- Complementing Your Brand Identity: For the last time, your creative food packaging design is ensured to complement your brand values and personality. No matter if you want to go forward with a fun or luxurious design, your design must communicate it effectively.
- Uniformity Across All Products: If you have multiple product variations or a complete product line, it is ensured that your design remains consistent across all the products. Consistency in branding is important to increase brand recognition and build consumer trust and loyalty.
- Print and Production:Here, the creative packaging design for food is made ready for mass production. It is ensured that the printing process results in the printing of the package with the same colour palette and finishes as finalised.
Why You Should Get Help with Your Creative Food Packaging Design
There are multiple reasons why you may need professional assistance for your food package design. Firstly, as a food manufacturing business, it can be quite challenging for you to handle everything on your own. There is just so much to take care of, like raw material sourcing, inventory & supply chain management, process management, quality control, and food safety & compliance. Working with a food branding agency and packaging specialists can considerably reduce your workload, stress and time.
Moreover, while creativity is important for packaging design, it alone cannot do the magic. It needs to be combined with a research-based strategy. A professional food packaging design agency with a group of skilled and experienced professionals can help you do just that. It can help you create innovative food package designs based on market research, consumer psychology, and design strategy. Additionally, it can help you come up with fresh concepts for your new brand or redesign the food packaging of your existing products so that they look fantastic on screen and work well on the shelves.
To put it succinctly, a food packaging design company will make sure that your packaging is more than simply a box, packet, pouch or sachet. It will ensure that your food product packaging design is captivating and unique – something that effectively conveys your brand story, resonates with your target audience and yields conversions and profits.
More Than a Food Package Design Agency. We Create Packaging That Sells
Now that you know the needs and benefits of hiring an agency, you are probably wondering which one to hire for your food packaging design services. There are just so many options! How do you choose the right one?
While we are not showing off, we can confidently say that we are one of the best food packaging design companies in India. So, if you need help coming up with inventive ways to package food, we’re here to help. We don’t just design for pretty presentations. Instead, we make sure that our packaging stands out in busy stores and compels people to stop, take notice and buy.
Whatever your need may be – a premium packaging design for a new product, a redesign of your existing retail packaging design, or perhaps designs for several SKU variations – we know how to build food packaging that sells.
Don’t trust us just by our words? Well, we don’t expect you to do so. That’s why, below, we share our work with you. Why not go through some of our food product packaging designs and then decide whether we are the right choice for you or not?
Selected Food Packaging Design From Our Portfolio
Thames Food
About Thames – A food brand that provides healthy and tasty snacking options to its customers.
Work Done – Redesigned the packaging of more than 70 of their SKUs, including protein bars, dry fruits, dried berries, trail mixes, oats and muesli.
Iorganic
About Iorganic – A brand focused on providing the freshest and purest food products to people and helping them recapture the organic way of life.
Work Done – Designed packaging for their gluten-free snacks and gift hampers range.
Wlues
About Wlues – A Makhana brand that wants to make healthy snacking fun and interesting for its Gen Z audience globally.
Work Done – For its 3 variants of Makhana – Cheesy Jalapeno, Cream and Onion and Peri Peri Makhana – we designed playful and colourful packaging to convey its bold personality.
Smart Yums
About Smart Yums – It is a brand that focuses on providing crunchy, nutritious and delicious protein bars for active children.
Work Done – To appeal to the brand’s target customers, children, we designed a bright and playful packaging design for its protein bites.
Kalprishi
About Kalprishi – An established name in the spice industry, Kalprishi offers a range of pure spice powders, masalas and summer coolers to infuse cooking with timeless Indian taste.
Work Done – For them, we designed packaging for more than 20 of their variants. We seamlessly weaved traditional and modern elements into the packaging design to attract their target customers.
Read More: Best Beverage Packaging Design to Boost Your Brand This Summer 2026
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What makes food product packaging design important?
Food is a perishable product, so its packaging plays a vital role in safeguarding it from any kind of damage and increasing its shelf life. Its packaging design ensures that it stands out in busy stores and captures consumers’ attention. When a packaging design creates a strong first impression and forms an emotional connection with the customer, it significantly increases their chances of proceeding with the purchase. Ultimately, this leads to an increase in sales and revenue.
What important points should be considered while designing food packaging?
Selecting the right material is important to ensure the safety and shelf life of the food product. Also, the packaging should be designed in a way that it is practical and convenient for customers to open, close, and store. The label, pouch or package should convey the brand identity (through colours, typography, message) and essential information (ingredients, nutritional values, usage information) simply but effectively. In the end, the packaging should be able to appeal to customers so that they buy it.
What important information should be included on the labels of food packaging design?
Certain information must be a part of your food packaging design. These include product name & description, net quantity, ingredient lists, nutritional information, allergen declarations, manufacturing details, usage & storage instructions, and expiry dates. In addition, it should also include a veg/non-veg symbol and any other legally required declaration or warnings.
Can packaging design help increase sales of my food product?
For sure. A captivating food packaging design can attract and hold the attention of your customers in a store filled with similar products. It can convey who you are as a brand, what your values are and how you are different from others in the market. In addition, a packaging design communicates essential information that customers look for before purchase. All this together helps increase the sales of your food product.
What role does sustainability play in food packaging design?
Sustainability in food package design refers to the use of packaging materials that protect the food while simultaneously reducing environmental impact. This includes the use of recyclable, biodegradable, or compostable packaging material and choosing responsible printing and inks. It also means using fewer resources and reducing waste.
Sustainability in food packaging design is important because it reduces negative impact and environmental strain and presents the brand as responsible and eco-conscious. This appeals to the environmentally conscious consumers and thereby increases the trust and loyalty factor.
What is the significance of food product photography in packaging design?
Professional food photography helps present your product more accurately and appealingly. This ensures that your customers connect with your brand and find it more trustworthy.
Do you offer food product photography as part of your packaging design services?
We can definitely offer food product photography as part of our packaging design services if you need it.
Other than packaging design, what other services can DN Designs provide for my food business?
DN Designs is a branding and design company, and hence offers end-to-end services to launch and establish your brand in the market. If you are a new food business, we can offer services like brand name suggestions, logo design, and catalogue design. We can also design and develop your website and help you promote it through SEO. In addition, we can also help promote your brand through our digital media marketing, photography, video and animation services. If you are an existing business looking for a makeover of your business, we offer rebranding services as well.
