We have quite a quandary here don’t we? We all want to be more environmentally friendly but we also need to buy things like food, clothes, furniture and stuff to keep us clean.

If you’ve read my posts on packaging design you’ll see that any company wanting it’s product to be successful, whatever it is, needs to package it in a way that makes it visually appealing and protects the product during transport, storage and sale. For this post I’m going to concentrate on food packaging, I know it’s had a lot of bad press recently, the reason why I’m using this example is because of the improvements that have been made.

When the environment became the ‘big topic’ one of the major things that came under scrutiny was food packaging. Why on earth does a package of biscuits need a cardboard box and a plastic tray and a cellophane sleeve to be sold! the biggest offenders were seen to be things like Easter eggs.

Cadbury’s was seen to be one of the worst offenders with one of their eggs needing a box, a plastic insert, foil wrapping, the wrappers on the two flakes that came with it and a box to put the flakes in!!

They claimed it was to protect the product from breakage during transport. the bad press resulted in a huge drop in sales, people were voting with their cash and buying products with less packaging. Cadbury’s was forced to have a bit of a rethink. They trialed boxes without the plastic inserts to see if the lack of the plastic support would cause an increase in breakages, when the figures came back positive they took another massive step and got rid of the box all together!

Other confectioners eat your hearts out!! Cadbury’s eggs are now cheaper and much more environmentally friendly. With out the excess packaging the eggs now take up less space so more can be transported at the same time and the reduction in packaging has also had a knock on effect on the price. People are also much more environmentally aware so are making the conscious choice to pick eco friendly products. All this and Cadbury’s has reported only a slight rise in the rate of breakages. Now if we could only get all the rest to follow suit…

It’s also there to promote brand identity, the success of your following produce may have everything to do with people recognising your produce as being part of a brand that they like or trust. This is just for fun, a bit of a satirical look at the difference between Apple and Microsoft’s style of packaging:

So, lets have a look at some packaging

Ah, apple, you may have had some recent hiccups with the release of the iPhone 4 but no one can fault your packaging design. It’s a beautiful plastic box with apples trademark white card with gray text. It clearly displays the product, allowing you to see it’s main selling points: it’s size and how thin it is. Speaking of size there really is no space wasted in this packaging. It fit’s in the palm of your hand and everything is secure, no rattling around. It’s clearly marked with the company logo, the product name, the design and manufacture origins, safety mark and product serial numbers around the boxes circumference. On the bottom of the box the contents are clearly laid out along with the system requirements in English and Italian and a reiteration of the memory of the product. I personally love this design, it’s simple clean and reflects the shape and styling of the product itself.

these ink cartridges are packaged in, what looks like a vac formed plastic case heat sealed at the edges. It displays the company name and a stamp that assures the customer that it is a genuine Canon ink product. The product is completely encased in a cardboard inner sleeve so you can’t see it at all, a photograph depicts it along with the cartridge code. It’s labeled as a twin pack and this is emphasised by the use of the ‘value pack’ label. the side of the package lists the printers that the cartridges are compatible with and also (Not shown above) it’s maximum and minimum operating temperatures. The back of the pack has some blurb about how Canon inks are specially formulated for their machines in 5 different languages plus an advert for their photo paper. I’m not a great fan of this packaging as the product rattles around in about twice as much space as it needs. The technical information is clear but the colours and massive mix of fonts and font sizes is off putting. 

Before you think it I did not eat the whole of this Toblerone by myself!! The shape of the packaging is a reflection of the shape of the product and is also reminiscent of the products logo of a Swiss Alp. It has a description of the chocolate and the country of origin on two sides of the box along with the product name. The weight and calorific values are printed on a red band next to the tear round strip that gives the consumer access to the product. All the detailed product info is on the bottom of the box, the ingredients, nutritional value, GDAs and the use by date. I love this box, possibly because it’s my mum’s favorite chocolate and I have some good memories attached to it

Packaging is used in just about every aspect of our lives, you can’t really get away from it, even if you try!

It’s used to protect products in transport, keep food fresh, entice us to purchase, to provide warnings and to relay legal and safety information. Any product you design that will be available to the public will need to be packaged so what are the materials involved? What rules do you have to follow?

Materials

Paper and Board

Paper and card are, next to plastics, the most used packaging material. It’s easy to cut, colour, print on, fold and form and it can be processed in hundreds of ways. One form is corrugated cardboard, a vary strong, light weigh material that you can see almost every day. Paper and board are cheap, light weight and versatile materials that can be easily recycled.

Glass

Glass is used for a lot of food and medicinal packaging as it is incredibly chemically inert. Nothing much can react with glass at room temperature. It’s clear so the product can be seen, amber glass as shown above has the amazing ability to filter out UV light! It is resistant to compression, internal pressure and heat and is low cost to produce and made of readily available raw materials. The down sides are it is very fragile and can be very heavy depending on the design of the container. Glass is also highly recyclable.

Metal

The main metals used in everyday packaging are steel and aluminium. To prevent the metal reacting with the product in side they have to be coated with an organic lacquer. You wouldn’t want to drink a can of Coke that had started to corrode the inside of the can!! Metals are strong and can be made into just about anything, cans, tins, tubes, crisp packets etc. The main disadvantage is weight and transport space, some supermarkets have started to replace tins with rectangular tetra packs as the pallet weight is reduced and you can fit more pallets into the same space.

Plastics

Plastic is cheap, light and can me made into just about any shape you can think of. Plastics can be broken down into two main areas, thermosetting and thermoplastics. Thermosetting plastics can only be formed once, if you tried to melt them again they would just burn! Thermoplastics can be formed over and over again just be re-heating them. The reason for the difference is in the nature of their chemical bonds, thermosetting plastics have strong bonds between the molecule strands, the ones in a thermoplastic are much weaker allowing them to break when heated so the molecules can flow past one another.

Rules and Regulations

There are different rules and regulations for packaging in different markets. The rules that affect the cosmetics industry will be different from those governing the drinks industry for example.

The Portman Code: This is a rule governing the packaging for alcoholic drinks. A companies packaging cannot encourage consumers to drink excessively or to emphasise the drink’s alcohol content. They are also not aloud to associate their product with drugs, violence or sexual success.

Braille: Since 2005 it has been mandatory for pharmasutical packaging to have it’s products name and strength printed on the packaging in braille.

Food Lableing: Any food sold must adhere to the food labelling regulations. Any product has to have an accurate description, it’s ingredients, place of origin and sell by date printed on it’s container. You’ve probable see the traffic light system a lot of the big supermarkets have adopted to make the nutritional content of their products clear, this has been done with the guidance of the Food Standards Agency.