Think about your favourite kind of food, a popular pair of shoes or every other product you see advertised in stores, supermarkets, online or on TV. Each and every on of them has a specific and unique packaging design which is itself a true artwork. By providing customers with useful information about the goods it contains and attracting people to buy more, packaging is a significant form of visual communication and plays a pivotal role in the success of advertising and sale campaigns of goods. You may think packaging design is a recent trick brands use to impress and attract customers to buy their products. However, it is nothing new. As far as there have been sales and markets of goods, there has been some degree of packaging design. This essay discusses the main historical events that have marked the history of product and packaging design and
From as early as the Stone Age, goods like food, water, clothes and utensils where stored in specific containers, appropriately made from stone, animal leather, leaves and clay. As time went by, trading was replaced with sale, so new technologies were needed to store, distinguish and give names to these goods. The development of a written form of language and later on the introduction of new materials such as paper rolls and parchments helped merchants to wrap and sell their goods locally and around the world. Spices, wines, tea, perfumes and textiles were traded between Europe and regions of the Middle East and Asia, along the famous intercontinental Silk Road. Later on, food such as coffee, corn, tobacco and sugar were traded from the new world to rich European countries, and all this required further development (and therefore design) of new packaging to wrap and contain these precious products. What materials did they use to box them? wood? paper? research and describe.
The Chinese are credited for inventing the process of printing texts with ink and movable letters, however the most famous example still remains Johannes Gutenberg's wooden printing press. The wooden (and later on metal) printing process largely helped the further development of packaging design. Sheets or wrapping paper were printed out in larger quantities and were decorated with ornaments, symbols and decorated letters and names of the tradesman who produced or sold the product (a sort of rudimentary logo design and brand identity).
For the first time in history, advertising billboards were shown in public to announce the sale of new products and thus required new visual communication rules to attract customers. The most common of these was to reproduce on the advertisement an image of the packaging instead of the product it contained. Packaging design become the only real way to attract customers and was therefore essential to sales. The essential information about the products had to be displayed on the container in graphic form, yet still in a comprehensible way.
This spread a revolution in mass communication and became the foundation for modern packaging design and visual communication rules. Mass production boomed as the request for more products at a lower price increased not only in Europe but in the new world as well. From the early 19th century, goods such as antidotes, beers, spirits, soaps and tonics were shipped from wealthy European countries to the new American colonies. However, it is important to note the meaning of mass production in this contest. Most of these goods were produced to attract educated and wealthy consumers, who could read and understand labels and advertisements of these goods.
As the demand for these precious products increased, merchants and manufacturers started understanding the importance of attracting more customers to buy their products. A pivotal way to distinguish products from each other was obviously through creating unique packaging. Emblems, coats of arms and other graphic ornaments (including mythological creatures such as unicorns and dragons) were stamped on wrapping paper and boxes to denote content, geographic origin, communicate rank and social status of the family who produced or sold the goods.
Manufacturers became brands, so they could claim property on their stock, packaging, and advertisements (trademarks) as well as promising to customers the quality of their products. Names such as Heinz, Smith Brothers and Osborne & Tone became famous as quality brands and were trusted by most consumers. Their unique trademarks on a packaging were always a promise of product and sale success.
And this was the beginning of what we know today by "mass marketing".
Img: https://www.pexels.com/photo/stacked-gift-boxes-with-different-colors-264985/
REFERENCES:
1) Klimchuk, Marianne R., and Sandra A. Krasovec. Packaging Design : Successful Product Branding from Concept to Shelf, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=947876.
2) https://www.pexels.com/photo/stacked-gift-boxes-with-different-colors-264985/
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