{"id":46603,"date":"2017-07-05T06:07:51","date_gmt":"2017-07-05T13:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/?p=46603"},"modified":"2024-04-16T05:20:03","modified_gmt":"2024-04-16T12:20:03","slug":"how-to-design-packaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/creativemarket.com\/blog\/how-to-design-packaging","title":{"rendered":"How to Design Packaging for a Handmade Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Owners and operators of handmade businesses realize how vital their product packaging<\/a> is to their credibility as design entrepreneurs. How your products ship and arrive at your customers’ homes and offices says a lot about your design prowess and branding.\nPackaging that’s uniquely and thoughtfully designed makes a much bigger impression on and stays longer in the minds of your customers than packaging that’s a mere afterthought. As a design entrepreneur<\/a>, you should think of your packaging as an opportunity not to only delight your customers, but also advertise your brand in a flattering way.\nThe thing about packaging is that it’s a mix of several factors that have to come together to be successful: design, technology, and function. If you have a handmade business, then the design part of this equation takes on added urgency, to say the least.\nAsk yourself, “What would my customers think of my brand if my well-designed and aesthetic handmade product arrived in a cardboard box?â€\nIt wouldn’t be favorable! In this tutorial, we’re going to look at all the steps involved in designing packaging<\/a> for handmade businesses.\n

<\/span>Customers Want Personalization — Especially for Handmade Goods<\/span><\/h2>

\nOne huge factor that you have on your side to differentiate your handmade business from the colder stock products out there is your innate ability to personalize your offerings. Think about this for a second: retail shelves and online stores are chock-full of items that can’t be personalized and lack an added appeal beyond their advertised value and benefit.\nYour handmade products can satisfy individual customer needs in a way that stock items can’t. In addition, since your products aren’t being rolled off the assembly line like stock items, you have the freedom to customize them to your customers’ tastes and give them a truly one-of-a-kind treat. As a result, customers pretty much expect that handmade products have unique and personalized packaging that they won’t find anywhere else.\nYou can maximize the potential and increase sales of your handmade products when you take extra time to make your packaging an extension of your product and branding.\nHere are some inventive examples of great packaging design from our product mockups<\/a> category:\n

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<\/span>Step 1: Get Useful Software<\/span><\/h2>

\nThe challenge with packaging design already begins at the most basic level of visualizing your packaging, which happens when you’re designing the artwork for it. Typically, designers will transfer their packaging designs to manufacturers in vector<\/a> format. The problem is that a vector format usually produces design in 2D, yet you naturally want to visualize your product packaging in 3D.\n\"\"\nYou can get around this issue in one, fell swoop by using either Adobe Photoshop<\/a> for more photorealistic packaging mockups or Adobe Illustrator for more cartoonlike mockups. Photoshop allows you to see what your 2D design will look like on an actual, physical object, as you can create these mockups entirely from scratch.\nIf you don’t even want to bother with creating your own design and therefore worrying about the right software for the task, then you can always select from the many packaging templates<\/a> in our CM marketplace to make life easier for yourself.\n<\/p>

<\/span>Step 2: Make It Functional and Practical<\/span><\/h2>

\nYour packaging can be as aesthetic and on-point in terms of branding as you envision, yet if it fails to satisfy basic rules of functionality, then it’s going to be a minus for your handmade business. Great product design dictates that your packaging has to be practical and easy to use from the standpoint of your customers.\nFor example, if you’re shipping handmade candles, then inside a sealed-off box is the last type of packaging option that you want to use. The reason is that candles appeal to the sense of smell, so your customers are expecting some form of aroma greeting them when they get your shipment. Candles are also visually appealing, so teasing your customers with a preview through the packaging is also clever and suitable.\n\"\"\nA good choice for candles would be a custom tumbler box<\/a>, which allows your candles to be smelled and seen, thanks to its holes and one face of the box being completely cut out, so your customers can see the candle.\nCustomers handling and opening such a thoughtful packaging design are going to remember your handmade brand with fondness, as they’ll be delighted in a very simple way that they weren’t expecting.\n<\/p>

<\/span>Step 3: Don’t “Box†Yourself in<\/span><\/h2>

\nOne of the biggest temptations that shows a true lack of creativity is the unrelenting use of boxes for packaging “solutions.†Everyone expects their products to arrive in a box! If you want your handmade business to stand out amazingly and memorably, then think outside the box.\nPuns aside, there are various packaging options besides using the plain, old box. After all, not every type of handmade product (or product in general, for that matter) easily lends itself to being packaged in a box. Products that are not so angled in shape—those are things like pouches, tubes, or just items that have more rounded features—aren’t all that ideal for boxes.\n\"\"\nHere’s a list of different packaging choices to compete with boxes:\n<\/p>