How to Get Great Graphic Design in the year 2019

Package design is a critical part of any plan to be successful in graphic design is the most important capability for optimizing package design.

Since most companies do not work frequently with a graphic designer, here are some easy to follow tips on how to optimize that experience.

Before you start working on package design, you need to develop a very, very clear understanding of the need. Is your package design clearly inferior to one or more competitors? Complete a strengths and weaknesses assessment of your current package design. You will want to make sure the strengths are somehow incorporated into a new design. Whenever possible make sure that you use quantitative research to make these determinations.

Develop a very clear statement of what you need when you communicate with your graphic design company. Wherever possible, illustrate this statement with examples of good and great design that you see other products using. Sometimes it can just be elements of some great designs that you think might be appropriate for your business. Be open to contributions from the graphic designer. At the conclusion, make sure that you mutually agree on the direction that promises great work.

When reviewing the first round of work of package design, be aware of your first reactions, especially for what you like. Be sure to involve others who have a good understanding of customer values and beliefs. Take at least 24 hours before communicating your feedback. Organize your feedback in clear, simple statements focusing on the most important elements. Again, supplement that feedback with visual examples wherever appropriate.

Continue this process through subsequent rounds of work. The goal is to use graphic design as a way of achieving competitive advantage and package design.  You should settle for nothing less.

How to Avoid Making Critical Graphic Design Mistakes.

For the most part, using graphic design to create superior package design is successful to varying degrees. Companies typically use graphic design to refresh a package design keeps it modern and relevant. These relatively modest changes can be helpful but seldom upset the competitive dynamics.

Occasionally in an effort to be highly innovative and dramatic, major companies will create a revolutionary graphic design. In almost all situations, this involves significant risk. Current customers are usually buying the product, especially if it is a retail product on a shelf, primarily based upon the visual "signature" the product has. For example, if you're shopping in the laundry detergent section for Tide, you are looking for the orange bottle, which is the brands visual signature. Interestingly, after decades of being in the orange bottle, Tide introduced a product variation in a white bottle. They were able to survive this jolting change primarily because the white bottle was shelved with a whole bunch of orange bottles bearing the same brand name.

Probably the biggest disaster was when Tropicana orange juice converted to an all white bottle. I remember seeing this package design and shaking my head, knowing it was headed for trouble. Tropicana completely lost its visual image of being orange in color – the orange juice in a clear bottle.  The marketplace spoke immediately and sales declined immediately. Even when companies respond quickly, and most do not, there was always some degree of both short and long-term her to their business.

So how do you avoid these disasters? First, recognize your visual signature. Second, if you want a revolutionary design, make sure that you identify the couple of critical visual elements associated with your product that customers use when making a purchase decision. Before you engage in this arduous and risky journey, make sure that you have done quality quantitative research with customers to be sure that they really, really prefer the new package.

Always be mindful of your visual signature your package design makes and use graphic design to help maintain the integrity of this work.

Understand What and How Great Graphic Design and Package Design Help Your Business Win in the Marketplace.

The ultimate goal of great graphic design that delivers great package design is to win and be better than your competition.

How can you learn if you're winning or not?

Simple – talk to customers. If you're in a retail store where your products are sold and there are customers looking at your types of products, go talk to them. Here are some questions you can ask them.

Which product first caught your eye? You want to know what designs are best at grabbing customers’ attention.

What about that product caught your eye? Was it the color? Was it the shape of the package? Was it a graphic design element on the package?

What product did you decide to buy? If it wasn't the product that first got there, why did they buy this other product? What do they like and dislike about the package design for the product they bought?

Wildcard question – of all the products of any kind that you buy in the store, which product do you think has the very best design? The one that you immediately look for. What do you like about it? What's the number one thing you notice about this package?

As valuable as this approach can be, it can be misleading if you do not conduct professional customer research. Professional customer research provides results that accurately represent your total customer base, not just a few folks that may also include biased family members.

Better package design requires graphic design. You need to find people who do graphic design with the intent of creating solutions that are better than your competition. Work for a graphic design company that can bring both marketing and package design expertise. If not, keep looking for a graphic design service whose work is better than competition and they say it is their mission to create competitively superior package design through world-class graphic design.

Winning Graphic Design Can Be Easy.

As a business leader, you battle with competitors every single day to win customers away from them and to keep your own customers buying your products. As much as you want to take away competitive customers, they also want to take away your customers.

No one ever said that business was easy. It isn't.

To make things easier you always need to start with ensuring that you have a deep and clear understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of competitive products in your product. Failing to fully appreciate and understand consumer values and behavior is the Achilles' heel of so many businesses.

This means that you need to focus on your product – it reliably does what you promise it's going to do and it is very high-quality.

This means that you need to focus on what customers see before they buy your product. First, you need to focus on what customers see as they consider buying your or a competitive product. For most products, this means you need package design that is demonstrably better than all of your competition. Retail package design needs to stand out in a very cluttered environment. In B2B your package needs to immediately communicate the benefits customers receive when they buy your product.

To win this battle for attention you need great graphic design to develop great package design. Graphic design needs to create a package design that delivers "pay attention to me" design that is better than your competition. You cannot get this kind of graphic design from every company selling graphic design services. You need graphic design services that incorporate and help you develop both the messaging for your package and graphic expression of that message. Do they vary overtly say they design to deliver a package design that wins against competition? If not, continue your search.

Follow the same procedure for all of your marketing materials. You want marketing materials that potential customers will see that are clearly better than your competition.