Step by Step to Great Graphic Design.

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. To make sure that this assessment is accurate, strongly consider using accurate quantitative research instead of lower quality qualitative research.

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. When design becomes collaborative around common insights and needs, the likelihood of great design goes up dramatically.

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.

You Can Avoid Bad Graphic Design.

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.

Major graphic design changes to your packaging pose some risks that you need to be aware of. If the design change that you are making is a big one, like major changes in colors and graphics, you may want to consider a proven method to mitigate risk. One of the most proven ways it is to have two design changes to get to the final design. The first of those two designs is one that is halfway between the old design and the new design. This first design introduces some elements while retaining key visual elements.

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.

Be Smart. Know What It Takes for Great Graphic Design.

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 good as these qualitative methods can be, coming to a conclusion about how competitive your graphic design is probably warrants an investment in quantitative consumer research. When conducted by a professional, what you learn is statistically representative of all of your consumers.

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.

Planning to Win With Graphic Design.

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.  What makes this so challenging is that battle with competitors is customer by customer and opportunity by opportunity.

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 and 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 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.

Be Alert. You Probably Need Better Graphic Design Now

It can be a major business mistake to not regularly evaluate how effective your packaging and marketing materials graphic design measures up to competition. For most businesses this is the primary where you got potential customers compare your product the alternatives they have.

This makes it tough to know if you need better graphic design. That is unfortunate. Graphic design is directly involved in virtually everything potential and actual customers see. If you are a consumer product, it is your packaging. If you are a business product, it can be your trade booth, packaging, and/or marketing materials.

Great graphic design is required to make sure that every customer facing aspect of your product is the very best it can be. You want your graphic design to do a better job of persuading customers to buy your product than the job your competitive products are doing to persuade your customers. While your graphic designs may not be the only way potential customers evaluate your product when making a purchase decision, it frequently is one of the most important that they evaluate. This makes it very important if you want to build your business.

So, how can you know?

Put your customer facing designs side-by-side with all of your competition. Then go through this checklist and see where you net out.

Compare package design: evaluate them qualitatively by evaluating them in side-by-side comparisons in the same environment customers see them. What is your eye go first? What's the first message you get from all of the packages looked at individually?

Compare marketing materials: which materials have the best message that is easiest to read? Which materials suggest the highest quality and the best performance? Which materials are best telling potential customers why they should buy a product instead of any other?

The Power of Graphic Design to Build Your Business

Whatever kind of business you are in, the packaging that you use for your product typically makes up most of your real marketing budget. More importantly, this packaging often becomes the primary material that a potential customer reviews before making a purchase. While graphic design can be relatively more important in consumer products, many business-to-business companies underestimate the importance of their packaging. As a result, investing in graphic design is one of the best investments you can make.

Here is a checklist of factors that you want to use to evaluate how good your current designs are.

Are you attracting a new generation of customers? What color and design preferences does this new generation have? How can you better use this information to say, "we are a product for you.”

What have competitors done with their package design in the last several years? If they have updated it and you have not, the concern becomes even more serious.

How does your package design stack up versus your competition? Some important criteria include how unique and distinctive is your package look plus which package is the best at selling the reason to buy that particular product instead of on the other.

Beyond your customers and competitors, what thoughts do you have on how to improve your designs? Combine your thoughts with those you have from your customers and comparisons versus your competitors. In this information is the opportunity for dramatic improvement.

Graphic design is one of the quickest ways you can build sales and profits.  Package design that is better than your competition will attract competitive customers to buy your product. Many times the appeal of a new design can have more selling power than a product improvement. The much lower cost for developing a new design compared to developing a new product improvement makes a new package design a major profit winner.

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.