How to Design Cosmetic Packaging Design: Ideas and Offers
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Few industries can attract customers who will be as devoted and loyal as the beauty and cosmetic industry. Almost every woman (and a ton of guys!) use beauty products daily. Whether someone is trying for the avant-garde “makeup is art you wear on your face” feel or the “I woke up like this” look, beauty products are a staple in bathroom cabinets worldwide.
The majority of makeup users will undoubtedly admit that they wouldn’t spend the time, money, or effort to apply it to their faces if no one else was going to see it.
Before a buyer has a chance to try, smell, or feel the goods, the packaging is the first thing they will notice. The appearance of lipstick or mascara may be more significant to beauty die-hards than the actual makeup.
A 2017 survey by Luminer found that 33% of consumers claimed they are more inclined to reject a product or brand if they don’t like the way the label looks.
Packaging should be given the same consideration as the product inside in a busy and quick-paced industry.
But how precisely do you create packaging that compels your ideal client to exclaim, “I needed that blush yesterday?” Do not worry; All Time Design is here to provide you with all the knowledge you require to design packaging with high standards on the shelf and gets your product into your customer’s bag.
How To Design Cosmetic Packaging That Sells
Creating a committed and engaged community around your brand might be challenging. The market is cutthroat, and today’s consumers are more particular than ever.
However, one crucial physical touchpoint comes first, whether you are a brick-and-mortar beauty brand or a web store: packaging.
A simple cosmetic packaging design can make all the difference. It will stand out on the shelf and grab your customer’s attention.
In designing packaging that sells, adhere to these crucial steps:
What does your brand stand for? Who is the target audience for your brand? How will customers be able to buy your goods?
After responding to these three questions, you’ll have a better idea of the packaging type you’ll need to have tremendous success. Creating a mood board for your brand is also essential. Check out some eco-friendly packaging design ideas.
Define The Personality of Your Cosmetics Brand
Your brand identity is equally significant to your customer’s identification. What is your branding? Are you dark and edgy? Effortlessly timeless? Luxurious? Accessible? What design elements you employ in your packaging will depend on who you are as a brand and the image you want to present to your clients.
For instance, luxury cosmetic packaging design or branding translates into luxury products. But will it be luxurious with a twist? Will there be glamour? Accessible, such as premium goods at affordable prices? Or would it be upmarket and environmentally conscious?
Your brand will influence a lot of the first packaging design because you want to connect it with your product line. While you still have some creative license to distinguish your packaging, maintaining consistency is essential to winning over repeat customers.
You can create a company logo, color scheme, messaging, or other elements that give your brand a uniform, cohesive look by considering all of the considerations mentioned above. However, before completing anything else in this book, we advise doing it first.
Determining your brand simplifies the packaging design process, whether you’re a startup, an organization rebranding, or an existing business looking to broaden your appeal.
Who Does Your Beauty Brand Appeal To?
You must identify your ideal customers before utilizing internal graphic designers or professional packaging design firms. Then, you may develop a design that appeals to the appropriate audience by considering elements like the problems your products answer, their target market, and their demographics and psychographics.
With such information, you can design packaging that appeals to your core customer base and the outliers who drive your business forward.
Where Do Consumers Order Your Cosmetic Products?
It would be best if you also thought about how to market your goods. Are you selling online or in-person? In giant merchants or modest boutiques? Your design strategies could alter depending on where you’re selling your products.
How you present your goods depends on where consumers interact with your brand. The packaging utilized in a store setting, where it is displayed alongside rival brands, must grab customers’ attention.
Think about the store itself as well. For example, it can be required to package things together in some boutique stores or to spruce up the exterior more than you would for a drugstore.
When you make purchases online, you have a little more freedom. Therefore, your e-commerce packaging should focus more on the consumer’s interaction with your brand than on becoming recognized.
While using unique packaging for various points of sale is customary, ensure your branding is consistent so your customers can recognize your products at a glance.
Create a Mood Board for Your Brand
Making a mood board for your company is an excellent step before you begin developing. Then, as you begin the design process, gather photos, colors, advertising, and anything else you feel best represents the strong brand identity of your company.
Let the Latest Cosmetics Packaging Trends Inspire You
Looking at the most recent cosmetics packaging trends is the best place to start if you need some inspiration for your packaging design. Once you know the current trends, you can design packaging that effectively communicates to your target audience and reflects what they value today.
To ensure that your packaging design remains fashionable for as long as possible, keep in mind that you want to use a style that is both on-trend, and carries a modern design as well as timeless and eminently appealing.
The following are the cosmetics packaging trends that are currently popular:
Bold, eye-catching patterns
The strong pattern trend will make your packaging leap off the shelves with its loud stripes and crazy color combinations. The proper placement of eye-catching patterns gives your packaging a distinctive design that sets your brand apart from the competition. A recurring trend that can give your packaging an edge is irregular patterns especially. The good news is that as long as you employ the proper colors and forms, abstract patterns may work for any brand, not just those that are young and loud.
Intricate line drawings
For cosmetics packaging, intricate drawings with fine lines and loads of detail are a timeless beauty trend. Particularly floral and hand-drawn images, whether artfully positioned in specific locations or spanning the entire object, perform nicely. A more geometric, clean, and excellent drawing style can suit you if you want something less feminine yet elegant and precise. If your business has an eye for detail or you’re searching for a modest yet lovely method to showcase what’s inside your packaging by illustrating the ingredients you use, this trend is ideal.
Unique Custom Fonts
Naturally, the bold font trend we are witnessing in graphic design across the board also applies to packaging. Your packaging can have a lot of personality by using a distinctive font. A hand-lettered font might be the ideal approach to stand out from the competition. Typography is the best way to represent who you are as a brand. A distinctive font is sure to linger in people’s thoughts, whether it conveys a nostalgic mood, a powerful message, or a whimsical flare.
Superb black packaging with a twist
Cosmetics packaging in black and white is a classic style that will never go out of style. While white used to be the color of choice for cosmetics packaging by far, what’s new in the packaging designs we’re currently seeing is that black seems to be taking over monochromatic packaging. These patterns combine subtle patterns and little splashes of color to draw the eye and give them an intriguing twist. Packaging mostly black has an opulent appearance and an air of coldness and mystery. Additionally, if you choose a sophisticated monochromatic design, you can be sure that your packaging will always be in vogue.
Modern minimalist pastels
Minimalism and pastels go together like peaches and cream. While pastels help soften a minimalist packaging design that would otherwise look harsh, a clean and minimalist design will guarantee that your pastel packaging looks modern and mature. To find the proper packaging for your brand, experiment with both ideas. You can create a whimsical and dreamlike effect by using a combination of pastels or by sticking with one pastel shade that appeals to your clients and brand.
Anything goes when it comes to cosmetics packaging. Dare to be unique! Play around with packaging designs that resonate with you and convey your brand’s essence.
Create your perfect cosmetics packaging
It’s time to start creating your beauty packaging and cosmetics labels now that you’re feeling motivated.
Set Your Brand Design Standards
Setting your design elements is the first thing you must do when creating your packaging.
There are several factors you should take into account:
style
The first thing you should think about is the tone and character you want to give your packaging. Do you intend for your design to have a minimalist feel? Do you prefer to be more extravagant and stylized?
Making packaging options per your overall design objectives will be easier if you know the style you want to adopt for the rest of your design.
Securing your style will also enable you to identify any other design components you may need to consider. For example, do you want to create a pop art effect? The design process may then need to be led by some illustrations. Do you use natural components in your line of organic cosmetics brands? Then perhaps you might include some nature images on your packaging. The key is to know what design components are necessary to convey the desired style in your packaging once you’ve decided on a particular look.
Colors
When selecting colors, you want to pick hues that a) reflect your brand personality, b) catch customers’ attention, and c) stand out from the crowd. This final criterion is crucial in the fiercely competitive beauty and cosmetics industry.
Consider choosing your brand’s color scheme like you would put together the must-have makeup palette of the season; you want to be true to your own identity while standing out from the competition. Pink, for instance, is a color that is extremely popular in the world of beauty and cosmetics. It’s playful, feminine, and just so happens to be a prominent color in all the beautiful cosmetics we lavish on our faces. However, if you choose pink for your packaging, you can find it challenging to attract customers because pink currently dominates the shelves of every cosmetics retailer.
The most recognizable beauty and cosmetic brands employ color to strengthen their brands. Urban Decay comes to mind when people think of purple. On the other hand, Makeup Forever is all about bold black and white. And who is currently the pink queen? Too Faced Cosmetics.
To ensure your branding is a success, you need to do similar and find a brand color scheme that catches the eye and becomes instantly synonymous with the brand.
Fonts
Like with colors, you want to pick an item that will stand out to customers who are scanning the shelves and be consistent with your brand.
Do you have a brand that is a little bit more daring? Choose a prominent, strong font like Urban Decay.
More pleasant, seductive, and feminine? Use a script or funny font, like Too Faced.
How about neat and fashionable? Consider using a sans serif typeface for an elegant, contemporary look, like Chanel.
Are you trying to achieve a classic feel? Use elegant sans serif fonts like Clinique.
You should consider one more thing when selecting fonts. What will it appear like on your cosmetics packaging? Your typefaces should be readable and clear even on a small, compact box. Check out some small business packaging design ideas.
Assemble the Information You’ll Need to Put On Your Packing
The information you need to include on your packaging should then be gathered (including the information you need to be FDA-compliant).
Typical elements on cosmetics packaging include:
- a photo demonstrating your product is cruelty-free
- labels for expiration
- Governmental cautionary signs
- Additional graphics and pictures
- A brand copy
Choose Your Packaging Type
It’s time to select the actual packaging at this point.
Know the Three Layers
There are three main layers you need to consider when it comes to packaging: outside packaging, inner packaging, and product packaging. Then, follow with foundation and finish with finishing powder.
Your clients must first sift through the outside packaging to reach your product. This could be a box you use to send customer orders out of your warehouse or a bag to wrap your cosmetics for sale in stores.
Your product is housed in its inner packaging, and the product customers open it to get their lip gloss.
Product packaging is the container that holds your product inside, whether it be a lipstick tube or a foundation bottle.
Standard Packaging Types in the Cosmetic World
The options are endless when it comes to beauty and cosmetics packaging. The “what” should be your first consideration when selecting your cosmetics packaging. What does your cosmetics packaging serve? What sort of goods are you producing? You should pick the product packaging that makes the most sense for each beauty product because the packaging that works for a lip gloss won’t be the best option for body butter.
In the world of cosmetics and beauty, some common packaging choices include:
- Airless bottles
- Compacts
- Droppers
- Pumps
- Jars
- Sprayers
- Tubes
Various products have different packaging standards. For example, most lipsticks will be kept in a lipstick tube. But you shouldn’t let that stop you from thinking creatively! Consider lip gloss as an example. Putting them in a tube with a wand used to be the norm. While that is still the most popular option, many brands have strayed from the “standard” and chosen squeeze tubes, jars, and twist lids instead. Therefore, don’t think you must keep to “conventional” packaging.
Once you’ve decided on the type of packaging you want, you need to plan how and where to acquire it. You can get packaging from a plethora of cosmetics packaging businesses for a discount. Additionally, you can have personalized bottles, box packaging, or tubs created, which might help your product stand out on store shelves but will undoubtedly cost you more than a bit of cash.
Choose a Focal Point for Your Design
It’s time to start thinking about the design once you’ve decided on the type of product packaging you want to use. And where should you begin? Selecting the focal point.
You only have a little window of time while a customer is looking at your goods to communicate your message before they move on to another item on the shelf. So what is the most important thing to convey to your customers about your product? That’s what needs to be conveyed in your packaging design, whatever it may be.
Do you want to promote a strong brand identity and let customers know that the face cream or lipstick they buy is exclusively from you? Then you should make sure your logo is prominently displayed. Is there a particular component in your beauty product that you are confident will impress your customers and convince them to buy? If so, your design should center on that.
You may ensure your customer understands your important message by concentrating on just one key component of your packaging design.
Think About Your Materials and Specialty Printing Options
The next step is to decide which packaging materials and specialty printing possibilities you’ll utilize.
There are many options available to spice up your cosmetics packaging. But remember that your budget will increase as your packaging becomes more intricate. Also, depending on your product, you might need to make some upgrades (for example, if your product is meant to be stored in the shower, you better make sure your labels are coated and water resistant).
Others are design decisions that can be used to create a particular feel and style. Indeed, adding elements like foil stamping, embossing, metal, or ink with a 3D appearance will make your packaging feel more upscale, opulent, and entertaining. Still, it will also raise the cost of each item.
Talk to your designers about the materials and printing alternatives that best fit your brand and budget if you are unsure of the options available or what options your budget permits.
How to Pick the Best Cosmetic Packaging Designers
You can proceed with the design of your cosmetic packaging in one of two ways:
DIY
Naturally, doing things yourself is your best option. In addition, although you might be tempted to handle the design to save costs unless you have prior design experience, we don’t advise it. You shouldn’t skimp on the design of your cosmetic packaging because it’s crucial to your company’s success.
Hire a Designer
The alternative is to work with a designer who will oversee the design process on your behalf. You can accomplish this in two practical ways: hiring a designer or holding a design competition.
Look for a designer with experience in product packaging design if you wish to deal with them directly (it’s even better if they have worked exclusively in the cosmetics industry). All Time Design offers you experienced designers that will ensure your cosmetic line gets the right packaging and branding.
Creative Cosmetic Packaging Designs for Inspiration
Here are some companies that, in our opinion, are already executing beauty packaging brilliantly to help you get more inspiration.
SOFI Cosmetics
Founded in Serbia, the family-run cosmetics company SOFI is known for its handcrafted, premium goods manufactured with all-natural components.
Natural soaps, bath bombs, lip balms, salt baths with fragrances, hand and face creams, and body oils are among the available goods.
The brand’s theme of depending on “the power of plants” and “respecting the environment” is easily communicated through the packaging, which is straightforward yet elegant and utilizes botanical illustrations.
Milica Panteli, a Belgrade-based local art director, who created the design, said it was not surprising that the brand design strategies were selected over marketing to promote their brands.
Kjaer Weis took a contemporary approach to design its cosmetic packaging, experimenting with shape and material to produce a cosmetic line that stands out from the competition.
Kjaer Weis
The company offers a wide range of products, from lipstick to blush and foundation, but what makes them so intriguing is how consistently well-designed they are.
All of Kjaer Weis’s items are created in an understated manner, with almost any lettering or noticeable graphics. However, the sleek, elegant, and sophisticated logo is the one thing that unites them all.
Although the wordmark is indented into the container’s metal, the vast, bold, and overt logo is next to it.
Although not all letters are embossed, this monogram is also included in the metal.
An abstract monogram that sticks out for its distinctive shape and the white hue that makes it up was created by Kjaer Weis using geometric shapes and patterns.
This clean, contemporary style grabs the viewer’s attention right away.
The makeup packaging design is accurate. The product is kept in a square-shaped metal tin with one of the corners chopped off, making it edgy.
Additionally, this device opens distinctively. Instead of opening the blush like an oyster, as is customary, you can slide the cover-up to make it resemble an old-school lighter or anything similarly edgy.
Rael Face Masks
These face masks are often described as both functionally and aesthetically fresh, clean, and bright.
These delicate and charming boxes contain purifying face masks, and the designs convey this quality through pastel hues, flower images, and straightforward typography.
Pastel colors make up the cosmetic packaging design, including its background. It’s a delicate, matte color that emphasizes softness and provides depth.
SK-II
Limited edition SKI-II Happy reunions of love, hugs, and kisses are the inspiration for XOXO PITERA face treatment essence.
The red matte background of this cosmetic box design highlights the brand’s vibrant emblem with simple wording.
This product may be the ideal gift for the next Valentine’s Day, according to the bold, gold text that covers the entire design cosmetic packaging.
The luxury cosmetic packaging design for the XOXO Pitera facial treatment essence honors love, which is why red predominates.
Fenty Beauty
The new line of slip-shine translucent sparkly lipsticks from Rihanna’s well-known brand Fenty Beauty has an innovative yet minimalistic makeup packaging design.
These products’ shapes were toyed with by the manufacturer, and their designs are notable mainly for the innovative geometric shapes that make them stand out on the shelves.
These designs, which have an intriguing hexagonal shape and clean, bold font that depicts the corporate emblem, reflect Rihana’s personality, which is one of taking chances and pushing boundaries.
This luxurious cosmetic packaging design is inclusive yet straightforward and understated. These products provide a pleasant, inviting sensation because of their elegance and stylish appearance.
Nars
Nars is a leading provider of lasting beauty products in the beauty industry.
The company’s new luxury cosmetic packaging design fits perfectly with its logo and the graphic crimson star, heart, and butterfly prints because it is a dark and brooding brand.
This plain, minimalist style is alluring and has a distinctive edge that sets it apart from its competitors. It has an enigmatic personality that won’t go away and is moody.
These colorful cosmetic packaging designs for Nars cosmetics are sure to attract attention.
Mor
Mor’s cosmetic packaging design is elegant and beautiful. The background for the artwork that lines these boxes, perfume bottles, lip balms, and lotions is composed of soft pinks and gentle whites.
With its packaging design, Mor took a more conventional path, choosing elegance and refinement in its artwork, logo, and color scheme.
Mor’s logo is seen on all its items with a giant M crafted from a regal gold tone and printed in a sophisticated, curly typeface. Then a golden wreath that radiates elegance and majesty surrounds this M.
The packaging design for Mor’s cosmetics is exquisite and magnificent and pops out its ideas. The key is that they don’t even resemble cosmetics.
Understanding the Cosmetics Industry Marketplace
An essential component of this procedure is research. Whether running an online store, in-person, or both, it would be best if you did this.
Choose a group of five cosmetic companies you believe will be your brand’s immediate rivals. Then, make sure they sell similar products to the ones you sell.
We advise choosing three direct competitors, one business that is thought to be a step above and one business that is thought to be a level below the brands you chose for your research. The latter two choices allow you to distinguish between a brand regarded as a premium and one seen as inferior.
Examine each company’s strengths and weaknesses, how they interact with customers, and any flaws your business may exploit. Examine their website, online stores, social media shareability, and any places that might sell their products.
Keep track of the cosmetic packaging boxes’ design aesthetics and whether any product or line sells more highly than others.
Hiring Designer from All Time Design
The cosmetics and beauty industry offers a ton of opportunities. And that chance is yours to seize if you have the right product, the appropriate packaging, and the perfect design!
Your packaging design process can be created from scratch, which includes logos, colors, typography, images, and other relevant aspects associated with your identity and personality.
Working closely with brands, we assess target demographics and develop the ideal printing techniques, visuals, right packaging, and structures to grab their attention.
All Time Design designers tick the possible evaluation questions you should ask yourself:
- Does this catch the interest of my ideal client?
- Is it evident from the packaging design what this product is?
- Is the packaging straightforward to reach and use?
- Would this stand out in comparison to competitor packaging?
- How does this appear in 3D? (you can even print the prototype and assemble the package to get a better idea of what it will look like in real life)
- Will this design still be relevant five years from now?
To get quality cosmetic packaging design, visit All Time Design, sign up, and get started today!
