You’ve developed the perfect product and created the business you dreamt of. But the thing each customer will remember is the way that it looks the first time they see it. So it is absolutely essential that your packaging screams ‘pick me’ and stands out from your competition. When it comes to packaging design, you have come to the right place. Based in Manchester, we’re a design agency that brings creative flair, industry knowledge and insightful product placement to all of our packaging design concepts.
Packaging Designers with the consumer in mind
Food & Drink
Sports Nutrition
Beauty
Lifestyle
Sporting Goods
Alcohol
Household
Pharmaceutical
Technology
Kids & Baby
”Create8 have been fantastic! They have developed my brand, working with me to create unique and eye catching packaging for our re launch. They’ve bought my ideas to life and really captured what I was trying to achieve.
LauraProtein Bakery
What Do We Do?
Packaging Research
When it comes to packaging design, it’s essential you know and explain what it is you do from the get go. A brilliant design company won’t be able to create your perfect packaging if they don’t understand where your company stands in the market. Make sure you tick the necessary boxes before committing to a project; the time you could waste if you have to backtrack on a half-completed design will mean pushing back your launch date.
Graphic Design
Every brilliant marketing campaign has a product with the perfect packaging. Behind that packaging is a graphic designer who knows just how to help you succeed. Luckily, this is our bread-and-butter, and therefore you’ve come to the right place. With talented graphic designers who have various strengths and styles, we ensure all our packaging design concepts are run by the whole team. This was we can have various opinions to bounce around, giving your branding and packaging design more attention than the competition.
Product Placement
Where are you going to sell your product? Product placement is essential when formulating your packaging design. Some products look brilliant on the shelves of a supermarket, whereas others are designed to be sold solely online. Products that have an online customer base will need to be packaged in a way that makes them easily shippable. Those that sit in stores need to catch the eye, as no filter or moving graphics will be there drawing potential customers attention.
Design Concepts
Much like graphic design, design concepts are our speciality! As a company, we always put forward several concepts for a client to choose from, using all our industry know-how to make sure your packaging stands out from the crowd. It’s vital as a business that you make the most of current trends – a brilliant product hidden behind odd and not suitable packaging design is unlikely to become popular. People like things that stand out, but they also like familiarity, finding the balance is critical.
Competition
At Create8, we strive to have a fully loaded arsenal of knowledge when it comes to your business sector. Knowing your competition is essential. We want to know what makes your competitors durable and what they do that you can do better, this has a massive part to play in the packaging design process. If your competitors look better than you, they are more likely to be bought instead. Collaboration is key to working out your sector as you will have all the expert knowledge, so let us provide the graphic design and make your packaging perfect.
Practicality
Have you ever bought a drink that was poured into a paper bag? No, we thought not. That’s why practicality is crucial in your packaging design process. If your product is one to be used by children, it wouldn’t be made of glass, the same goes for the clumsy adults too. A perfume bottle, for example, has to look brilliant on a bedside cabinet but also has to be easily held whilst being used. Innovation is great when it comes to the practicality of packaging, a brilliant design agency will think outside the box and if your product is more practical than others in your sector, guess what? SALES!
Sustainability
Sustainability is something that should be taken into account by every start-up business. If you are aiming to be a dominant player in your sector, you need to start thinking long-term today. Social responsibility and sustainability involve thinking about the long-term detriment that non-recyclable packaging has on the planet. We aim to design packaging that limits the carbon footprint of a business by using recyclable materials. If you choose it, you’re in environmentally safe hands with us.
Informative & Honest
If there is one thing you need your packaging to do, it’s tell the truth, honesty is the best policy. Potential customers who aren’t fully committed to your brand can spot a lie a mile away, and those who already use your products will be alienated if they don’t see the promised results. We don’t want you getting in trouble so follow the legal procedures to ensure we implement legitimate facts and figures into our packaging design work. For example, if you produce a food product, don’t exaggerate the health benefits as this will create serious problems for the business and directors of the company in the long run.
Extensibility
Forward-thinking is important; as your company expands you’ll likely bring out more and more products, each with a new design that is clearly still from your company. In the long-run, you don’t want all your products to look completely different, keeping your colour palette open leaves plenty of scope for the designer to produce brilliant packaging designs time-and-time again.
The Packaging Flow
We’ve made sure to make our design process as easy as possible for our clients to understand; however, we know each client has different demands and needs so we remain flexible throughout the process. To begin your packaging design process, have a chat with our Manchester-based team today.
1.
Scope
The first step is always scoping out your project to see if it’s achievable. We can then provide you with a project estimate and timeframes, so you can see how we aim to create your perfect project.
2.
Research
It’s important for our designers to understand your industry and competitors; this allows us to see what has and hasn’t been done before so we can challenge the norm!
3.
Design & Develop
Once brand research is complete and confirmed with you. It’s time to get creative! Our design team will start developing your project, we will send over proposals, allowing you and your team to offer feedback and amendments so we’re all on the same page.
4.
Refine
Once you’ve found the design you like, it’s time to refine it based on any amendments you send through. Let’s make sure the final piece is perfect!
5.
Print, Deliver & Grow
Once everything is complete, it’s time to send you everything you need or liaise with our printers partners to get everything printed for you. At this point, we’ll send over some more ideas to help promote your business going forward.
Packaging Frequently Asked Questions
If my product sits on the shelf with larger brands how do I make it stand out?
Well, that’s our job! And we wouldn’t be happy if it didn’t! We take the utmost pride in our design work, with graphics, web design and packaging design being our absolute specialities. The best thing a business owner can do is have a clear vision of what they want to achieve and to be ready to collaborate with our design team. Give us a call, and we will make your packaging design perfect.
Do I need a website and a logo for you to start work?
Luckily for you these are both things that we can help with! We take on all business-related design work including web design, logo design and branding. It’s always great to have a brilliant logo, but if you’re happy with the one you have that works for us too as we can build your product packing around your existing brand identity.
When it comes to a website, that’s entirely up to you, we would advise it as we see the sales that come from a website as absolutely essential, but you may want your packaging to stand out in a supermarket, that’s great too.
Can you print the package once it’s designed?
Printing is not something we do in-house; however, we do have excellent relationships with many local printers and can handle the print management for you, or we will always point you in the right direction. After all, we wouldn’t want to make your packaging design perfect for it to be printed shoddily, so we only recommend other companies in which we have total faith.
Specialist products will require more skilled companies; for example, if we design your packaging and it includes a glass bottle, we will point you in the direction of the right craftspeople needed for the job. We will never leave you without a way of moving forward as we want to see you succeed as much as you do, and we want to see that brilliant product looking fantastic in its packaging on the shelves near us.
Can you help with other marketing materials, so they align with our packaging?
Of course, it would be a pleasure! Once your packaging design is finished, that’s just the start of another job! We can help with everything from flyers to promotional giveaway products, and we love the challenge. If you decide suddenly that you want a 3D printed toy to accompany your product that matches with the packaging design, we can’t wait to get started.