Overview
A part of the package design industry is keeping up with current and upcoming trends for each season. Designing a packaging trend includes research focusing on what colors, patterns, icons, materials, and more are trending for that season. Using this research I create a brand along with a mood board and packaging ideas to represent the trends for the upcoming season.
Trend Process
After researching, I choose a focus point and a selection of colors that will be the most prominent. I then design a mood board to help customers visualize the theme of the trend with the main colors. Naming the trend to correlate to the theme helps visualize it with the brand and it gives the packaging a logo so customers can see where their logo can go and how the packaging can be customized to fit their brand.
Design Process
When designing the trend, I gather some patterns and icons to have a variety of inspiration and ideas. I start with creating dielines and models of what packaging products I’m going to design before designing. This way I can create an assortment of different types of packaging and tailor the packaging to products appropriate to the season. For spring/summer, packaging for products like beach accessories, sunglasses, and hair accessories are popular. I usually try a few different patterns and colors on the different pieces to see what fits best, or to have extra options to choose which design will fit best to complete the collection of pieces. Having a good variety of the color palette and trending patterns/materials is important.
Trend- Retrovana
Retrovana is the name of the trend I created based on my research. This trend focuses on the nostalgia of summer vacation and childhood fun. It emphasizes on the poolside aesthetic of leisure with lawn games and cookout motifs to capture the summertime memories. This trend mainly focuses on the patterns, use of bold colors and unique design elements of die cut shapes to bring the pieces to life, rather than different textures and materials. The palette brings back primary colors with a twist of pink and orange to add a sporty feel.
Take a look at my package designs for this trend, along with photographs of the sampled products to see them come to life!
Below are a variety of my digital renderings that were sampled and photographed!
Sampling Products- Creating Flat Dielines
Once we complete our digital version of the trend, we order samples to have physical versions of some of the pieces for photography and customers to view the product better. This involves creating flat die lines for the products and ensuring the technical design of the product is accurate. For example, when designing a box, I need to create two flat die lines for the base and lid of the box, doing the math to add the top, sides, and inner wrap (bleed) of the paper wrapping the box so it is properly proportioned.
If the box were to hold a jewelry product, I would also create a die line for the insert and add the punches of what product I want it to hold. (necklace, earrings, etc.)
I also need to add notes with my die lines so there is direction on the size of the product, thickness of board it is made out of, materials to use whether it is a specific paper from a vendor or if a Pantone color is printed on paper, if any hot stamp foiling is needed, etc.