What are the best practices for creating food packaging that communicates your brand's values?

In my experience, packaging companies that are very familiar and updated with food safety and environmental requirements. Food packaging manufacturers that are rebranding the image of food packaging to be environmentally friendly but still preserving the integrity of the packed product. These companies will be best suited to advise on materials that can be used.

One very important thing to remember when aligning brand values with packaging materials for food is to make sure you are considering the shelf life of your product. For instance, some recyclable films don’t have good barrier properties causing your product quality to degrade faster. You might be negating the benefits of recyclability with more food waste.

You should be very careful in choosing your suppliers too. EU rules are very strict, but other countries like the USA, Korea, China, and Japan have different detailed rules about packaging. You do not want to be cheap and then discover that a specific polymer of your plastic film is not allowed in your country, your coating is banned, or the wonderful biodegradable cup for your new product has substances migrating to food or is not bio-degradable according to local technical rules like EN 13432

choosing your packaging material can tell a lot about the company and its belief systems or brand image. Graphics and design are more of a marketing aspect.

Graphics are catchy and important for consumers, but please be aware that they should not be in any way misleading. For instance, in the past, I saw labels depicting national monuments of a certain country known worldwide. This can be interpreted as the country of origin of the product, and if it is manufactured in another country that's a problem. And it does not matter if the picture is symbolic, is a piece of art, or it is covered by copyright because it comes from an artist. If it's misleading, it's misleading. No exemptions by the law. The same goes for the representation of health benefits (e.g. image of a heart). And do not forget that in several countries you might face specific limitations in the aggressive marketing to children!

Pack copy check is one of the most daunting regulatory tasks, especially on complex multi-language packages. The error is always waiting you behind the corner and having the knowledge to cover all countries' regulations and languages is not common even for bigger corporations. Many of our clients overcrowd packages in an attempt to save on labeling costs, forgetting that sometimes a product completely covered in printings will discourage the consumers from reading anything. Regulatory compliance comes forts, followed by clarity. To be effective in your messages you have to prioritize. To prioritize you have to know your customers and deliver the most effective message.

In countries like the EU, where allergens should be emphasized in a different typeset, a printed test to ensure the legibility of mandatory particulars is granted should be a must. Too much labels have been wasted for trusting the legibility of a PDF file on a screen.