“Be bold but print less”

A few weeks back our Design Director Mathias Lundeberg was invited by the Swedish Environmental Institute on the topic Design for Recycling. Packaging design is a daily task at our agency, so we were stoked to be able to share our point of view.

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In his talk Mathias shed light on some of the current challenges when it comes to sustainable packaging design . While trying to minimize the use of materials and the amount of print on pack, the reality is that if your products doesn’t stand out and has the ability to signalize the positive impact it has on the environment it will be hard to convince consumers to buy the products – or even understanding the advantages. Mathias spoke about the emotional aspects of design, grounded in the theory by Daniel Kahneman:

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“ The basis for a brand experience is human decision making and the fact that people are irrational and emotional”.

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The most important point that Mathias made is that since design still has to be emotional to gain attraction – we are currently experiencing a need to reprogram the consumers in terms of codes and clues that help them identify their product on shelf. While there is less space, less colors to choose from, and material choices that might not signal the quality or the taste you want, you still need to be able to differentiate product lines and find new ways to be bold on shelf. To us as designers, this is an interesting challenge, and we are looking forward to try and solve them, and see were this shift will take the industry. As Mathias himself puts it: “Be bold but print less – evoking emotions is still what will win the fight on the shelves in store.”