Packaging Design: Successful Product Branding From Concept to Shelf, 2nd Edition

Imagery

When used appropriately, imagery can create visual excitement, memorable experiences, and recognizable touchpoints. Fashionable, chic, stylish, inspirational, personable, or unexpected, imagery can capture consumer interest. Consumers look at pictures before they read text.

EFFECTIVE USES OF IMAGERY

Illustrations, photographs, icons, symbols, and characters can be executed in a multitude of styles that each create a rich visual language and provide visual stimuli. Simple imagery enables the viewer to recognize a concept quickly; complex or subliminal imagery requires more than a moment or two for its meaning to be fully taken in. Consider the varying sensory experiences that different visuals communicate: flavor, scent, taste, temperature (including the sensation of a spicy food). All can be conveyed visually in packaging design.

Illustration and photography can be used to communicate the product “hero.” The hero on a packaging design can become the distinctive feature of the PDP, be the focal point in the hierarchy of design elements, and personify the brand.

Imagery should always communicate the brand personality and product attributes directly and appropriately. The communication of appetite appeal (on food packaging), the connotation of lifestyle, the suggestion of mood, and instruction about product use are all ways imagery shapes a packaging design's personality.

A creative marketing brief (a document that descriptively explains the company's expectations regarding ...