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Beautiful and Expressive Packaging Design
June 2nd, 2008 in Inspiration | 137 Comments
Packaging design has the primary goal to attract customers’ attention. For this purpose, package designs can not simply inform the customers, but also provoke feelings and communicate emotions. An effective packaging looks attractive, impresses with its creativity and is just nice to have on the shelf.
As an ongoing part of our monday inspiration series today we present excellent examples of beautiful, attractive and communicative packaging design. We have also tried to present creative and unusual ideas which you could use for your projects. Below the gallery you will also find some further references to blogs and resources related to packaging design.
You may want to take a look at our related posts
- Beautiful and Original Product Designs
- Celebration of Vintage and Retro Design
- Innovative Designs and Devices
Packaging Design
Atypyk!
Atypyk is an artistic group of French creative minds. Their products are smart yet ironic, and their ideas are packed into good packaging examples. The second picture is the packaging of a 6pack-vase (cans not included).
Pot Of
biz-R has recently completed a naming, brand direction and packaging project for Clive’s new ‘Potof’ range of fresh organic meals. a really bold, highly graphic, identity based on symbology,pattern and colour associated with each recipe’s origin. The eye-catching result communicates beautifully, on and off the shelf.
100% Chocolate Cafe
The concept behind Tokyo’s 100% Chocolate Cafe is to put your senses in the middle of a chocolate kitchen. They live up to their name with over 56 types of different chocolates, cheese and black pepper chocolates. They also serve chocolate drinks, chocolate pastries, chocolate ice cream, and even chocolate sandwiches. Colorful and clean packaging.
R Design Studio
Sexy, striking, catchy and beautiful — package design by R Design Studio from London. The choice of colors is remarkable.
Tasty Type
Izze Beverage Co®. doesn’t boast their nonprofit mission on their label, but the design’s simplicity hints that they are a different kind of company. Izze’s sales grew 450% per year over the first two years without any TV, print, or online advertising. Surely their success is due in part to the bottle — clearly branded with Trade Gothic™ caps and a clever use of a Caslon™ asterisk, emulating a cross-section of the fruit contained therein.
Best Wishes Bag
This package is literally over 20 years old. The design is still amazing.
Beer Bank
Stylish, traditional packaging by designlab Fuerzza.
Tiger-Tiger Ice Cream
Flavor sounds like something from one of Miss Retro Modern’s or Charm & Poise’s challenged recipe cards!
cd&c self-promotion > wine label & packaging
Wine label and packaging. The colors of dots on the wine bottle are chosen very carefully: notice how well they fit to the branding logo on the bottle.
Espa Packaging
Packaging design for a range of advanced skin care products for one of spas. Strong, vibrant gradient in use.
Arcadia Organic Tea
This packaging was hand made and assembled by me for a package design class as part of my BFA. The pattern was lacquer transfered to green paper. They come in a package of four so placed back-to-back all the little pyramids would nest together to make a larger pyramid.
Graphis Packaging
Retro packaging with dominant geometric forms. Nowadays the design looks impressive and vibrant
Scone Mix Package
Orange Cranberry Scone Mix designed by Montia. Simple yet attractive. Notice how well the package uses only three colors.
Porto Novo Caffee Package
Designed by Fizi Pao. Beautiful and elegant packaging.
Cocoa Bar
Some pretty bar wrappers from Cocoa Bar, NYC.
Askul Garbage Bag
Even although a package bag isn’t really something one would give a special attention to, some interesting solutions are possible. The design below makes use of colorful typography.
Cadbury Milk & White Chocolates
Cadbury Packaging Designs for ‘Gourmet Chocolates’. Designed by Daniel Elliott. Simple but sweet and attractive.
Sferra 1891
Packaging for Sferra’s recently debuted 1891 line. Linens packaging.
Coffee Time: Bag and Cups
Stylish old-times-packaging from S43 Agency for a CoffeeTime brand from Latvia.
Book Packaging
Peter&Wendy love typography and a strong typographic packaging. We love it too!
Typographic Packaging
Another example with typography in use. Sometimes all you need is just a title of what is inside the package.
Steampunk Packaging
According to designer, the task for this design was to pick a subculture and design a series of pictograms/logos & etc for it, and then apply said logo(s) to a package for a set of information cards about that subculture. Designed by Rovina Cai from Australia.
Brad Surcey (site is currently offline)
Strong colors and beautiful compositions. Notice how well the title of the product is emphasized, it strongly and clearly communicates what is inside without revealing too much unnecessary information.
Warming Little
Designed by Thirdperson, comprising a range of special winter soups with promotional heat resistant cardboard sleeves that slotted onto the existing cups. They’ve scooped a few awards, including Design Week 2008.
Ferrarelle
Clean minimalism at its best. Excellent packaging of a mineral water bottle.
Typography
Nothing can beat the old school typography.
Remarkable Pencils
Apparently, the 10 pencils packaged into this box are 100% remarkable. Well, at least they have a remarkable packaging.
Askinosie Chocolate
When it comes to the design of chocolate packaging, there are a number of options available. For instance, you can provide the package with some further information about the chocolate and give it a more traditional, historic and authentic look.
WH Smith
“Our brief was to create a compelling and inspirational solution. Because of copyright issues regarding artist’s work was a problem, our solution was to take inspiration from the though process behind how one paints and draws and to convey famous artists thoughts by choosing relevant quotes that captured the spirit of the product. We achieved this by commissioning different illustrators to recreate these quotes with the relevant use of materials.” Designed by R Design.
Askul
Original geometric forms can also be used for product packaging. And they are attractive, too!
Visualization of CI
Clean and slick design by Martin Zampach.
Food Packaging
Nice old times strike back. Louise Fili with a traditional, old-times food packaging.
Before Grain Dog & Cat Food
Well, it is the packaging for dog and cat food, but it just look good. Notice how interesting the typography is used — the letters are building a pyramid.
Vintage Packaging
This design is more than 20 years, but it still looks very impressive. Beautiful color scheme for a vintage t-shirt packaging.
Fuelosophy
Fruit drinks designed by Templin Brink Design combine beautiful illustration and an interesting form of the bottle.
Banana Juice
Well, that’s an original design. Banana juice package in form of a banana! Designed by Naoto Fukasawa.
Infuzions
Creative packaging by Parker Williams Design.
Equal Exchange
Designed by Good Digital Agency.
Typographic Packaging
Here the typography is pretty loud.
Tea packaging
Experimenting with typography.
Beck 8-Bit
One more time experimental packaging.
Fruits Packaging
Original packaging which may surprise and attract customer’s attention.
Afro Coffee Packaging
Afro by Dalla Cia: a Wine Box radio. Who thought that a radio on a wine label could actually work…
Chocolate Scrabble
Unfortunately, this item is no longer available.
Coke Vintage Packaging
Old times, old times. We really miss packaging like this.
Japanese packaging
Really original design.
Last Click
Package design for Turkish Delight
Sometimes packages can really communicate emotions. The intention of the design below was to attract children and provide sustainability instead of throwing it away after consuming this product. For this reason the package can turn into a paper toy. The children can put together the body which is inside the package, and the face.
Pio Pio Cheep Cheep
A sweet paper toy one more time.
Milk Boxes in Love
Yeeeah! He found her! Or she found him! In any case, these milk boxes are now together. When buying a next milk package make sure to buy two — for Mr. Milky and his lady. Milky has a sad history. It is nice to know that everything is fine now.
Sources and Resources
- Dzine - Packaging Design
- Packaging Design Inspiration
- Vintage Package Design
- Creative Packaging Inspiration
- Package Design Patterns
A series of professional observations about package design practices within specific product categories. - Off The Shelf
A Japanese packaging design scrapbook. Collected by James Bowskill. - Japanese Packaging Design on Pingmag
David (June 2nd, 2008, 1:27 am)
Some excellent designs here, especially love the simplicity and style of the Chocolate Cafe products.
Gabriel Sirbu (June 2nd, 2008, 1:31 am)
Beautiful! I like the pencils the most!
Cosmi (June 2nd, 2008, 1:31 am)
Wonderful! I love Pot Of and 100% Chocolate Cafe design.
Thanks Smashing Magazine ;)
Stuff (June 2nd, 2008, 1:33 am)
Beautiful. Some lovely retro designs. Great use of fonts throughout.
erre (June 2nd, 2008, 1:37 am)
i love the milk boxes, they are so cute….
Greg P (June 2nd, 2008, 1:40 am)
Heh, you guys love that Coffee & TV video!
I wanna eat that Before Grain Dog & Cat Food based on the packaging..
Two Socks (June 2nd, 2008, 1:57 am)
This is a fantastic post. Always love seeing whats new on the market so to speak A+ :P
Pixelsnobbery (June 2nd, 2008, 2:07 am)
The Milk Cartons remind me of the ones from the Blur Video - Coffee and TV. May even be the same ones…
Link [www.pixelsnobbery.com]
Pixelsnobbery (June 2nd, 2008, 2:09 am)
^ Duh! Posted before I read the whole post! It IS the ones from the coffee and Tv video! haha
Komil (June 2nd, 2008, 2:15 am)
very beautiful
Florent V. (June 2nd, 2008, 2:17 am)
Great collection. I love the Selfridges tea boxes. Hmm… want some tea right now.
The Chocolate Cafe packaging is great. Too bad they mispelled the name of #1. It should be “Côte d’Ivoire”, not “Cote D’Ivoire”. ;)
Toni (June 2nd, 2008, 2:19 am)
Very beautiful!!
Some More Packaging design inspiration - part II From DzineBlog.com
Link [dzineblog.com]
Pepa (June 2nd, 2008, 2:36 am)
thank you, amazing! ‘chocolate cafe’ and ‘r design studio’ are wonderful. how about setting-up some poll?
seit (June 2nd, 2008, 2:47 am)
About Chelsea Candy.
The package is actually over 30 years old (to be exact, they started selling it in 1971, so 37 years old).
source: Link [www.meiji.co.jp]
krayzibonz (June 2nd, 2008, 2:49 am)
woowww this is veryy cool post !!!
rahman (June 2nd, 2008, 3:04 am)
really beautiful………i like the theme of Visualization of CI…..
MyW (June 2nd, 2008, 3:26 am)
Nice !
Should take a look at the packaging of these products : Link [www.gupuds.com]
Buyed one juste because of their look :o !
Niki Brown (June 2nd, 2008, 3:36 am)
good post, but looks like you guys just went to thedieline.com and stole everything they posted about…
Mr E. (June 2nd, 2008, 3:43 am)
Now this is a great post!
Michelle (June 2nd, 2008, 4:02 am)
This was a breath of fresh air! I loved this post and am feeling thoroughly inspired again. Whether you got the info from thedieline.com or not, thank you - because i would never have seen it if you didn’t post it here.
Luiz Gustavo F. Zanotello (June 2nd, 2008, 4:11 am)
Very nice.! xD
jaxter (June 2nd, 2008, 5:03 am)
Latvian Coffe time is nice…
Axel (June 2nd, 2008, 5:31 am)
I love how some typographic packages look like old Penguin Book’s covers
Christine (June 2nd, 2008, 5:49 am)
Love it! Very inspiring and great color combinations. Thanx
gbeldam (June 2nd, 2008, 5:50 am)
“Vintage Packaging
This design is more than 20 years, but it still looks very impressive. Beautiful color scheme for a vintage t-shirt packaging.”
It’s a Kix cereal box with an offer for a vintage t-shirt, not t-shirt packaging as you stated. This also isn’t 20 years old, it’s a vintage version put out by General Mills for Target.
buf (June 2nd, 2008, 6:25 am)
I hope these designers are considering recycled solutions and restricting the amount of landfill that they might add too.
Pease.
Raj from BlogHash.com (June 2nd, 2008, 6:26 am)
Wonderful! Amazing! Very very impressive work. Thanks for this post.
Quakeulf (June 2nd, 2008, 6:32 am)
This was simply orgasmic! =3
Jonas (June 2nd, 2008, 7:28 am)
Beautiful! Does anyone know the font used on the Chocolate Cafe-packaging?
Mike.SA (June 2nd, 2008, 7:47 am)
Nice to see Graphic design is still healthy…awesome and inspiring.
benrulz (June 2nd, 2008, 8:26 am)
reely creative stuff …. great job guys….
keep ‘em coming..!!
Chad Burt (June 2nd, 2008, 8:40 am)
Some of these are really nice, like the banana juice. Some of them completely miss the mark though. Psychedelic colors and patterns work well for things like candy, but there are some mundane products here that I want to easily recognize on a store shelf. Some of these things just want to visually assault you.
Ben koshkin (June 2nd, 2008, 10:41 am)
If you scroll quickly, they all look very similar.
Link [www.benkoshkin.info]
Why do food companies want their food to look like museum pieces. They are more concerned with “looking cool” than “looking tasty”
Alot of these look like they are done in some soviet era government bureau.
The producers of these foods should have not been so gullible.
Koodoz (June 2nd, 2008, 2:24 pm)
Love the Banana Juice packaging. It’s soooo Japanese! I can’t help but wonder, what it would taste like and what its consistency would be ( thick like a smoothy/nectar or liquidy like orange/apple juice)
Sketchee (June 2nd, 2008, 3:14 pm)
The Tiger Tiger’s Tiger looks a lot like the old school Tony the Tiger! So cute
Jason (June 2nd, 2008, 6:35 pm)
Wow the Kix Cereal box looks awesome - looks old but still awesome.
Clancy (June 2nd, 2008, 6:47 pm)
Wow, helvetica on a solid background!
It takes a special kind of genius to come up with something as innovative as that.
PiLoT (June 2nd, 2008, 10:28 pm)
Hi guys,
Anobody know the font name of “Chocolate Scrable”?
Nisreen (June 2nd, 2008, 10:35 pm)
Really creative, I wish I can be this creative in webdesign!
Yuefei (June 2nd, 2008, 10:49 pm)
Beautifu!Thanks for this post.
I love it.
iqranegara (June 2nd, 2008, 11:45 pm)
very very creative people
Jenny (June 3rd, 2008, 12:09 am)
If someone happens to know what typefaces were used in those typographic designs, could you tell me please? (even better if you have/know where to get the typefaces too)
Specifically for these designs:
Pot Of
100% Chocolate Cafe
R Design Studio
Sferra 1891
Typographic Packaging
Billifer (June 3rd, 2008, 12:24 am)
I love your tea pyramids, as well as the banana juice containers! Each is innovative and original, but in a completely different way from the other: One more classical, the other more subtle. These are some great examples. Thanks for gathering these! I’m feeling inspired.
TheMadnessAxis (June 3rd, 2008, 2:03 am)
the 100% Chocolate Cafe is awesome!
HCL (June 3rd, 2008, 2:41 am)
what a pity, this website is not very good describing the concept, which its neat: colour-coded vine in a box (and its german-only..)
Link [www.hauswein.de]
vivian (June 3rd, 2008, 5:53 am)
Good !!! Bravo~ Love all the design…. The banana juice looks so real.
sandrukii (June 3rd, 2008, 9:45 am)
really amazing….!!!! yeah.. I like it!!
Guy (June 3rd, 2008, 10:40 am)
How To Impress Smashing Magazine In 3 Easy Steps.
1. Design a package, mostly black with clean lines and splashes of bright color in flowery shapes.
2. Use LOTS of Helvetica.
3. Done.
Steve (June 3rd, 2008, 2:00 pm)
what I wouldn’t give to go to a store with nothing but helvetica in it. Just once! :)
michael Magnotta (June 3rd, 2008, 5:32 pm)
Beautiful packaging design is half the battle, the other half obviously being the product itself…those interested should also view the gorgeous box available for soleri wind chimes.
fmash (June 3rd, 2008, 10:16 pm)
Looking at all those pretty packages I’m gettin’ a feelin’, that people ain’t no bad… (c:
GoozaKooza (June 3rd, 2008, 10:56 pm)
Long time reader, first time poster.
This is your best post yet. Loved all the designs. The Milk carton couple is the best.
Michelle (June 4th, 2008, 6:22 am)
This was also my first post and I have been reading for about a year. This post was just so inspirational! And I agree with you Steven on “what I wouldn’t give to go to a store with nothing but helvetica in it. Just once! :)” - if only!
Unplugged (June 4th, 2008, 9:56 am)
Amazing Art!
OverZero.it (June 4th, 2008, 11:50 pm)
Love all of them.
Noah (June 5th, 2008, 6:54 am)
Beautiful, yes, but with many of these designs I just see a lot of waste that will need to be recycled (hopefully).
Jason (June 10th, 2008, 9:17 pm)
mmmm pot of cardboard & fonts. Marketing always tastes better!
…but overall the packaging (waste) selected for the article wasn’t horribly excessive. (well except for the sponge, the pyramid marketing tea, the cardboard pasta, the WTF Caffee, and the SteamPunk Subculture Identity thieves, the single bottle wine crate…. and that &@*%^ cheese sponge again. )
The designers… society made them… who in turn package society in their image and sell it back. 100% Recycled. Brilliant! (yum! burp! yum! burp!)
Rhy (June 12th, 2008, 4:05 am)
Half of that post was taken from the dieline and there is no link back to them. Pretty rude.
gabel (June 16th, 2008, 5:27 am)
the “pot of” font looks like Vega SH-Medium and another font (forgotten the name), both are commercial ones, but available via google
danny giang (June 17th, 2008, 11:46 pm)
My favorite would be t he banana drink. Amazing what a little shading and color can do!
Ananya Roy (June 20th, 2008, 3:04 am)
too good!!!
Redrogue (June 24th, 2008, 1:56 am)
The arcadia packaging looks great in that tea as well as the steampunk. Yes, people are also convinced by how products are packaged, making them ogle with curiosity and eventually by those cool packaged stuffs.
LMG (June 27th, 2008, 5:13 am)
Excelent selection of design, i love what i saw, it open my mind to think different.
ilich (July 1st, 2008, 9:24 pm)
the banana package its simple awesome
Nushra (July 7th, 2008, 4:23 am)
wwwwwwwwwwwwwwoooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!
really smashing
nice
like it a lot
u r the best
Chris Kostyshyn (July 23rd, 2008, 11:40 pm)
I love the kix one. but you may want to correct it
Kix isn’t a t shirt company, it makes cereal. I thought that was more apparent than it must be
D (July 26th, 2008, 8:35 pm)
some of them are very well~
Thx For Uploading
Ali raza (August 3rd, 2008, 4:45 am)
all is fit….
very good…..
zabrdast…..
jimba (August 4th, 2008, 4:11 am)
Waaaaauuuuu!
It’s really nice post…
I like “100% Chocolate Cafe” most…
Darshan (August 5th, 2008, 2:04 am)
Really Good Design of Packaging. Very sobber and eye catching.
prathap.R (August 9th, 2008, 1:36 am)
wow ..woww…dreaming colors…..good compositions.
Peter Kazlauskas (August 12th, 2008, 6:33 pm)
I need to have a small test strip packaged in a see through,water proof,packet that can be attached to a product. Something like an individually wrapped tooth pick.
Is your company able to take on a project like this.
Please let me know.
Thank you
Peter
Francis (August 22nd, 2008, 7:10 pm)
The banana juice is very nice…
Simon (September 10th, 2008, 12:58 pm)
Where can you get that Tiger Tiger ice cream? It looks amazing!
jin (September 18th, 2008, 10:23 pm)
ie8 文字连继,自动换行,有什么方法解决!??????????
man (September 20th, 2008, 12:53 am)
Great designs. Banana juice package is great ! Fuleosofy too… My compliments to all designers…
Jo (September 23rd, 2008, 1:17 pm)
bloody awesome, congratulations to all these excellent artists! they are a true inspiration!
Earnest (September 24th, 2008, 7:34 am)
I’m bananas for some juice!
Alloo (September 30th, 2008, 1:02 am)
The Bananas juice is very very nice design!!!!
Good Design!
Margaret (October 17th, 2008, 10:50 pm)
Perfume bottles have interesting designs too =)
Ana (October 19th, 2008, 11:45 pm)
Sponge is…..TOP OF THE TOPS!
And wine with pasta is beautiful! But to be honest, everything is amazing!
Rachel (October 24th, 2008, 6:07 pm)
Wow! These are gorgeous! Thank you for posting. I just had a guest graphic designer write a post on my blog. She wrote about the Link [www.allgraphicdesign.com] and I thought that your subscribers might be interested in learning about the process.
Thanks again.
Rachel
the con artist (October 28th, 2008, 4:38 am)
You guys are LOOOOOOOSSSSSSSEEEEERRRRRSSSSS!!!!!
jynxfm (October 28th, 2008, 4:46 am)
i agree with con artist
Brad Pitt (October 28th, 2008, 4:48 am)
this packaging is fabulous! you guys are amazing!
Aguirremateus (November 21st, 2008, 6:58 pm)
Beautiful packaging design and very creative!