Best Packaging Design Trends Of 2023

Introduction

Packaging is defined as the science, art, and technology of covering products to supplement the processes of distribution, storage, sale, and use. Nowadays, packaging has a broad meaning and can also refer to the secondary processes of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Many businesses have begun considering packages as a means of marketing and promoting their product, which has increased the focus of the package designing department. Many investments have recently been shipped to this particular department to attract customers on the spot. Being very volatile, they tend to mutate with every fiscal year. Let's take a look at the design trends of 2023.

The year 2023 will be marred by several major global crises. Rising inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a looming climate crisis, and an impending trade war between the two largest economies on the planet have led to a mixed bag for every firm. Nonetheless, every firm tried to use a playful combination of colours and designs to make the packages more of an aesthetic tool than merely a protection for the goods inside. The top 10 packaging trends include using Illustrated ingredients in attractive palettes and applying Tactile textures and Wrap-around patterns. Some other upcoming package designing trends with huge potential in the market include Typographic scrawl, Mascot variations that tie products together, Ecstatic colours, Cartoon charm and Product visuals with a creative twist, while Sticker book aesthetic and '70s vintage are also being widely used by certain specific companies aiming for a particular group of customers.

Illustrated Ingredients in Punchy Palettes

This is one of the fourth packaging design ideas of the coming year. With people attaching greater importance to transparency, especially when cosmetics and other body products are concentrated, it's not a shock that decorative packaging with the packed ingredients being illustrated in a bright and fun style is becoming the norm. This packaging design can secure the attention of people who want to know the product's raw materials. It will also help differentiate between the flavour or variation of the particular product. This makes the package design trend visuals focus on cartoonish and youthful foundations as a plot of bringing back childhood memories while infusing the wholesome energy of youthful spirit. The importance is attached to the application of fresh, juicy pops of colours and simplistic art, like doodles, to make the product the apple of the eye of the customers.

Tactile Texture

With the increasing importance associated with packaging design, firms are recognizing the advantages of using a variety of tactile textures. Some of these technologies involve steps like embossing and debossing, which includes the raising or depressing of packages, die-cuts involving creating artistic holes in the packaging body, and foil printing, the implementation of reflective metal on the packaging.

The packaging design ideas equipped with these printing techniques augment the product's perceived value, as they give a fancy and posh look often seen associated with high-end brands.

This packaging design trend began when companies recognized the importance of utilizing the human sense of touch. A package with supreme textures is more appealing.

Wrap-around Patterns

Wrap-around patterns employ eye-pleasing and seamless wide lines to attract customers. This packaging design appeals to human curiosity and encourages people to show more interest in the product. These visual elements are robust and revolutionary, favouring a desire for freedom and going against the packaging rules.

These wrap-around patterns covering every corner of the product invite customers to pick up and focus on the product. This packaging design idea is based on the consistency of patterns and the flexible nature of the design.

Typographic Scrawl

Typography on the packaging is an upcoming packaging design trend that is specifically created keeping the literate functioning human mind in mind. It has become a separate department for many firms preferring specialization and passes through its changing trends and times. The most contemporary style on the rise is handwritten or "scrawled" text. This packaging design trend aims to take the viewers and the market back to the bare bones of packaging and marketing. It provides the looks of a permanent marker that is made to look complete and fulfilling with streaks and uneven colouring patterns. It makes it look like someone took a pen and casually wrote the product's name on the can or box. It gives a rustic and simplistic feel.

The casual and personal do-it-yourself look is a stark contrast to its predecessors, which are infinitely more polished and not-a-hair-out-of-place brand designs. Instead, these packaging design ideas tend to make everything look more authentic and practical while appealing to the light-hearted non-corporate side of people. It became a preferred option for many people who had their lives impacted because of the global chaos.

Mascot Variations That Tie Products Together

The traditional mascot ideas have remained more or less the same undergoing little change with the ravages of time, and continued wearing the same clothes and possessing a consistent and unmoving disposition. This packaging design trend helps to change that old-school idea. The brands are now regularly adding variations to their mascot's original appearance within the range of their product types and flavours. This packaging design includes new clothes, movements, or attitudes to suit the changing times and attitudes.

These mascots undergo subtle variations in their looks, mostly by the inclusion of new outfits or activities to appeal to a wider customer base. The packaging design trend combines playful and quirky touches that are crucial to sacrifice cohesion. It's a simple and exciting way of tying together an entire product line of varying designs while simultaneously appealing to shoppers.

Ecstatic Colours

This is a comparatively old-fashioned packaging design idea that banks on attraction to make sales. It emphasizes the flashier and brighter colours that tend to attract more consumer attention. This relatively simple and straightforward concept is making rounds in 2023, as ecstatic colours have become one of the most upcoming packaging design trends in the business world. Ecstatic colours remove the formal and hardcore complex attitude and are considered smart for making the packaging and product look more conspicuous amidst other competitive products.

These ecstatic colours are extremely bold and highly saturated with bright hues; they attempt to create a confident and fearless impression of any product and company. This style's extremely beneficial and useful feature is the sheer playful attitude and whimsical combinations of these colours. This makes the entire product much more palatable to many customers looking for an interesting alternative to a fast-moving consumer product that is regularly used.

Cartoon Charm

If there is something that takes anybody back to his childhood, it is cartoons! This package designing idea exploits the special charm associated with cartoons. The cute aesthetics and the wacky yet interesting situations that can be drawn on the package give the cartoons a free, funny, and fantasy feeling reminiscent of every childhood. Sticking these cartoons on any packaging helps bring out the old-world charm front and centre and strengthens a brand's personality and customer base. The 2023 packaging design trends using cartoons on packaging helps lean towards a classic and simplistic style considered aesthetically similar to the comics from newspapers. They resemble hand-drawn diagrams and comic situations quickly and with minimum effort, which means minimum investment for companies.

These web-to-print cartoon versions are more simplistic and free contemporaries of their more polished brothers seen in film and on TV. The hand-drawn strokes used in the creation of these cartoons have a natural little wobble to them that helps embrace imperfections in the structure. The packaging design idea lives on the silly and goofy charm of cartoons associated with kids. It may be black and white to give the rustic feel or be fully colourized to look more attractive to the customers.

Product Visuals with a Creative Twist

The use of product visuals has become a staple used in packaging design while giving an idea of the contents of the package itself. But in 2023, the main packaging design trend while utilizing product visuals is based on the implementation of loose features in their presentation using abstract, geometric, and simple shapes.

The main packaging design idea behind the use of these visuals is that the packaging can allude to the contents of the product inside rather than the simple raw placing of the product inside a meaningless box.

Using loose or abstract interpretations of the product is crucial to meet the customers' expectations while emphasizing and focusing on the freedom to express different groundbreaking ideas. The results are revolutionary as a stand-out product design with value augmented by a creative twist.

Sticker Book Aesthetic

Stickers are flashy, beautiful, and extremely aesthetically pleasing to the eye. This packaging design trend of stickers attempts to touch the aesthetic appeals of customers' inner child, especially those nostalgic for the 90s.

These designs utilize bright colours and tend to appear eye-catching by the spacing of certain images, especially that of cute icons or illustrated doodles separate from the others or by their even overlapping to bring out a combined image of the product. This packaging design idea represents a floating composition style that helps to replicate a sticker book, where the stickers are placed randomly and haphazardly. This is important for imparting a carefree and simple image while filling it with the irreverent energy necessary to attract customers.

This packaging design trend also banks heavily on nostalgia, with the stickers reminding of happier and simpler times while also adding fun and providing a small hatch to promote a little escapism from the world's morbid contemporary state of affairs.

70s' Vintage

This packaging design trend is very old and dates back to the '70s, which still hasn't lost its old-world charm. The '70s vintage style is not affected by the ravages of time. It is prone only to a simple hibernation procedure after every few years when the markets become saturated with the same products. This package designing idea is influential from the aftermath of the pandemic with the usage of warm colour schemes, which gives a comforting and wavy imagery of the dreamy '70s. These imageries help sew an understandable comeback in the market across all frontiers ranging from home decor to fashion.

Aesthetically, the '70s vintage style banks its popularity on the use of earthy colour schemes, especially the hues of browns and oranges, bubbly serif fonts, and thick, squiggly patterns. This package designing idea evokes familiarity and groovy individualism in the product.

Conclusion

One major takeaway from the upcoming packaging design trends is that they're a very subtle and suitable response to the difficult times faced by the world and are an apt reflection of the times ahead. The uncertainty and unrest of the past few years have made people respond positively to the familiar styles of packaging designs. Sometimes it's for fostering escapism from troubled times, while in other cases, it is to act as a means of reminiscing about the past. Lastly, the packaging design trends of 2023 also have to be built, keeping in mind that finding hope in the future is one of the most important goals for many across the globe.