Packaging – graphic design
Packaging that is meaningful and identifies the food product and the brand started with the mechanisation of printing and paper production in the 19th century. Over the decades, graphic design has become more and more complex. The shape, colours and typography act as a code in its own right which alerts, attracts and communicates with the consumer: A product for the luxury market will not have the same design as one for more modest budgets.
© Getty Images / Robert Alexander - Exhibition of Andy Warhol’s painting of tins of Campbell’s soup, 1962, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015
Débuts de l’emballage comme signe
The invention of the paper machine and the mechanisation of lithographic printing changed the face of food packaging in the 19th century. In Victorian England, packaging began to feature colours, and the visuals, which had previously imitated the graphics reserved for the upper classes, tried to appeal to the young working class. New typographies stood out from the letterings of the printed book and became more imaginative. Packaging gradually became an advertising medium. Printers offered manufacturers of packaging various catalogues of illustration templates. These templates were pre-printed on various materials, such as tinplate sheets, with a gap where the names of the product and the producer would be added, thus simplifying the manufacturing process. Despite technical advances, standard forms of packaging still dominate the market today as they are compact, inexpensive and quick to produce. However, special care is taken over the images and texts displayed, which convey the meaning and identity of the product using visual grammar drawing on collective imagination and where nothing is left to chance. Modern packaging as a sign in its own right came into being with semiology – the science of signs – at the dawn of the 20th century.
Shape, colour, material, typography
The graphic design of an item of packaging is a complex assembly process that requires great skill. The choices of shape, colour palette, typography and material are combined signs that make packaging visible and intelligible in the eyes of the consumer. The shape and colour, visible from a distance, alert consumers and attract their attention. The lettering and choice of font help create the identity, the packaging and the brand: Coca-Cola is a radical example where the product and the corporate brand are one and the same thing. Together, they form a code that creates expectations in the consumer’s mind. Black and gold packaging, with understated typography, suggests a noble material and thus will frequently be used for luxury products. These goods are often adorned with other elements whose main role is to make the product stand out, while contributing nothing at all to the function of preserving the contents. Satin ribbons on boxes of chocolate provide a good example. As the art world reclaimed packaging graphics to give them resonance beyond their commercial meaning (e.g. Andy Warhol and his Campbell’s Soup Cans in 1962), so the world of industry turned to the art world to commission unusual graphics, published in limited editions for products that have now become iconic. Perrier, for example, adorned its bottles with Street Art designs in 2014.
Standards and deviations
The internationalisation of brands means that they generally use the same packaging all over the world. Yet food and symbolic codes differ from one culture to another, requiring brands to think ‘glocal’ (global and local) to remain globally recognisable while fitting in with local eating habits. On the other hand, beyond the choice of colours and typographies, some producers break from the traditional codes of standard packaging by opting for unexpected, distinct packaging as a means for updating product image, even if the contents remain unchanged, or to launch a new product on a saturated market. La Goutte d’Evian and Ice Pulp sorbets in tubes are good examples of this.
MoMA, 2015. Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962 [en ligne]. http://www.moma.org, consulté le 29.10.2015.
NESTLE, 2014. Lancement de l'édition limitée PERRIER 'Inspired by Street Art", 19.09.2014 [en ligne].
https://www.nestle-waters.fr, consulté le 29.10.2015.
EVIAN, 2014. La Goutte d'evian : un design unique, le format d'un verre ! [en ligne]. http://www.evian.fr, consulté le 29.10.2015.
ICE-PULP, 2015. [site internet de la marque, en ligne]. http://www.ice-pulp.com, 29.10.2015.
DAVIS, Alec, 1967. Package and Print. The Development of Container and Label Design. Londres : Faber & Faber.
URVOY, Jean-Jacques, SANCHEZ-POUSSINEAU, Sophie, LE NAN, Erwan, 2006. Packaging : toutes les étapes du concept au consommateur, Paris : Eyrolles.
