By
Sarah Harris
Cosmetics is an industry focused on appearance. Accordingly, cosmetic packaging needs to be as attractive as the cosmetics claim they’ll make the customer.
Cosmetic boxes also need to reflect the personality of the intended user. If the customer is going for a pale, goth look, for example, the package shouldn’t be emblazoned with glittery flowers and unicorns. If you want products that speak to your target demographic, you need custom cosmetic packaging.
What Is Customized Cosmetic Packaging?
As opposed to using stock, one-size-fits-all designs, custom cosmetic packaging gives you a bespoke option tailored to your products’ and customers’ needs. You can determine what graphics and colors the packaging will use and even opt for unusual shapes and sizes.
Why Use Custom Cosmetic Packaging?
Customers care about the appearance of their purchases, not just their effectiveness. Your brand has to grab attention and hold it, whether on a store shelf, on an online retailer’s webpage, or in social media feeds. Cosmetics is a competitive industry, and beauty packaging needs to capture attention.
How to Customize Your Beauty Packaging
Cosmetic boxes are your brand’s canvas. The path to a solid brand identity is marked by some essential steps.
Step 1: Define Your Brand Personality
Know your brand and what it stands for. You’re creating more than skincare packaging. You’re also putting together the mental image that customers will carry with them when they think about your brand. Are you environmentally focused? Upscale and luxurious? Punk rock? Know yourself before you can know your customers!
Step 2: Find Your Ideal Customer
Every company needs to know its ideal customer profile (ICP). Young, old, male, female, likes, interests, occupation… The list of details goes on and on. But as with any business looking to grab a slice of the market, look for underserved pockets of the customer base you want to sell to.
Step 3: Keep in Mind Where Your Products Are Being Sold
While online retailers may offer you more freedom when you’re designing cosmetic boxes, physical retailers may be more stringent. These stores have a brand all their own, and the skincare packaging on their shelves needs to have a consistent look, too.
These retailers will also have size and shape restrictions that custom cosmetic packaging intended for your online store won’t have to meet.
Step 4: Do Creative Research
Your beauty packaging will have to walk a fine line. You’ll want to see what your competitors are doing, keep up with current trends in cosmetic packaging, and communicate your brand by understanding how colors and fonts affect customer behavior.
You’ll also have to look for how you can differentiate your cosmetic packaging so it doesn’t just blend in with the competition and get lost in a sea of similar products!
Step 5: Set Your Brand Design Standards
Once you’re in touch with your brand, that brand needs to be consistent across your products. Customers need to feel like all of your products are coming from the same company, and if your branding is too muddled or disjointed, it’s going to hurt sales.
Style
What’s your style? If you market elegant, upscale products, you may want tall, slender containers with premium materials like glass and metal. Your cosmetic packaging needs to align with your personality and mood.
Colors
Colors affect behavior. Red stimulates hunger, which is why it’s used in fast food branding. Blue is calming, which is why hospitals use it. Your custom cosmetic packaging will need to take color into account, too.
Are you selling bold, stylish cosmetics to a younger, edgier demographic? Yellows and oranges may be for you. Environmentally conscious? Greens and browns are your palette.
Fonts
Fonts are an often overlooked aspect of design but one of the most important. The fonts you choose can evoke an art deco feel, vintage sci-fi kitsch, spare and modern elegance, or frenetic energy.
Width, height, use or non-use of serifs, use of capital vs lowercase letters, and amount of italicization are but a few of the many considerations when choosing fonts for your skincare packaging.
Step 6: Gather Product Packaging Specifics
You will need to satisfy FDA regulations regarding what to include on your cosmetic packaging, such as ingredients, amounts, contact information, placement of the info on the package, and how large the fonts must be.
In addition, you will want to add details that are optional to the FDA but desired by your customers. This may include information such as cruelty-free, non-GMO, recyclable packaging, or any certifications or awards. However, don’t just apply these labels for the sake of grabbing people’s attention. Make sure the information is honest and accurately reflects the makeup of your product.
Step 7: Choose Your Packaging Type
The type of cosmetic you’re selling will determine much about the packaging. If you’re selling perfume, you will probably want to use a spray bottle. Lotion will come in a jar or squeeze tube. Lipstick will be packaged in, well… Lipstick tubes!
Outer Packaging
Cosmetic boxes play multiple roles, but the most important is that this is the first thing the customer will see. It also has to protect and conceal your inner packaging.
Inner Packaging
This is the part of the packaging that holds your products in place. While the outer packaging is the first line of defense and must look attractive, the inner packaging will cushion and separate the package’s contents.
Product Packaging
This is the container that your product lives in, such as the bottle for your perfume or the tube for your lip gloss. The materials you choose must both protect the cosmetics once they arrive in customers’ homes and fit with your brand. Clear glass may look nice, but it may cause certain products to spoil faster.
Step 8: Choose a Design Focal Point
What is the first thing you want people to notice about your packaging? Is it the model on the package? For instance, eyes that stare back at the consumer is a great way to capture their attention.
Is it your logo? The colors? Brands sometimes use single, bright, bold colors on their cosmetic packaging to make an unmistakable statement, because all of the boxes sit next to each other on a store shelf.
Step 9: Materials and Specialty Printing
Even if your products are being marketed to bulk buyers and customers expecting a cheaper product, your materials still have to withstand the rigors of shipping and keep your products fresh. While you do need to consider color and design, these are secondary to selling safe products.
Still, you can make use of a lot of customization when it comes to making sure your packaging stands out. Unique shapes, colors, and messaging can be compelling without compromising shelf life. Any printer or packager you use should be familiar with what works and what doesn’t and be able to translate your intended design as faithfully as possible.
Step 10: Start Designing
Now that you know what your brand stands for, who your customers are, and what you want to accomplish with your packaging, it’s time to work on a design!
Choosing the Right Design for Your Cosmetic Packaging
While it might be easy to say, “The sky’s the limit!” you will need to keep realistic goals for your design in mind. For example, you can’t make a 55-gallon drum of skin cream and expect retailers to carry it. But as long as your design is physically possible, someone can craft it.
DIY
If you’re familiar with graphic design and know-how to create interesting art, you can tackle the project yourself. You’ll need to be familiar with FDA rules regarding packaging information and size/shape restrictions (see 55-gallon drum example above), but as long as you have all of the parameters, you can create your own custom cosmetic packaging design.
Hire a Designer
If you hire a designer, hire one with experience and an understanding of the needs of the cosmetic industry. If possible, get one with a track record of success in creating attractive custom cosmetic packaging.
If you have no design experience, definitely hire a designer. In fact, hiring out the manufacturing entirely can cut down on a host of production headaches.
Benefits of Customized Beauty Packaging
Giving your cosmetic products a unique, bespoke packaging design allows you to
- Control your branding.
- Tailor your design and the materials you use for your target demographic.
- Have greater access to certain materials:
- Recycled
- Reused
- Unique
- Stand out from competing products.
- Cut costs by reducing excess materials.
It can even help you to boost your sales!
Boost Your Cosmetics Branding with Print Bind Ship
Custom cosmetic packaging gives you control over your brand! You can determine your colors, fonts, package sizes, and materials and grab the attention of your potential customers. But where do you start? With Print Bind Ship!
We create, store, and ship custom cosmetics packaging for customers every day, and we can do it for you, too! Have a design? Need a design? Let’s talk! Contact Print Bind Ship and boost your branding today.
FAQ
The packaging is the first part of your product that customers see. It needs to grab their attention and support your brand.
The best choices are hardy yet flexible plastic for squeeze tubes, glass or rigid plastic for jars, and glass or metal for tubes or spray bottles. The packaging must protect from sunlight, too.