Pick up two boxes at the same time, without reading either label. One is glossy cardboard, almost plastic to the touch. The other has a matte surface, visibly textured, with no varnish at all. Neither has said a single word yet. Still, each one has already told you something different about what’s inside. No one explained it to you. Your fingers decided for you. That’s packaging design at work, and the material is doing most of the talking.
That’s the part almost no one discusses in time during a packaging meeting. The material isn’t a production decision to settle at the end, in a rush, once there’s no budget or time left. It’s a message read with the hands, long before the eyes get a chance to read anything.
What is packaging design?
Packaging design is the process of creating everything that surrounds a product. It covers the shape of the container, the material, the graphics and the information printed on it. It also includes the experience of opening it.
A good package does several jobs at once. It protects the product, explains what it is and helps it stand out on the shelf. Above all, it expresses the brand. In practice, packaging design brings together several decisions.
- Structure. The shape, the size and the way the package opens and closes.
- Material. Paper, cardboard, glass, metal or plastic, together with the finish on each surface.
- Graphics. Colour, typography, illustration and photography, all aligned with the brand identity.
- Information. The product name, benefits, instructions and legal details the consumer needs.
How material fits into packaging design
Of all those decisions, material is the one most often left for last. Yet it shapes everything else. It defines how colours print, how the package feels and what it says about the brand’s values. For that reason, a solid packaging design starts from the brand strategy and treats the material as part of the message.
That’s also why packaging works best as part of the wider brand system. In the CureBand packaging for Tecnoquímicas, for example, Disney licences and the product’s own identity had to work together on every pack.
Untreated cardboard is saying something too
Unbleached kraft paper, with its visibly “raw” texture, used to be an almost exclusive code for small artisanal brands. Not anymore. Today even large brands choose it on purpose. That unvarnished finish says something specific, namely that nothing is hidden here. Indeed, more than half of consumers say they’ve consciously chosen a product for looking sustainable in recent months. Material stopped being just a production cost decision. Now it carries the brand’s values with it.
Sustainable isn’t just one word
People use “sustainable” as if it were a single thing. In reality, it’s three different terms competing for the same spot, and mixing them up gets expensive. Biodegradable isn’t compostable, and compostable isn’t recyclable. Even so, all three often end up in the same marketing sentence.
Biodegradable material does break down without leaving harmful residue. The problem is speed. No one guarantees how long it takes, and the ideal conditions rarely exist outside an industrial plant. Compostable material does turn into fertiliser, but only with the exact humidity and temperature. Most cities still don’t have that set up. Recyclable, in turn, depends entirely on having somewhere to recycle it. Glass and aluminium can go round endlessly without losing anything. Paper and plastic, however, wear down a little with every cycle.
Using these terms as synonyms on a label is a fast way into greenwashing, even without meaning to. More and more people notice when an “eco” label has nothing real behind it.
In Colombia, this stopped being just a matter of image. Law 2232 of 2022 requires phasing out single-use plastics. So whether a brand likes it or not, this decision is now also about complying with the law.
Two packages can cost exactly the same to produce. Even so, they can tell the consumer opposite things, simply because of the texture and the material someone chose. Or the material no one chose in time.
What you feel before you read
Touch doesn’t stop at the base material. Think of an embossed detail you notice as you run your finger over it. Or a metallic foil that appears only on the logo and nowhere else. Or a varnish that shifts from glossy to matte exactly where someone wanted the eye to pause. None of that is a production accident. Someone decided all of it on purpose. And the effect builds up. The anticipation of opening something that already feels cared for creates an expectation the product will have to live up to.
That’s why the most expensive mistake is never choosing a cheap material. It’s choosing a material that promises something the rest of the brand doesn’t back up. A luxurious package around a disappointing product doesn’t protect the brand. In fact, it betrays it even faster, because the material set an expectation higher than the reality that followed.
Material supports (or limits) the packaging design
No design exists in a vacuum. Every graphic piece has to land on something physical, and that surface is never neutral, even if we treat it that way. A saturated colour looks spectacular on glossy coated paper. That same colour goes flat on porous kraft paper, which absorbs ink differently. A fine, delicate typeface can disappear on corrugated cardboard with visible texture. On the other hand, that same texture looks perfect on a brand with bold, unadorned strokes.
Material isn’t a passive canvas where the design simply sits on top. It’s more like a partner with its own opinion, one that strengthens some decisions and trips up others. That’s why choosing it can’t be the last step, once the team has closed and signed off the design. Instead, it has to be part of the packaging design from the start. Even the best colour palette won’t help much if no one asked first what surface it would live on.
Before printing anything
No material communicates the same thing to everyone, and none is correct by default. Glass speaks of permanence. Kraft speaks of honesty. Glossy plastic speaks of something more accessible and everyday.
So here’s the question almost no one asks in time, before anything goes into production. If someone touched this package without reading a word, would they feel what the brand wanted them to feel? Does the material say what your brand really wants to say, or just what the last quote offered?
Need this for your company?
At QÜID, we treat packaging design as a strategic brand decision, from structure and material to the final graphics. See how we work in Branding.
