Process
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6 min read
Why your packaging brief should start at the shelf
Before a single sketch, walk the aisle where your product will sit. It changes every decision after it.
Most packaging briefs start with the brand: its values, its tone, its audience. That is useful, but it skips the place where the decision to buy actually happens.
Stand where your customer stands
On every project I spend an hour in two or three shops photographing the shelf. Not the hero products, the whole shelf. You quickly see which colours are already taken, which formats dominate and where the gaps are.
What to bring back
Ten photos, a list of the three brands that own the shelf, and one honest sentence about where you could stand apart. That sentence becomes the first line of the brief.
Written by Ines Halden
Brand and packaging designer, Lisbon