Today, the average supermarket keeps nearly 44,000 items on its shelves; a large discount store can shelve more than 120,000 items. If you sell your product on the internet or in a retail store, you’re swimming in an ocean with millions of other products. It doesn’t matter how delicious your cookies are, or how unique your software… your consumers must choose your product from among the blur of competition to find out how good it is. How can you guarantee that your product will stand out in the sea of competitive merchandise? Make sure you choose a package designer with substantial experience in package design.

Creative, targeted, and innovative package design can help make your product the success you know it was born to be.  An average package design will very likely result in average sales or worse.  With his considerable 38 year’s experience in all facets of package design, Ted DeCagna provides custom hand lettered typography, a rare skill that will make your product stand out from the crowd. He is also well versed in preparing the complex digital art necessary for package manufacturing, folding, and printing. The first step Ted does with a package design assignment is to make a trip to the supermarket or internet search and see what else is out there

“My goal as a designer and to make my clients product look different from all the competition and as aesthetically pleasing as possible.”  I do this by first creating a package design product logotype with custom hand lettering that is playful, creative and unique.  When you start with a strong product logotype design you can’t go wrong as long as legibility is paramount. I see may young designers trying to create a product logotype that is unique but they make the mistake of going too far and the lettering is sometimes very hard to read. This is a critical mistake because if you can’t read the product name easily and from the distance on a store shelf, they’re not doing their job as a first-rate package designer. “

Secondly Ted uses dynamic color backgrounds when the product calls for it or simple clean white backgrounds framed with beautiful graphics.  One example of this is with a recent award winner for a holistic organic foil tea bag design (above) called Organic Botanicals, Ted used illustrations of beautiful tea leaves framing the very unique hand lettered product logotype to create a clean, contemporary package, foil bag design with classic hand lettered typography which is guaranteed to make your product stand out from the ocean of competition.

For folding carton design there no space for a length description on the front of a carton so Ted recommends pulling out the top 3-6 product benefits and using contemporary looking diamonds (not bullets) to make the major product benefits prominent and easy for the consumer to read in 20 seconds or less, because that’s very likely all the time you have to communicate why your client has the best product in any given industry.  If you have the luxury of a little space on the back of the poli bag, carton or paper bag package design, have the client or better yet a pro copywriter, write a short compelling story that communicates why your client’s product is special.

With a family of products, Ted establishes the best original design then changes the colors for other flavors.  A good example of this package design practice is a poli bag design for Magic Pop ( a major seller in Shop Rite Supermarkets on the East coast) which are fresh popped rice cakes in eight different flavors.  After the original design was approved Ted created a strawberry version using red as an accent, yellow green accent for onion, sepia brown for cinnamon, orange yellow for cheddar cheese.  On the store shelves as group these bags clearly look like a package design family line of products but the different colors and graphic illustration of each flavor help differentiate one flavor from the other quite well.

Package design appeal is critical.  The package design can either make or break product sales. So, if you have a new product you want to be the next major seller any marketing expert will advise you to invest in the best package designer you can find. Whether you need a label for your vintage wine, a poly bag for your organic corn tortillas, a bottle design for your new sports drink, or a high-end box concept for your fine jewelry line, make sure you get the best design possible. Then, sit back and let your product be the star. You will very likely be happy you made the design investment to do it right.