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Typography in packaging is the important step while designing. It reflects your brand identity when placed on a crowded display shelf. The selection of typography can make or break your psychology of packaging design in marketing. You need to choose high contrast fonts with sufficient sizes that can prevent blurriness. To prevent overcrowding, make a balance between lines and word spacing. You can use colour psychology to convey a consistent brand message to your audience.
Typography is as important as visuals, it can grab more customer attention, evoke emotions, and make your brand recognizable. The right font choice for packaging that reflects your brand image can truly connect with your audience and make a big difference. That’s why we have decided to explore the role of typography in custom packaging. And share some essential tips regarding typography for custom box printing to help those people who are stuck. So, let’s go!
Role Of Typography In Custom Packaging
Some people need specific reasons to invest in custom packaging. Typography is one of the main reasons to make your packaging stand out in the market.
- Enhance Brand Recognition: It helps to promote brands and serves as a powerful marketing tool.
- Seek Customer Attention: It helps to enhance the brand identity and grabs customer attention through its appealing look.
- Influence Customer Decisions: By adding unique typography to your custom box can differentiate your brand from others and it will affect their buying choices.
Communicates - Product Information: It is used to display product information, brand name and ingredients of the products.
- Enhance Readability: By using different font sizes, weights and styles you can create a visual hierarchy.
Right Font Style Selection
Choosing the right font style is crucial for typography. Because it has a significant impact on readability and brand personality. You can customize thicker and bolder fonts for better printing on absorbent materials like cardboard to prevent bleeding. Whereas, thinner fonts offer more flexibility on smoother surfaces like plastic.
Here is the table that can help you choose the right font to avoid illegible typography:
| Aspect | Serif | Sans-serif | Script |
|---|---|---|---|
| Description | Fonts with small decorative strokes or “feet” at the end of each letter’s main strokes. | Fonts without any of the small decorative strokes found in serif fonts. “Sans” means “without” in French. | Fonts that mimic cursive handwriting or calligraphy, appearing fluid and connected. |
| Appearance | Classic, traditional, and formal. Serifs can vary greatly in style, from thin and elegant to thick and blocky. | Clean, modern, minimalist, and approachable. Generally has a more uniform stroke weight. | Decorative, artistic, and expressive. Can range from very formal and elegant to casual and playful. |
| Readability | -Highly legible for long passages of text in print media as serifs help guide the eye along the line. -Can appear blurry on low-resolution digital screens at small sizes. | -Excellent for digital media, such as websites, apps, and computer screens, due to its clean lines. -Often preferred for displaying text at a distance, such as on highway signs. | -Generally has poor readability at small sizes or in long blocks of text due to its connected and decorative nature. |
| Ideal Uses | Print: Books, newspapers, and magazines. Branding: For an established or trustworthy brand. | Digital: Website body text, user interfaces, apps. Branding: For a modern, straightforward feel. | Decorative: Logos, headlines, invitations, and certificates. Branding: To convey a personal or creative feel. |
Note: You need to avoid overly complex and unreadable font as customers do not attract to such packaging
Strategic Positioning Of Typography On Custom Printed Boxes
You can use appropriate typeface, sizes, alignment and scale to prioritize readability and make your product appearance more appealing to the targeted audience. It helps to create a balance through symmetry like a brand’s logo is often placed at the center of the packaging box for immediate visibility and then adds slogan or tagline of your company to create a visual hierarchy. While the low placement of typography suggests approachability and the high placement suggests power. For accurate placement of typography on custom packaging you need to consider the following factors:
- Limit Type face: You need to limit the typeface. Use 1 or 2 fonts in your packaging to avoid overdesigning.
- Readable Font: Your font should be legible and visible to customers from different viewing distances.
- Font Alignment: create a balance in font alignment with easy to read arrangement on the left, right or center of your packaging box.
- Font Scale: For paperboard your font size should be at least 6pt and for cardboard at least 10pt.
- Offsets: Add an offset or margin of at least ⅛ inch around text to prevent it from being cut off during the printing process on custom packaging boxes.
- Ascender And Descender: Make sure ascenders (parts of letters that go above the x-height) and descenders (parts that go below the baseline) stay within your print margins so they don’t get cut off.
Use High Contrast And Color Psychology
You can pair font colours with your custom box background colour to pop-up your text on the packaging boxes. You can choose a dark colour font with a light background and a light colour font for a darker background that will enhance the readability and customers can easily visualize the text. You need to consider the trends of custom packaging design while choosing a colour combination.
You can use colour psychology in typography that can influence customer’s buying decisions. You can choose colours that align with your brand, for example blue colour represents calmness whereas red colour represents excitement in buyer’s mind. This can help you to convey your brand’s message to the consumers more efficiently. It also helps in improving customer experience, foster loyalty and leaves a positive impression on them.
Balance Typography With Other Design Elements
To balance typography with logos and other design elements you need to limit your family font that will create a visual hierarchy and prioritize readability. You can use a grid system that can help you arrange the elements in a framework. You have to pay attention to spacing and create a layout that is visually appealing and does not feel cluttered. The balance between packaging typography and other design elements must exist! The overall harmony of the packaging will get lost if you focus too much on textual content (or the other way around).
Pay Attention To Spacing
Embrace White Spaces
Create A Visual Hierarchy
Pay Attention To Spacing
Ensure that the line and word spacing are accurate to avoid overcrowding or awkward gaps. This will make the printed text easier to read on the custom boxes. Here are two main factors that you need to focus on while adjusting space:
- Adjust Kerning And Tracking: Adjust the spacing between the individual letters (kerning) and words (tracking) to avoid awkward gaps and improve readability.
- Use Leading Effectively: Adjust the line spacing to increase the visual flow and prevent the text from feeling too cramped or too spread out.
Embrace White Spaces
White spaces around the text improves the readability and avoid visual cluttering that helps in keeping the key content highlighted. This kind of strategic use of white spaces grabs shoppers attention to important elements like brand logo and labels. It creates a sophisticated appearance of your packaging boxes.
Create A Visual Hierarchy
You can add a variation in font styles, sizes and colour to make important text highlights like the company’s label and it will catch the customer’s eye in a single go.
You need to ensure that the body text should be visible from different distances even when larger other design elements are present on the packaging boxes.
Ensure Consistency Across Branding
You need to use brand specific fonts for your labels on your custom packaging boxes to show a consistency of your brand. A consistent typography label across all packaging can help in building brand recognition and customer’s trust in your brand. Also, ensure that your packaging typography is suitable with other marketing tools you use. That includes social media platforms, websites, and others.
Consider Printing Techniques
To ensure clean and legible typography on custom boxes, you must consider the printing method, font choices, and the specific characteristics of your box’s material.
Printing on cardboard has different limitations than printing on fine paperboard and certain design elements can become blurry or unreadable if not properly planned.
- Thin and delicate fonts don’t work well for embossing techniques.
- Bold fonts greatly work with spot UV and foil stamping techniques.
- Always confirm font suitability with your printing supplier to avoid font stretch in the final print.
Note: You need to print a full-size proof of your box design to check the actual legibility and readability of your text. Do not rely on screen previews only.
Common Mistakes To Avoid During Typography
There are some common mistakes related to font type, space, consistency and contrast that you should consider during typography. It include:
- Using too many fonts creates a cluttered and confusing design that customers will not appreciate.
- Bad contrast with background colours can make your text hard to read for your customers which increases the accessibility issues for those with low vision.
- Ignoring spacing and alignments can lead to a chaotic design that can create legibility and readability issues.
- Using fonts that are trendy but they don’t match with your brand can create a mess.
Examples Of Brands With Amazing Packaging Typography
Some brands have greatly boosted their sales and brand identity with significant typography changes. How they did it may give you an idea of how things should be done in your case. Read more about some of them!
McDonald’s
Burger King
Nuud
McDonald’s
Packaging designers hired at McDonald’s seem to know how to nail it with typography ideas. First of all, all of their packages come with flat illustrations. Each illustration represents a different product. Yet, regarding typography, they haven’t made any bigger changes. Their packages have rounded modern letters, which makes each product eye-pleasing. The well-known logo has stayed on each package.
Burger King
The retro approach that Burger King supports regarding typography and packaging design is amazing! The typography they use now is the same as the one they used during the 60s and 70s. Also, they used different letter sizes for different packages, but their design remained the same.
Nuud
For those who do not know, Nuud is a brand that sells biodegradable chewing gums. Their packaging typography is fantastic. The main focus is on the brand’s name that looks like a smile! Also, a small message, “Chew plants, not plastic,” is located immediately above the logo. That way, they managed to highlight their products’ main benefits/features.
Need A Print Proof For Your Custom Printed Boxes In The USA?
Contact Hot Custom Boxes now to order a print proof through email [email protected] or by calling at (332) 263-6086 and we will deliver a sample to your door step in the USA.