You walk into a store, its shelves covered with packaged products, aisle after aisle revealing colorful boxes and bottles and jars. Containers of all kinds are lined up in rows and stacked in displays designed to entice you, the discriminating consumer, who has come to fill your cart with delectable goodies. What catches your eye first? You spot a shelf with boxes of tea you've never seen before, the bright graphics illustrating flavors that tingle your tastebuds, almost making you feel the delightful brew trickle down your throat and warm your belly. You toss a box into your cart, though tea wasn't even on your list. But you couldn't resist. Now that's effective packaging.

There are some food manufacturers who think it doesn't matter how appealing their packaging is, as long as it fulfills the FDA's labeling requirements and describes the product inside. After all, it's what's inside that people are buying, right? But the wise manufacturer considers their product's visual impact and how it will affect a consumer's incentive to buy. With so many similar products on the market, a successful manufacturer must ensure that theirs is the one that gets noticed first.

Visual Presentation
We live in a visual society where images influence our buying decisions. With only a nanosecond to capture consumer attention, you can't afford to scrimp on visual appeal. To increase your food product's success, consider how your target market will perceive what your product offers. For example, it may not be enough to say that your product contains no preservatives, or that it's made with the finest imported ingredients, or that it's chock-full of every essential vitamin the human body needs. And, of course, that it tastes good. When selling food, you can't rely solely on words to describe your product. Consumers see first and ask questions later. Plus, they're usually in a hurry, so they don't often linger over descriptions to motivate them into making a choice.

Creating a mood
Depending on the product, you can create an emotional affect through mood inherent on your packaging. Snack foods, such as cookies, chips and crackers, are most appealing when the package portrays festive graphics of bright colors and fanciful images. Gourmet coffees may require something more exotic, and bakery products need a homey, wholesome look that offers the illusion of home-baked goodness. The mood you create will define your product's one-of-a-kind personality. People often make buying decisions based on an emotional response to what they "see."

Uniqueness
What sets your product apart from the other dozen or so that proclaim to be just like it? Capitalize on your own product's uniqueness by making it evident through the packaging. Your box may have a unique shape, or your bottle a special kind of label unusual for a product of its kind. Maybe you include a value-added gift that no one else offers, like recipes exclusive to the country or era of your product's origin, or a cookie cutter, cloth napkin or placemat, special cooking utensil, reusable container, etc. The ideas are endless, and all of them can combine with your packaging to make it something truly special.

Using Color
The use of color is vital in creating an effective package. Though the more colors you use will affect packaging production costs, a vivid image of your product is what guarantees it getting noticed. Photography is often used on a product's primary display panel to depict an appetizing image of what's inside. This can also be accomplished with illustration, or a combination of the two. Depending on the food product, you may want to show it in use on your packaging, thereby creating immediate recognition of precisely what it is you're selling.

Choosing the right package
There is much to consider when selecting the right packaging method for a food product. It's essential that the method used not only ensure a product's adequate shelf life, but that the package takes up an economical amount of space on a retailer's shelf and is structurally engineered in such a way that it displays strong visual appeal. All of these factors combine in developing a package's design, from the initial concept through its production. Therefore, when partnering with a package designer, it's important to let the designer in on a product's beginning phase of research and development.

Packaging Costs
When first starting out, assuming a business plan has been developed and a budget is in place, keep in mind your product component inventory. Packaging is a component, and its unit cost will increase or decrease in accordance with the quantity produced. You may wish to start out on the low end, producing relatively small quantities of printed labels or tags that will be affixed manually to generic bags or boxes purchased in bulk. Printing directly onto the packaging materials themselves is quite expensive, as minimum print orders may exceed what you really need to start with, and this can adversely affect your margins. But with the option of labels and/or tags, costs can be considerably reduced and you have the advantage of using the savings to print more ink colors for greater visual impact.

So where do you start?
Begin by perusing the shelves in the types of stores where your product will be sold. Is your target market specialty gourmet? General consumer gift? Mass merchant and grocery store chains? The answer to these questions will determine your package's design direction. Also, consider attending gift shows and fancy food shows where you can eye-up the competition. Which booths are the busiest? What packages appear to attract the most attention? Think about how you can capitalize on what's already being done and make it even better.

Keep up with product and packaging trends by subscribing to trade magazines like Gourmet Retailer. Some of the trades have web sites, and Gourmet Retailer can be found at; Gourmet Retailer Online.

When thinking of a design direction, be mindful of possible expansion into additional flavors and varieties, or an extension of the product line itself. If starting out with one product, consider how the package design could incorporate complimentary colors and images on ancillary products. Your company and/or product logo should harmonize with your product packaging as well.

Selecting a Package Designer
Regardless of the number of ideas you have for your own packaging, effectively implementing those ideas will be difficult without the right expertise. You could have your nephew draw up a cute little picture, then take it to Kinkos to have color copies made or print a few hundred one-color or two-color tags that staple or glue onto your package.

However, this method will likely reduce your chances for success. You may save money creating your packaging this way, but you could waste everything you saved on an otherwise wonderful product that will end up appearing amateurish and dull. Taken to the other extreme, you could approach the most exclusive design agency in town and spend thousands of dollars on a pretty design that's executed inappropriately to your target market, using an embossed gold box with elegant script to sell Uncle Pablo's spicy chili mix.

It's advisable to enlist the services of an experienced packaging designer, who knows how to create an effective package that leads to profitable results. Package design is a specialized niche and there are only a few designers who can claim such expertise. Thanks to advanced internet technology and the convenience of overnight delivery services, long distance business relationships are now viable.

In closing, I would like to leave you with a packaging philosophy of mine: Advertising can lure consumers to market, but once they arrive at the store, they are no longer a captive of the ad that brought them in. Some other product may attract their attention because its visual presentation has more integrity. That is the edge we must create.