Culturally-relevant packaging is important for global audiences. You want to make sure that the item is sensitive to people, but also gives them what they want.
Having culturally-relevant packaging that conveys specifics is important, and you want to make sure that you’re using packaging that fits the area. One example is if you’re getting packaging for China together, you need to make sure that you don’t use black for various reasons.
With that said, if you don’t, it could reflect poorly on you, especially as a brand or business. Here, we’ll go over what cultural packaging ideas you need to have, the challenges, and what the future of such looks like.
Examples of Cultural Packaging
Cultural packaging requires you to have different colors that fit fondly with the area at hand. For example, Asian countries prefer reds or golds, or something cartoonish or pastel. It’s good for them, and really enforces a rich, inviting sort of experience.
In Japan, various symbols, including small cartoon characters, might be used. This is good, because it also makes the packaging simple, whimsical and exciting.
Finally, languages. Some areas have multiple languages. While one language might be dominant, you want to incorporate the languages as much as possible there, so you’re not excluding anyone that might be interested in this type of packaging experience.
The Challenges
Now this type of packaging is great, but it does come with some challenges.
The biggest one is balancing universal branding with the localized design. Look at your logo, and adapt it as needed. If you know something is a little bit culturally-insensitive to certain areas, consider adjusting as needed.
If you’re selling products in the UK for example, you might focus more on plastic-free experiences. These are a bit of a challenge for some companies, because not everyone’s as worried about plastic-based packaging.
Consider all of these factors when choosing a design, and adjust as needed to really make your packaging stand out amongst the crowd.
The Industries Pioneering this
There’s a few industries that are pioneering all of this.
One is food. Food is sold to many different areas, and you want to make sure that the food packaging is befitting to each region. Try to ensure that your packaging fits each of these experiences as much as you can, no matter what it might be.
The second is cosmetics. With more and more countries selling cosmetics, then you’ll definitely want to look and see how you can make all of this relevant to your packaging needs.
Finally, electronics. Having electronic devices is great and all, but if you’re selling to new regions, consider the way the packaging is designed for that.
All of these industries are making localized packaging that fits the experience, and also really makes it relevant for each of the customers that buys from them too.
The Future of This Packaging
With a lot of cultural packaging adapting such designs for these markets, you might wonder what the future has in store for this.
These days, you’ve got AI. AI-driven design personalization works for a lot of different reasons. You give customers what they want. but, for those shipping to different locations, you can make the personalization ultimately based on the market preferences that are there.
It’s impressive what it can do. While it doesn’t replace quality checking, it can be good for leveraging appropriate markets, and in turn, giving those in such areas the ultimate designs that they want to have, and really tap into the global markets that are there, whenever you can do such a thing.