Five packaging territories for 2025

Even though it smells like spring, we are still in time to try to analyse where packaging is heading in the current year, perhaps even as a prognosis for the coming months. Because we don’t know if Schrodinger’s cat is alive or dead, but we do know that it is inside that box, and that box has been designed by someone. In a discipline like this, where there are a myriad of products with their respective ways of packaging, distributing, advertising and storing them, it is bold to try to simplify everything that might be happening into a few trends, but the world is for the bold who speak up and clear the air (sorry, Groucho).

We have chosen these five territories, based on our experience at Squembri as a design studio and in our contemplative practice, because to design well you have to look better. They are flexible, debatable theories, susceptible of making a Copernican turn and taking us in the opposite direction, but we don’t know how to work without beliefs and these are ours, or some of them.

PRAGMATISM: It’s not “why”, it’s “what for”.

We live in exceptionally practical times, in which a failure in design can generate a major rejection in the user. It is no longer a question of whether the easy-opener is an easy-opener, it is that even when it has become compulsory to put screw caps attached to the neck of the bottle to make them more sustainable, people have become uncomfortable. In this sense, we believe that now is not the time to have surprises on the shelf, to send confusing messages that the user must resolve in order to find out what product is inside or what qualities it has. Every decision taken when designing packaging, especially if creativity is sought, has to be anchored to a good answer to the question: ‘What for?’

We have had to impose this maxim on ourselves when preparing the design of the products of the large supermarket chain Covirán, i.e. their private label products, which are subject to many requirements. A good designer is one who knows that a constraint is not a limitation, but an opportunity to be more effective.

In the field of sustainability (which has already gone from being a suggestion to an obligation for everyone) we also noticed it in the Ecodesign Awards for the best sustainable packaging. One of the winners was a carton for a CBD cosmetic oil from WeBotanix, which opens easily and provides all the information in a useful and creative way.

AUTHOR: The ‘who’ matters too

We are experiencing a boom in the figure of the designer, partly thanks to the large number of existing design competitions and also to the fact that technology and remote working allows freelancers to undertake projects for brands. We met Hugo Zapata at the Andalusian Design Awards and we already have him as a benchmark, specialised and with his own brand.

Many brands want their packaging to be designed by a specific professional or team by virtue of the portfolio they share and the awards they win. We also know what it’s like to hear a new client say: ‘I want you to do the same thing you did for…’. No, we are not going to do the same thing because it is not the same product, although it will be noticeable that we have also done it.

JOY: Everything is in colour

Although the simplicity extolled by Mies van der Rohe is still valid, a saturation of information and options has returned, multiplied by digital, which means that discreet packaging can go unnoticed. We see a lot of colour in the new designs, also boosted by new printing and production technologies. It’s that ‘eye-candy’ effect that comes and goes, and is coming right now. Take this example of a hot chocolate brand, Chocolulu, designed by a Greek agency, AG Design Agency. Less is more, but we can paint it in vibrant colours.

BRANDING: More branding, please

As advocates of branding, we cannot understand packaging without a complete strategy that imbues all actions with coherence. It is something difficult to maintain when we talk about the food sector and companies that have many very different products. In the case of Covirán that we mentioned before, we have some guidelines to stay on track, but in other cases it is the client himself who asks us to make an exception and go out of the brand platform. This only makes sense when we are talking about sub-brands that are going to have a real life of their own, a House of Brands as the canons dictate, but if the main brand is going to govern everything, we have to stay within the strategy.

Another case in which we can attest to the importance of this coherence is Doctor Salsas, a client for whom we have designed everything from the first name to the last packaging of their products, and we are still working on it. The visual system is maintained, the tone and the brand promise too, and even if he invents new products (and we are talking about a very innovative client) we remain faithful to a style.

VINTAGE: The old days were better

This is a trend that, in a cyclical fashion, is repeating itself, turning what was once modern into vintage and vice versa. Following the insight that any time in the past was better (which is quite debatable), brands with history are now opening wardrobes from the 80s and 90s, rescuing designs that were excellent and were relegated by the new times. This is something that Cruzcampo has been doing for several years now, but we can also find it in other brands such as Phoskitos, KFC, Coca-Cola… In food, going back to historical packaging means conveying a message of commitment to the quality of yesteryear and offers guarantees. The problem with this nowstalgia comes when brands that have just been born try to practice it, or when, when opening those cabinets, it turns out that the old brand designs are not usable or even bad. You have to know how to decide!

These five currents, with more or less nuances, are still active, but we know that there will be more to come. Soon we will be talking about edible packaging as something normal, a reduction in the use of materials to the minimum necessary to avoid waste, interactive packaging with AI, personalisation not only of the appearance of the product or its packaging, but of the product itself, etc. But that is tomorrow, and we are not always sure about tomorrow.

Luis Arronte

Director of branding, strategy and communication