Sachet Design Tips for Food Products [Proven Strategies]

In the ever-changing world of food packaging, sachets are becoming a staple for brands and customers. These flexible, lightweight pieces of packaging are the best choice for food samples, single-serve products, and limited-quantity offerings. Despite the various benefits sachets provide companies and consumers, the uniqueness and innovation of food packaging presents challenges. It's important to make sure designs stand out on the shelves. If you are selling a sauce, snack, or drink, there are multiple Sachet Design Tips to make sure packaging perfectly articulates and showcases the products and services of your business.

Simplicity and Visual Order.

If the packaging design of a sachet is complex and cluttered, it is unlikely to be noticed or read. Packing design clarity and visual order is a must. There is a good chance consumers will only scan your design for a second, and good packaging design will be instantly noticed. Key elements of your packaging design, like the brand’s logo, product name, and product variety will likely be the most prominent, so design their placements accordingly. Pack design expert, Andy Kurtts, suggests that the front of a package should contain the logo, identification of the flavor, and a few (2-3) relevant callout to attract focus and attention.

Do not crowd the sachet with too much text and design. Utilize simple whitespace design to draw attention to important text. For example, Koochikoo candy sachets use simple minimal design with abstract elements and a mix of gloss and matte finishes to create a premium design that is not too distracting. The same is seen with the Nuvero Makhana where soft illustrations of the lotus and colored variants of the pack help to differentiate the flavors while up keeping a simple and elegant design.

Use of Color Psychology and Imagery

Choosing the appropriate color and design of a pack is vital to how consumers will perceive a product. When it comes to food products, the color on the pack alone can evoke emotion corresponding to a certain taste or a feeling of freshness. For example, warm colors such as red, orange, and yellow are stimulating and can evoke feelings of hunger. Therefore, it can be more fitting to use these colors on a pack of a snack or savory product. Cool colors, on the other hand, such as green and blue evoke a feeling of health and freshness. This is reflected in Nuvero’s soft green packaging of fox nuts.

Imagery should match the story behind the product and its quality. Using high-quality photos or illustrations of the food can give a realistic look, while using an image of an abstract graphic can look more sophisticated. An example of this is the sachet design for Hunter’s Gourmet Smoky Tandoori, which displays vivid pictures of products against a black background to illustrate the product’s richness. Maintaining consistent colors and imagery across product variants helps to create brand loyalty and ease of decision for the customers.

Use Functional and Sustainable Materials

The type of material your sachet is made of is important. It is essential for food preservation and the material’s sustainability. Many modern sachets are made using laminated films or recyclable substrates that are moisture, oxygen, and light barrier. An example is the high-barrier laminated films that Nuvero uses on their resealable pouches which help to preserve the crunchiness of the product and improve the shelf life.

More and more customers are considering sustainability. Using recyclable paper-based laminates or biodegradable plastics are good ideas to lessen the negative environmental effect. For instance, brands like Earth To Malibu with their soft-touch laminates sachets implements their eco-friendly practices. Also, light materials are more sustainable because they reduce transport costs and carbon footprints as seen with Sunday Lawn Care which improved their products from heavy bags to lightweight pouches.

Include Functional Elements for Customer Ease  

Sachets should have an easy way to open, use, store, and reseal if necessary. Customer satisfaction increases with the presence of features such as perforated openings, zippable times, reusable hooks, and the like. For an example of a customer-friendly tear and reseal pouch, consider the TeaZa Healthy Dip. Their pouch is designed with both easy open tear notches as well as zippable resealability. Along the same lines, the gloss laminated stand up pouches from Nuvero are designed to help with stability for placing on shelving, are easily resealable, and are therefore very usable. 

Sachets of a certain form also help with organization. For example, say you have a bunch of stand up pouches that are flat on the bottom, that will maximize the amount of shelf space used and make better vertical use of that space. Also, if you have single-serve sachets, consider easy tear features. In a great example from an award-winning design showcased by Koochikoo, the presence of structurally sound and well designed pouches adds to the beauty of the entire design.

Encapsulate Branding and Imprint Stories with Typography  

Conveying the essence of your product as well as character, is the main purpose of branding and design. Branding should also match that character - be it contemporary design sans serif fonts for a more modern design of the logo, or elegant serif fonts of the logo for a more premium feel like Nuvero, you can use both for an elegant fusion of contemporary and premium design. To improve guidance for the reader, a hierarchy of text to the main brand, and then support text, is helpful to avoid clunkiness.

The space on the back of the sachet can be used to explore tales. You can detail where the products come from, which ingredients are the stars of the show, and other possible uses. For instance, on their sachets, Nuvero informs the audience of the story of handpicked, harvested, and preserved traditions of fox nuts, which are relics of freshwater pond nutrients. Artisanal spoilers, traditions, and purities are re-emphasized. Thanks to this story, the sachet becomes emotionally charged and the competition is left behind.

Test To Perfect Your Design

You must conduct testing to provide real-world evidence before tweaking your sachet to perfection. Print mock versions and display them on real shelves to assess visibility, appeal, and color contrast. This approach is recommended to see how the design stands out and performs in the mock competitive space.

Use this feedback to change your design. For example, you might try different color combinations to boost contrast or adjust the balance of the design to improve the focus on certain elements. For instance, Kettle chips, which won the German Design Award, uses a combination of color and edge-to-edge printing to improve recognition of their products.

Why You Should Care About Creating Quality Food Packaging

Good food packaging is important for the protection, appeal, convenience, and sustainability of the food product within the sachet and must offer a perfect balance to achieve optimum effectiveness. In order to achieve effectiveness at a higher level, food packaging sachets must employ good designs along the lines of color strategically, clear hierarchy, good practical user design, excellent material, and instant good functionality at the first contact.

Be the food product packaging design that adds to the sustainability cycle.