People across all cultures, ages and continents become more and more aware of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. That influences their eating and buying habits as well as increases the awareness of the importance of movement and practicing sports. Brands all over the world see the recent trends and adapt their packaging to look attractive to their target audience. Other businesses are created and developed especially to fit this market or create new product lines for new kind of customers. But what are the trends exactly? What makes one product visually healthier from the other?
Minimalism, Obviously!
Minimalism is a trend that appears currently almost across every industry… fashion, cosmetics, food, supplements, etc. With as big of a force, it reached healthy food businesses. What does it mean that the packaging is minimalistic though? Is it small with small letters and transparent plastic to decrease even the use of any color? Not really. Minimalism is driven by the phrase that ‘less is more’. Fewer calories, harmful ingredients and processing are reflected by the design of the box or bottle or label.
This way the customer subconsciously makes the connection that the less chaos on the outside of the box, the less chaos on the inside of it. Indeed, brands often avoid the use of too many colors and go for white backgrounds but the more important matter for the designers is to bring some negative space into the box to achieve a ‘clean’ effect.
Where Did It All Start?
At the very beginning, healthy product options weren’t really products of its own but rather health-oriented versions of the ‘normal’ ones. They targeted customers with health problems who had to follow a specific diet. This way brands started to create sugar-free yogurts and fat-free cheese. And the packaging resembled the subtracted ingredients. A raspberry dessert, for example, which normally would have plenty of raspberries and colors on its cup, suddenly would only feature a few raspberries and white background. The design certainly wasn’t creative. Instead, it showed more informative characteristics.
And How Is It Now?
Currently, the demand for healthy products constantly increases. Naturally, so does the supply. And with a growing supply, there is growing competition. Healthy food and supplement brands suddenly started to feel a lot more pressure as they needed to differentiate themselves not to lose its client to the new, emerging and often local producers.
Partly the differentiation is done through focusing on the quality of the products such as their nutritional value or lack of unnecessary calories and harmful ingredients.
However, what happens when two products on the shelf feature more or less the same ingredients? After all, a pure and organic apple juice can’t differ much from the other pure and organic apple juice, right? In such a case, it is the price and the packaging design that make a difference and influence the customer’s final buying decision.
What Do Brands Do?
First of all, nowadays, healthy food and supplement producers try to show what they really sell instead of trying to show what they want to sell. Let’s put that into an example of a pear juice. A trend shows that a producer of a healthy, organic juice will rather try to include a picture of an imperfect pear on the box.
Why? Because it’s more genuine. Customers then see the brand as more real and relatable. Using an image of symmetrical, perfectly round and shiny pear would make the company look sort of… fake. A health-oriented customer who puts of great value into its lifestyle and nutrition will wonder whether his or her juice is seriously made from only such perfect fruits. Generally, the reached conclusion will be: no, it’s not.
Conclusion
In short, it is the minimalism and genuine feeling that are dominant trends in the healthy food market. However, is it all? Almost. The mentioned genuine feeling is additionally presented by easy access to the nutritious information. Brands no longer try to hide what’s inside their products. Contrary, they are proud of the ingredients they use and want to shout to the world: choose me, I’m the healthiest of all!
