Trend AI and Packaging Design: Advantages, Opportunities and the Role of Humans
Artificial intelligence, or AI for short, is already being used in many industries, including ours. It has the potential to change the way products are designed, produced and sold. In packaging design, it can help develop and realize packaging more efficiently. But it is not yet able to replace human creativity. In the following, we describe the status quo of AI in packaging design.
Real-World Examples:
Nutella Unica:
An algorithm crafted seven million unique jars, turning standard packaging into collectible art—a testament to AI’s potential for customization at scale.
The Glenlivet:
This storied whisky brand embraced AI-generated art for its packaging, boldly merging tradition with futuristic appeal.
Three 3’s Brewery:
Partnering with Xhilarate, AI was leveraged to refresh its branding, showcasing the brewery’s forward-looking vision.
Coca‑Cola® Y3000:
Coca‑Cola invites us to taste the future with a beverage co-created using AI, blending global consumer insights with technology to envision the flavor of the millennium.
SuperFresh Berries by our GLBA Partner Agency Orhan Irmak Tasarım:
Our GLBA partners demonstrated AI’s expanding role in packaging design, offering a glimpse into a boundary-pushing future.
Advantages of AI in Packaging Design
AI comes with some significant benefits in the context of packaging design. These range from comprehensive optimization of the design development process to easier implementation of immersive and individualized designs.
Comprehensive optimization of the design development process
AI can optimize the design development process by enabling packaging designers to achieve better results with less effort. Corresponding tools are not only able to process large amounts of data, but are also capable of recognizing correlations between the data – and all this in a short time. Packaging designers can thus access a wealth of information, which puts them in a position to make informed decisions comparatively quickly.
With AI, packaging prototypes can be created quickly and cost-effectively. This ensures that packaging designers can first test many design variations and select the best options before producing a physical prototype. Apart from saving them time and money, the AI process optimizes the design quality of printed packaging and labels.
Easier implementation of immersive and individualized designs
Another advantage of AI is that it makes it much easier to implement immersive designs and thus make packaging more tangible for consumers in the sense of extended reality. In addition, the individualization aspect must be mentioned: People’s desire for individualization is a major trend, also in the area of consumer behavior. Artificial intelligence can simulate such individualization.
Features of AI-assisted packaging design tools
AI-powered packaging design tools make use of special databases that have been specially devised for packaging development and contain a wide range of packaging-specific information, such as:
– Packaging types
– materials
– shapes
– sizes
– graphics
– colors
– etc.
Design elements can be generated in seconds. By leveraging machine learning, AI-powered packaging design tools automatically search databases and extract relevant information. In addition, AI is able to make recommendations for meaningful design changes based on past experience regarding customer behavior and sales success.
The importance of data quality
How effectively AI works depends primarily on the quality of the data. The respective tool must be trained, so to speak, so that it can generate the best possible output. Accordingly, packaging designers have the task of feeding the tool with high-quality data, i.e. data that is representative of the company and its target group.
AI in packaging design – the role of humans
The use of AI in packaging design naturally also changes the role or the work of humans. With the use of artificial intelligence, the packaging designer has to think more than execute. The tool increasingly takes over the executive part; the designer, on the other hand, becomes more and more of a conceptual designer in this constellation. He trains the AI tool and gives it tasks, then checks and corrects its output.
As valuable as AI is for the efficiency of the design process, it cannot yet be used strategically. The most important part, the one that ultimately decides whether a product or its packaging is really successful, is still done by humans. For despite all the enthusiasm for the clear advantages of artificial intelligence, one thing must not be forgotten: Consumers, i.e. those who are supposed to buy the developed product, are people. And people – unlike AI tools – think less in terms of algorithms and more in terms of emotions. Packaging designers have a better sense of what appeals to consumers on an emotional level than their practical AI helpers. And that’s not likely to change anytime soon.
Summary, conclusion and outlook
The use of AI tools accelerates the development of new packaging concepts and increases the efficiency of the entire design process. Among other things, artificial intelligence can help to identify and close design gaps, improve existing concepts and bring forth new, innovative and unique packaging solutions.
But without the human being, in this case the packaging designer, it is nothing: He takes over the strategic and emotional part, he trains the AI and in this way gets the best out of it – for high-quality products and packaging that really strongly inspire consumers. Intuition and emotions are abilities that only sentient humans have in this constellation.
In short: For technical, logical and repetitive tasks, AI is precious; but “made by humans” will, we believe, remain a real quality feature in the future.
To venture a functional outlook after the emotional one: artificial intelligence will presumably also influence visual trends. Do you remember, for example, how minimalist design came about? Back then, it was all about developing a quick and aesthetically pleasing alternative to filigree products elaborately decorated with ornaments to meet the needs of the masses. However, it is precisely this simplification of shapes, colors, structures et cetera that could be reversed by AI. Because well-trained tools make it possible to generate highly complex graphics and shapes with a single click.