Creative packaging inspiration ~modern & vintage~
11.09.07Posted by: Jayhan Sim

Packaging is one of the most common example of graphic design in the world. Apart from displaying the important information, the packaging has become an important sales tool. With the use of illustration, color, typography and even various packaging materials, designers can create an attractive image and build a brand identity that is eye-catchy and impactful, yet preserve the contents.
A beautiful and attractive packaging or corporate sign can boost the selling and stands out from the rack of competitors. For example the IZZE beverage packaging shown above, their sales grew 450% per year over the first two years without any TV commercials, print and web advertising. It must be its unique & simplicity of graphic approach together with clear and refreshing typeface that attracts people to buy it.

I still remember when I was in Form 5, the tuition center I attend sells cold drinks. I saw one drink bottle the packaging is very nice. The drink is called Clearly Canadian. I never heard of it, but I purchased the orange flavor. Because the packaging is nice, I keep the bottle after finish drinking it. Now it’s still sitting at my house. Good design becomes collectible item.
Because I’m a Multimedia Designer, I less touching on packaging designs, but I like to observe beautiful designs. Here I listed out some sites which has very nice and creative packaging designs too see, either modern or old school approach.
TheDieLine.com
The main source of packaging design inspiration. According to the webmaster Andrew Gibbs, he started theDieLine because as a packaging designer, he needs resources for research and inspiration. But he found none, so he set this site up dedicated to creative packaging design.
“Product packaging not only secures and protects a product, it is the direct link between the brand and the consumer. It is what determines if a product will be a success or failure. Packaging plays a pivotal role in influencing a consumer’s perception of the brand and product.”
Powerful Packaging Design – The Cool Hunter
A cool collection on creative packaging design. Be sure to check out more goodies by clicking the “Packaging” tag below.
ProgressPKG
You can find a variety of creative packaging designs in here, from CD packs to metal packaging. A very creative company who aim to be market leaders in the field of creative packaging.
HardFormat.org
Need more CD packaging design inspiration, then you cannot afford to miss this site. Hard Format is a little place to celebrate the brilliant of music-related design including CD, cassettes and records.

Off The Shelf
A collection of nice and memorable packaging designs that can be found in Japan.
LouiseFili.com
Louise Fili Ltd is a design firm that specialize in packaging design especially food packaging and others.
Rbird research on packaging design patterns
A useful research and resources about package design practices within specific product categories. Just download the PDF documents for reading to get a better understanding on packaging designs in one field.
Vintage Packaging collection on Flickr
Flickr again. This is a collection of old style packaging design. A good reference and knowledge on how the packaging design was executed back in the days.
Dime Store
A collection of vintage dime store packaging.

There is it, a total of 9 great sites to inspire you on nice and creative packaging design. If you find it useful, just bookmark the sites shown above or Del.icio.us this post. If you have good packaging reference site just suggest the URL below, then I will put it up.
Credits: FontFeed August Newsletter | Intro text inspired by DesignerMag Issue 2006










I know that packaging will make a big effect. I am a consumer and I always automatically go for food or junk food with nice designs, even though they are not trendy products.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:34 pmThis is a great list of sites for inspiration. I just wrote an article that lists 180+ resources online for design inspiration and I found your article so helpful that I added your link to the article.
Thanks.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:57 amRachel
thanks for the linking Rachel! That’s a great article you had
December 19th, 2007 at 10:12 amYou are so inasanely smart and resourceful its making me want to shed tears of joy and awe.
March 10th, 2008 at 5:10 amWell i mean great post
thanks chocominty
March 10th, 2008 at 10:14 amhye there jay-han
April 9th, 2008 at 7:43 pminteresting sources! thanks for sharing.u really made my day~
you are welcome, cima.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:19 amhey guys, do you know that you can hardly find a good brand packaging designer in Malaysia?
May 16th, 2008 at 3:18 pmHmm, I don’t know about this because a great packaging design need efforts and time to design/develop until the final result. Indeed many packaging in Malaysia won’t give many impression but I can see some is quite good.
May 19th, 2008 at 5:10 pmThank you for sharing this. It helps me a lot… Thanks!!!!
May 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm[...] Creative Packaging Inspiration [...]
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:19 pmYou are welcome Vivian, and thanks Smashing Magazine for linking my site!
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:54 amLove your website! You are awesome!
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:01 pmThanks again Vivian
June 6th, 2008 at 10:09 amHey!…Man i love reading your blog, interesting posts ! it was a great Thursday .
June 20th, 2008 at 6:24 amHi there, you must have missed Packagings of the world
November 21st, 2008 at 12:30 amhmmm…not what i expected..but nice!!!
March 17th, 2009 at 10:01 amCan anyone advise where I can look for fragrance packaging inspiration sites?
April 9th, 2009 at 8:21 pmHi Candice, maybe you can find it through http://www.thedieline.com/ or http://lovelypackage.com/
April 12th, 2009 at 9:15 pmhttp://www.packagingdesignarchive.org is also a great reference for packaging design
May 6th, 2009 at 6:24 pm[...] Creative Packaging Inspiration [...]
June 7th, 2009 at 2:59 am[...] http://www.jay-han.com/2007/09/11/creative-packaging-inspiration-modern-vintage/ Creative Packaging Inspiration [...]
October 3rd, 2009 at 2:47 pmДаа… Пока это у нас не очень сильно развито, так что придётся чуть подождать.
October 19th, 2009 at 5:03 amhey there. I like your blog very clean and fresh looking.
October 31st, 2009 at 4:48 pmI am not a design student or work in the related field but I love design especially on packaging. But I prefer packaging with cool and engaging Fonts. I’ve seen some cool chocolate packaging using just font and some retro pattern. There are so cool!
I’m starting a blog listing the things I like on the internet and I hope you can visit me.
I’m looking forward to your updates.
I too observed that most packaging design in Malaysia used too much people on their packaging/wrappers. I hope they can use more graphics and typography in their design. Afterall, we want to buy the product, not the model…
November 12th, 2009 at 8:57 pm[...] Dzine – Packaging Design Packaging Design Inspiration Vintage Package Design Creative Packaging Inspiration Package Design Patterns Off The Shelf Japanese Packaging Design on Pingmag Feed RSS do [...]
January 21st, 2010 at 11:28 amHey,
I wanted to let you know that I have been following for a while and I would like to sign up for the feed. I’ll give it a try but I will need some help. This is a terrific find and I would hate to lose contact, and maybe never find it again.
Anyway, thanks again and I look forward to reading again sometime!
September 6th, 2010 at 7:32 am[...] Creative Packaging Inspiration [...]
October 25th, 2010 at 4:21 amHi, I am a package design student from University of Moratuwa, SriLanka and your website inspire me so much. And these days I am doing a research on package designs of the products which does not go for advertising. And this strong packages prove that it is working as silent sales man. Beer advertising is prohibited in Srilanka and my research is on the effectiveness of beer packages.
October 9th, 2011 at 2:53 pmThanks for adding these websites.
Hi Panchani, thank you very much! Glad that you find the article is useful.
October 11th, 2011 at 4:01 pmHi,
i have seen the sense of ur choice of artwork….
i would like to request u to do a packaging design for my company….
please contact me asap
-Ben
November 6th, 2011 at 3:42 pm