The Importance of Color: A Rainbow of Possibility
Color isn’t just a simple design choice. It is a powerful tool that evokes emotion, impacts moods, changes perception, and influences decision making… and because of this, can be used to drive consumer behavior.
Most visible from a greater distance than other elements in your packaging design, color provides an immediate, foundational opportunity to attract customers.
Emotion
Consider the emotions and associations you want consumers to have when they interact with your brand, and choose colors that reflect those qualities. Warm hues like red, orange, and yellow can create a sense of energy, urgency, and excitement, while cooler blues, greens, and purples are often associated with calm, trust, and stability. Neutral colors like black, white, and gray can convey sophistication, simplicity, and elegance.
Context
Bold colors, eye-catching graphics, and innovative design elements grab consumers’ attention and pique their curiosity, but it is important to consider the overall aesthetic in your packaging. When making design choices for your branded packaging, it is critical to be mindful of how it will appear and communicate in the context of other competing products on the store shelf.
Attributes
In addition to branding, your packaging should effectively communicate the unique attributes of your product, such as potency, flavor, and intended effects. Color can be used to convey this important information. By establishing a clear and direct color-coded system and/or graphic icons, consumers can quickly and easily identify the products that meet their needs.
Telling Typography: What you say is as important as how you say it.
Typography is an often overlooked and versatile design element that not only conveys meaning and emotion, but has the power to make words attractive and actionable. Effective typography sets a tone. It can capture attention on a crowded shelf, reinforce brand recognition, and even influence purchasing behavior.
Visual Hierarchy
Typography is far more than an aesthetic choice that makes text readable and appealing—it’s a powerful tool for communication, consumer engagement, and brand differentiation. Thoughtfully structured typography helps organize information clearly on the package, allowing consumers to easily find essential details such as product name, dosage, ingredients, and usage instructions.
Through strategic use of font sizes, weights, and styles, line-spacing, and contrast—designers can establish a clear visual hierarchy that guides the eye from the most critical information to supporting details, enhancing user experience and understanding. On crowded dispensary shelves, typography can be a beacon for your brand. When your name and brand promise are being clearly communicated, shoppers can make a connection, even at a glance.
Brand Image
Beyond providing clarity and conveying information, typography also plays a vital role in expressing a brand’s personality and values. Whether you are using a sleek and modern san serif typeface that signals innovation and minimalism, or a handcrafted serif font that speaks to a product’s artisanal quality and tradition, your font choices define a feeling that shapes how consumers perceive your products and the company behind it.
Though fonts and font treatments are a great expression of your brand aesthetic, readability remains paramount—especially in regulated environments like cannabis retail. Selecting legible fonts with proper spacing and contrast ensures that consumers can quickly and confidently make informed choices, even in visually busy or low-light settings. When typography is approached with both creativity and purpose, it transforms packaging into a fully immersive brand experience.
The Shape of Things: From tactile feel to shelf appeal.
Packaging, construction material, and shape are perhaps the most immediate of all influences on the consumer perception of your products.
Visual Interest
Though shape is often thought of as a forgone conclusion in packaging design, it can be a major player in consumer and brand perception. When market insight is applied to the overall shape of your packaging design, it becomes a powerful tool with emotional impact.
Unique and unexpected shapes are the first to get noticed in a sea of cylinders on a crowded shelf. The initial visual appeal of a package’s shape draws consumers in, and once your product is in their hands, the rest of your brand message has a direct line to their attention. If the rest of your design and functionality is consistent, delivering on the promise that drew them in, that shelf appeal will influence purchasing decisions and sales.
Emotional Impact
Shapes have common associations that have subtle, yet powerful emotional impact. The shape of your cannabis packaging solutions influence the perception of your product’s quality, its size, and even how it tastes. Applying the Golden Ratio to packaging design creates aesthetically pleasing proportions that are subconsciously appealing to consumers.
Curves have an organic nature and can also suggest comfort. Rounded packaging shapes are associated with softness and communicate a friendliness—a positive vibe that is welcoming and even luxurious, depending on the context. For example, round custom cannabis jars for strains containing high CBD levels can accentuate the soothing effects of the product or the relaxing, sedative effects of an indica-dominant strain.
Angular packaging conveys strength and stability, efficiency and precision, which can be used to establish a brand’s innovation and modernity. Angular shapes used in custom cannabis weed bags or custom cannabis boxes can be choice for packaging activating sativas, suggesting creativity and adventure.
Research suggests that shape even has a taste association which makes it a fun element to play with when packaging different flavor profiles of your edibles and extracts. Rounded shapes are associated with sweet while angular shapes are often associated with sour. When custom cannabis packaging combines thoughtful shapes with custom cannabis labels that use color and typography to reflect the flavors inside, consumers are engaged on a sensory level—before they even open the package.
Value Statement
When considering shape, material construction cannot be overlooked. By aligning your packaging materials with your mission, you deliver a strong and immediate message to your consumer—one that reinforces your values before a single word on your label is read. Whether it’s the use of sustainable materials, premium finishes, or tactile textures, your choice of material choices can quietly communicate who you are and what you stand for.
If sustainability is part of your brand identity, ensure that your packaging materials, inks, and adhesives are environmentally friendly. Kraft paper or uncoated cardboard suggests earthiness, simplicity, and natural purity. If you are working with a luxury brand aesthetic, a smooth matte box with embossed lettering has a level of sophistication that will appeal to a more prestigious market. Likewise, while a lightweight CR Mylar Bag has a casual, youthful, approachable nature, the smooth feel of a Glass Jar has clarity, and its weight underscores quality.
Discover a full range of custom cannabis solutions for your target market and the experience you want to deliver in our Product Catalog.
The Sound of Success: Those Unboxing Noises Have Resonance
Packaging has an auditory element that is often overlooked, but the sounds that come from a product’s packaging are not only part of the experience of that product, they play a powerful role in shaping consumer perception. This is especially true for cannabis products which must be stored in airtight, child-resistant containers and unlike a bar of soap that is unwrapped once and no longer retains its packaging, cannabis products are commonly accessed again and again over multiple uses.
In fact, with their CR mechanisms and air-tight seals for freshness, custom weed packaging offers many distinct sounds. With a popping sound that has become somewhat synonymous with security and freshness, the most common example of this is probably the PopTop Container. Ultimately, however, each form of cannabis custom packaging has an audible element during the unboxing experience that can evoke a sense of freshness, security, and even luxury. There is the subtle slide and snap of an elegant Pre-Roll Tin, the soft zipper closure of custom cannabis bags, or the super satisfying press-fit, pop-off click of Cocoon Jars, our very own innovative alternative to standard push-and-turn PET jars. Each of these sounds signal quality, care, and intention that begins a multisensory brand experience each time the product is handled.
A distinctive unboxing sound becomes a recognizable part of your product experience—offering the reassurance of safety and authenticity, while also signaling premium value. Intentional sound design in packaging isn’t just a detail—it’s a strategic asset that can deepen engagement. In the cannabis market where consumers are seeking products that feel both trustworthy and elevated, we can use auditory cues to reinforce brand identity and build emotional connection.
Want more tips for creating custom cannabis packaging that captures your consumer’s attention?
Download and print our FREE Branding Essentials Worksheet – this quick interactive workbook will guide you through a thoughtful design ideation process to help you maximize your brand potential. Enjoy this fun, insightful process and then contact us to optiomize custom cannabis packaging solutions for your brand success!
