We’ve been designing packaging for over 20 years, from retail FMCG lines to craft food and drinks, health and beauty, and challenger brands trying to out-think a category leader with ten times the budget. Here’s how to write a packaging brief that actually gets you there.

A packaging brief isn’t just “make it look nice.” It’s the document that connects three things that often pull against each other: what your brand needs to say, what the customer needs to understand, and what the product physically has to do to reach the consumer safely.

The best packaging briefs hold all three in view at once. They treat packaging as a working object, not a flat design on a screen. Because the moment your product hits a shelf, it stops being a design and starts being a product people either pick up or walk past.

1. The Product Itself

Start with what’s actually inside. What is it, who’s it for, and what makes it worth buying? Be specific about the format too, because format changes everything: a rigid box, a pouch, a bottle, a can, a jar, a sleeve, a label on glass. The physical thing shapes every design decision that follows.

If you have a range rather than a single product, communicate that early. Designing one pack and designing a family of twelve that need to sit together are very different jobs.

2. Where It’ll Be Sold

Packaging behaves differently depending on where it lives. A premium bottle designed for a specialist retailer might look lost in a discount multipack aisle. A product going into a major supermarket has to survive planogram rules and stand out at eye level against category giants.

Tell us the retail environment: supermarket, independent, online-only, direct-to-consumer, food service, export. And be honest about the shelf reality, because a product that ships in a box online has a completely different job to one fighting for attention on a crowded gondola end.

3. The Shelf Standout Challenge

This is the heart of a packaging brief. On shelf, your pack has competition on all sides, and a shopper who is scanning, not reading. What’s going to make them stop?

Show us the category. What do the market leaders look like? What are the conventions everyone follows, the colours, the layouts, the imagery? Sometimes the smart move is to follow them so you signal you belong; sometimes it’s to break them completely so you stand out. Help your agency understand the shelf so we can decide which fight to pick.

4. What the Customer Needs to Know (and In What Order)

Packaging is a hierarchy of information under real pressure. In two seconds, a shopper should grasp what it is, why it’s for them, and why it’s better. Everything else comes after.

Tell us what must be communicated and how important each thing is. Brand name, product type, key benefits, flavour or scent, format, claims, provenance. Rank them. A brief that treats every message as equally important produces packaging where nothing stands out.

5. Mandatories and Legal Requirements

Packaging is one of the most regulated things you’ll ever produce, and this is where projects go wrong, are delayed, or end up costing more. Get it all on the table upfront to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

Ingredients and allergens, nutritional panels, weights and measures, barcodes, recycling symbols, country-of-origin, certification logos, warning text, retailer-specific requirements. If you operate in food, drink, health, or beauty, the rules are strict and non-negotiable. The earlier we know them, the cleaner the design.

6. Print and Production Realities

A design is only as good as it prints. Tell us what you know about production (if you have strict requirements, that is). The print method, the substrate, the number of colours, any finishes like foil or emboss, and crucially, the budget per unit. A gorgeous design with six spot colours and a soft-touch finish is worthless if your margins only allow for two-colour flexo.

If you already have a printer or a supplier, loop them in early. The best packaging is designed with production constraints in mind, not fighting against them.

7. Sustainability Requirements

Sustainability isn’t a nice-to-have any more. Do you have recyclability targets, material restrictions, or plastic reduction commitments? Are you making on-pack environmental claims that need to stand up to scrutiny? Is there a retailer or regulatory standard you have to hit?

Sustainability affects material, structure, print, and messaging all at once, so the sooner it’s in the brief, the better the whole design serves it, rather than being bolted on at the end.

8. Budget and Timeline

Packaging projects have hard deadlines more often than most, a listing date, a launch window, a seasonal drop, a trade show. Tell us as far in advance as you can, and flag any print or production lead times, because those can be the longest part of the whole process.

On budget, be clear about both the design investment and the per-unit production cost. Both shape what’s realistic. A brief without either leaves everyone guessing.

9. What Success Looks Like

How will you measure whether the packaging worked? Sales volume, shelf standout, a retailer listing secured, positive customer response, repeat orders, a design that finally does justice to the product inside? Define it, so the whole project stays anchored to a real outcome rather than personal taste.

• Designing for the screen, not the shelf. A pack that looks stunning zoomed in on a monitor can vanish at actual size, in a real aisle, under supermarket lighting. Always judge packaging at true scale and in context.
• Leaving legal and print to the end. These aren’t finishing touches, they’re foundations. Discovering a mandatory panel or a print limitation late means redrawing work you thought was already done.
• Cramming in every message. The instinct to say everything is the fastest route to saying nothing. A clear hierarchy is what makes a pack readable at a glance.
• Forgetting the range. Designing packs one at a time leads to a family that doesn’t feel like a family. If more variants are coming, brief for the system, not just the first pack.