Visual communication via the design of food and beverage packaging

Abstract

A rapidly growing body of empirical research has recently started to emerge highlighting the connotative and/or semiotic meanings that consumers typically associate with specific abstract visual design features, such as colours (either when presented individually or in combination), simple shapes/curvilinearity, and the orientation and relative position of those design elements on product packaging. While certain of our affective responses to such basic visual design features appear almost innate, the majority are likely established via the internalization of the statistical regularities of the food and beverage marketplace (i.e. as a result of associative learning), as in the case of round typeface and sweet-tasting products. Researchers continue to document the wide range of crossmodal correspondences that underpin the links between individual visual packaging design features and specific properties of food and drink products (such as their taste, flavour, or healthfulness), and the ways in which marketers are now capitalizing on such understanding to increase sales. This narrative review highlights the further research that is still needed to establish the connotative or symbolic/semiotic meaning(s) of particular combinations of design features (such as coloured stripes in a specific orientation), as opposed to individual cues in national food markets and also, increasingly, cross-culturally in the case of international brands.

Enhancing the design of wine labels

“…In the present study, respondents’ positive response toward symbols and other visual tools to be applied for crossmodal communication also supports earlier findings, which suggest that linguistic symbolic tools, like metaphors, analogies, metonymies, and allegories, may complement crossmodal communication ( Paradis and Eeg-Olofsson, 2013 ; Moreno Lara, 2014 ; Alousque, 2015 ; Kelley et al, 2015 ; Costello et al, 2018 ; Herdenstam et al, 2020 ). Other aspects to consider when developing visual tools for crossmodal communication are which crucial sensory descriptors to select when trying to create olfactory mental images ( Tomiczek and Stevenson, 2009 ) or a more general mental image of the overall sensory experience ( Williamson et al, 2016 ; Croijmans and Wang, 2021 ; Spence and Van Doorn, 2022 ; Spence, 2022a ).…”

Color Semantics in Human Cognition

“…Although color-concept associations are dynamic, updating with experience (Schoenlein et al, 2023), evidence suggests they are sufficiently stable at the group level to predict group-level color preferences (Palmer & Schloss, 2010) and color meaning in information visualizations (Mukherjee et al, 2022; Schloss et al, 2018, 2021; Schoenlein et al, 2023), which is key for designing visualizations for public audiences. The results of these studies can extend to incorporating color semantics into recommender tools for effective visualization design (Gramazio et al, 2017; Smart et al, 2020) and have already contributed to understanding color in marketing (Spence & Van Doorn, 2022).…”

Explaining Visual Shape–Taste Crossmodal Correspondences

“…Indeed, it is difficult to determine the extent to which the carbonation-angularity mapping is, for example, based on the common usage of angular logos in the marketplace (see Spence, 2012, for a number of examples). At the same time, however, it can be argued that visual design features of labels, logo designs, typeface, or product packaging are more likely to succeed in the marketplace if they are based on some underlying mapping (see Spence and Van Doorn, 2022).…”