When you take part in a big family Christmas, which gift is for who becomes a dilemma. One that can usually only be fixed by opening it. This is why the tradition of gift tags has been kept for such a long time and it cannot be disputed that it is important. As gift wrapping trends have changed however people have become more experimental with their wrapping and use of labels and to keep things interesting here are some ideas for you to keep your gift wrapping looking beautiful.

Stamps are great, if you own letter stamps or names of the family members you need to, they can look really effective on your gift. The option to add embossing ink and glitter can make any gift more exciting and the recipient will know it was meant for them. If however you don’t own the correct stamps to do this and you don’t have the time to go out and purchase them then why not use old corks and a craft knife to create the letters you want. Alternatively if you cannot find enough corks, potatoes work just the same.

Cutting out letters from old Christmas cards or wrapping paper sounds a lot trickier than it needs to be. A set of alphabet stencils from your local craft or toy store are cheap and easy to use to cut out the letters you want. Once you have wrapped your gift just stick them on and you’re good to go. If you’re using plain wrapping paper you could use the stencils to draw on the letters with permanent marker or a decorative pen.
If you prefer the traditional label then have a look online for printable one’s - there is a huge selection of designs available across the web.

The seasonal holidays are almost upon us, in less than a week December will be here and the time for gift wrapping will have begun in earnest. Everyone wants their Christmas gifts to stand out when surrounded by everyone else’s and it is quite simple to make your gift wrapping special and unique without have to spend hours prepping.

Adding decoration to your gift sounds far more complex than it is. If you have some small decorations that you no longer use when decorating the house, or perhaps some of the small decorations that you find on seasonal products left-over from last year (like the small bells your find on the chocolate reindeer) they can be perfect. Tying on a little decoration alongside a nice ribbon bow only takes a few seconds ad it can make a huge difference in appearance.

Other idea’s for little decorations could be that you use some twine or ribbon to tie a candy cane to your wrapped gift - a symbol of Christmas recognised everywhere the candy cane is a perfect addition and can be hung on the tree.

Continuing the edible theme, making cookies with coloured sweet sections or decorated gingerbread men make excellent home decorations so why not tie them to your gift. Additions like that not only make it look wonderful but also add another element to your gift for the recipient to enjoy.

Source: Heather Bullard

Don’t forget about nature this time of year too, even tho most of the tree and plants are inactive over the winter, things like sprigs of evergreen leaves, holly leaves, pine cones and mistletoe all make wonderful seasonal decoration.

 

Packaging tape is very useful in the day to day life, apart from all the serious work that it can help us with, the packaging tape can be used to light up the moment in some cheeky ways, in other words, for pranks!

Before playing a prank it is important that the prank is funny and not annoying or degrading. The best approach before pulling a prank is to imagine that the prank was pulled on you instead. A prank should not last very long as this may end up being unfair on the victim. Keeping it short and sweet is even better in terms of enjoyment. A prank should not be expensive in terms of expenses and damages. Most packaging tape pranks qualify these guidelines.

The packaging tape is famous for the many pranks it can be used in. One popular prank does not require you to have anything but the tape itself and a knife. Take a new piece of tape from its container and make cuts in intervals all round the tape, then return the tape back into the container. Someone wanting to use the tape will have quite a rough time trying to get the end of the tape.

Another prank is where you get a dummy spider or any frightening bug you can get. Stick some tape to it and leave some length of it which you stick to the frame on top of a door. Place the spider on the door. When someone opens the door, the spider will fall on their face and you can make fun of their terrified moment all day.

One particularly funny trick is where you get a hollow cylinder of rubber or plastic that looks and feels exactly like a partially used roll of tape. Hand it casually to someone and ask them to tear you off a strip, the sight will give you a mighty laugh as they struggle to find the elusive nonexistent gap between nonexistent layers.

There is the tape across door prank too. You get some transparent tape, must be clear tape. You then choose a door where your friend will pass through. Make sure no strangers will use it or people who might get you in trouble. Tape the clear packing tape across the frame on the inside of the door preferably at the face level of your intended victim. The tape is stuck such that, the sticky part will face the door and the direction from which your victim will come. When they come in in haste, as most people do, they will not see the tape and will stick their face in it. At this time you will be in the room laughing your ribs out at the hilarious confused reactions.

Students and design companies like to make concept packaging to show off their skills. Creating a brand image and translating it onto a product, especially a range of products is incredibly difficult. This creative agency, Moon Troops, has done a whole host of concept designs that do that very well. Translating imaginary brands into packaging that would definitely sell to consumers.

The use of popular culture symbols such as sunglasses and mustaches will go down well with consumers who follow trends or are attracted by humorous packaging. For each different drink product a different colour has been used but the entire design has been kept the same. This should create product/ colour association and keeps the brand coherent across all the products.
 

Another great concept design from Moon Troops is this iced tea packaging. For each different flavour they change the colour of the red drop shown in the image above. Again they have kept the integrity of the brand when designing each product and have made the packaging simple and easy to understand.

Source: images

This tequila packaging is incredibly exiting. Commonly a bottle of tequila will have a worm at the bottom of it but these bottles have something even more other worldly. The structure of the glass in this luxury tequila packaging is incredible. They have been hand crafted yet done so precisely that every shape is nearly exactly the same. The hand crafted internal design along with the tall thin necks make this bottle look like a form of cactus, linking it to it's Mexican roots. This luxury bottle only has a small amount of labeling, most of it on the neck of the bottle - the fonts used throughout the packaging again look very similar to those used in mexican culture, making this a mix of stereotypical mexican elements. The decorative parts of the bottle stoppers are made from wood, varnished to appear burnt red and blue, the sorts of colours you would expect to find in a hot country.

The DL envelope is the most popular type of business envelope today. The envelope has dimensions of 210mm by 110mm which is the smallest size the post office can manage in automatic sorting. This format is not in the universal C series and hence some automatic enveloping machines had problems with them. The envelope was first used in Germany and DL stood for DIN Lang. Today this is known to be ‘Dimension Lengthwise’.

The DL Envelopes are very light and easy to carry around. Their light weight makes the postage costs relatively low and is mostly used by companies sending out lots of mail. The envelope is especially good for holding one page documents such as bills or short letters. The DL envelope is easily printed on; this is a huge advantage for businesses that are sending a lot of mail. Instead of stickers, or manually writing the addresses on the envelopes, the addresses can be automatically printed on the envelopes. Some companies also print their logo on the envelopes.

DL envelopes are not expensive; not only in terms of postage fees, but also buying the envelopes is not expensive. The costs can be decreased further by acquiring the envelopes in bulk. Companies producing the envelopes will give cheaper prices to customers who buy many envelopes per purchase.

Compared to other letters that open on the width side, packing the letters into the envelope is much easier and faster due to the wider area of operation. The flap of the envelope often has a pre- applied adhesive that needs to be wet a little to stick. This saves on the time that would otherwise have been used to apply glue. A slight disadvantage of this envelope is that the folding of the letter can be a bit hectic. For an A4 paper to fit into this envelope, the paper has to be folded into three equal parts along the length. Getting this dimensions right needs plenty of concentration which takes a lot of time and some letters end up being untidy as the folds are undone and re-done.

The DL envelopes are used in many ways. Many businesses use them to communicate with their customers, suppliers, and clients; individuals also use them to communicate. Apart from communication they are used to package money, cards, or other flat and small items. Envelopes are important to have around and though they are available in most stores, keeping some in the office and home is prudent.

We all know that energy drinks are bad for us, they give us caffeine and they taste great but they really aren't that great for you. So aside from todays culture of enjoying the unhealthy, what really makes us go back to them? Packaging.
At the end of the day it is the packaging that attracts the consumer to the product on the shelf and energy drink packaging has grown to be very distinctive.
Tall and thin cans mark the beginning of the energy drinks rise to popularity and despite getting wider in some cases and shorter in others, the overall shape of the energy drink can remains the same.
Energy drink packaging does what few other products packaging can do - it makes you feel cool. By being such a controversial product, it makes you feel like you're living on the edge. Energy drink companies play on this heavily, some brands using heavy dark colours and imagery such as claw marks or tattoo-esk typeface, others use overly bright and exuberant colours and designs - both with the intention of seeming alternative.

Source: flickr

These Mountain Dew bottles are rare for the energy drink packaging trends. A limited edition based on an American national holiday is practically unheard of in this dark corner of the packaging world but they have done it well. Mountain Dew is a colourful and exciting brand of energy drink - playing on the unnatural nature of it's toxic yellow packaging to differentiate its self from other brands. These limited edition 4th of july bottles show ordinary colours combined with whacky designs and an unusual bottle shape to create something very special. The fact that this packaging is so 'normal' and celebratory of an ordinary holiday makes it appeal to people who don't drink energy drinks but the fact that it is so different from the energy drink packaging before it, appeals to the types who like their alternative energy drinks - an overall winning design!

Products can come in all kinds of containers and each container brings with it, it's own set of packaging merits. Jars, plastic containers with lids, screw top lids, tubes, boxes, pouches and hundreds of similar products are around today. These Marination jars are a great example.

Despite holding food, these jars aren't of an ordinary ‘food-holding’ shape. Their straight sides and lid make them look more like cosmetics packaging than something containing a cooking ingredient. The label on the jar is all typography that makes this packaging even more unusual for a food product. The overall appearance of the jar is slick and smooth, making it seemed like a polished product, even if it doesn’t appear to fall into the food category this appearance if far more likely to attract attention.

This Hip Peas container is the plastic equivalent of a jar, with a bright and exciting design and a clear colour scheme. The fresh white label across the top looks professional and the spots combined with the handwritten font gives it an element of quality. The overall colour scheme looks natural and the dot pattern is a playful element that shows the consumer that the product is for children of a young age. The fact that the packaging is made from plastic re-enforces this as the purchaser may want to give it to their child to play with and the absence of glass makes this possible.

Has it ever occurred to you that the recycling of your mailing bags can bring about major environmental and economic gains to you and the community that you live in as a whole? And bearing in mind the number of people who receive items packed in these packaging materials every day, think about the amount of garbage produced annually as they get rid of them.

One of the most important reasons you should always endeavour to recycle these packaging materials lies in the fact that reusing them reduces to a significant extent the greenhouse effect. Scientists have proven beyond reasonable doubt that most of the gases released into the atmosphere are as a result of the manufacture, use and discarding of packing materials that are not biodegradable. The danger brought about by high levels of greenhouse gas emissions is that they can result in alteration in the global temperatures which in turn results in the melting of glaciers that are in the poles. This in turn brings about changes in sea level which can easily have devastating results like flooding or desertification. Therefore with this knowledge, you will be in a position to understand that recycling plays a major role in the maintenance of various eco systems on this planet.

Another reason as to why it is of great essence to recycle your mailing bags is due to the fact using recycled products will in a very big way cut down on the amount of non biodegradable material  that is likely to find its way to landfills. Most of the materials that end up in landfills have a tendency of decaying and bringing about the emission of methane gas which is detrimental to the environment. What’s more, since most of these packaging supplies are manufactured using plastic, it is not hard to see why many campaigns are geared towards educating people on the importance of recycling. The plastic material that is used in the manufacture of these packaging supplies is more often than not very harmful to the environment and can prove to be extremely hard to get rid of; sometimes they can take over 5 centuries to be broken down by the environment.

So the next time you use mailing bags made from plastic give a thought to the amount of waste you are adding to the environment, instead reuse such products whenever possible.

Your products packaging needs to look great, show your brands identity and inform your consumer what lies within. Something often forgotten about however, in our search for beautiful and creative brand packaging, is that it also needs to be shipped. Whatever packaging you create needs to be able to fit into your outer packaging supplies, bubble wrap, mailing bags, cardboard boxes. It needs to be simple to pack up and send so the consumer gets it as fast as possible. There is nothing wrong with packaging your products in a simple box. Boxes can be pretty and functional and are easily packaged.
 

Source: Jolie Jolie Design

These boxes are simple, cheap and easy to assemble and with a few minutes worth of decorating time they can look fab. Tie a ribbon around them, attach a label, a sticker, some washi tape or rubber stamp it. Whatever you do keep it simple and pretty and make sure it’s shippable. If the box is a little too big for your item, or you have items of varying shapes and sizes, use corrugated card, brown or tissue paper inside to bulk it out and keep your product safe.