1000 Package Designs – A Comprehensive Guide to Packing it in by Grip Design

Article by Martin Gibson – @embody3d @martingibson – 17.03.2011

There’s not too much to say about Grip Design’s 1000 Package Designs published by Rockport. It’s a cute little collection of some of the best packaging designs around. Cute in page size but packed with power when it comes to content, stretching a whopping 440 pages.

1000 Package Designs is categorised into the following sections: beauty, modern, playful, urban, classic, functional and vintage. The designs are brilliant but for the ill-sighted among us the designs could certainly be a little larger. Consider this book a picture book, a catalog of stunning designs from around the world, don’t expect academic rationales of in-depth captioning. The designs are fresh and many I have never come across before making it a good market research resource for anyone developing their own packaging design.

Because of the visual nature of this book, a larger page size would have maximised the effect of the designs and made them a little easier to grasp. I have seen many logo design books containing these smaller page sizes, but for logos this size can be justified because of their inherent simplicity. Whereas packaging design can be a little more intricate, where seams, part lines, labels and text content and descriptions suddenly become important details. This in conjunction with slightly more extended captioning including a brief 1 sentence on the inspiration, design need and client background could have made this title a little more appealing.

[rating:3]