Designing Brands and Packaging in the Age of AI

Packaging is the last piece of advertising a customer touches before deciding. It has to work at three metres, at thirty centimetres and on a phone screen. AI does not change those rules, but it changes how many directions you can test before you commit.

Territories before mockups

I use generative tools to build three or four distinct territories: a heritage route, a modern minimal route, a bold graphic route and a category-breaking route. Each one gets a full set of cues — palette, material, typography feel, photography style. Seeing them side by side kills the endless debate about taste and turns it into a strategic choice.

Design the system, generate the variations

• Master artwork stays in vector, built by hand with real typographic control.
• Flavour and SKU variations are explored generatively, then rebuilt in the master file.
• Renders and shelf simulations are generated to test the range in context.
• Lifestyle and e-commerce imagery is produced from the same lighting recipe for coherence.

Legibility beats novelty

Generated packaging concepts almost always fail on the practical layer: barcode zones, mandatory copy, net weight, nutrition panels, dieline constraints and print reality. Treat AI output as a mood, never as artwork. The dieline is the truth.

Testing before print

Before a single plate is made, generate the pack in the environments where it will live: supermarket shelf, Amazon thumbnail, unboxing video, influencer photo, dark kitchen counter. A design that survives all five is ready. One that only works on a white studio background is a portfolio piece, not a product.

A good pack is a decision made visible. AI just lets you see more decisions before you make the expensive one.