Project 2: Software Packaging

After lots of time looking at software at stores and online I decided to redesign the McAfee line of Antivirus products.
When you think about it, the package has a lot of responsibility. It has to grab the customer’s attention, usually in a crowded space with thousands of other products competing for consideration. With software packaging, the customer is usually in task completion mode and not just browsing so their attention needs to be grabbed quickly. Here are some interesting facts about packaging:
• A pack on a shelf has approximately 3 seconds to grab the audience’s attention.
• For most new products, the store shelf is the first, last, and potentially only time to facilitate a purchase decision.
• Packaging generates impulse purchases
• A typical package generates 570 million impressions each year.
It is too bad that despite the importance of packaging, it can veer so far off course from the purpose. Sometimes the packaging is so overloaded with marketing messages and information that we tend to lose the brand identity in the mess. This is a great video link that demonstrates this, it is pretty funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeXAcwriid0
I kind of felt like this is what I saw when looking at a lot of software packaging. Is there a way to simplify it? I usually know what I want when I go to buy software and don’t even pay attention to all the extra information. Even if I did understand it I probably would still not pay attention to it.
Packaging should represent the brand identity of the company. It needs to inform people, but also create feelings and communicate emotions, it will probably be the last chance to as it will likely be the last chance to influence a sale.
I would really like to come up with a way to design the packaging to minimize the waste. I love the line from Candace Hartley’s “If we are all carrying 8 gigabytes of virtual space on our key chains, why shouldn’t the software section at Fry’s look like the gum display? A lot can be learned from the gum display.” I totally agree, why does there need to be such a big box for usually one or two cd’s?