How to Design Custom Boxes for Your Brand: A Beginner’s Guide

September 16, 2025 Packaging Design

In packaging, what makes a memorable moment between the customer and the brand? Is it a product? No, it’s your custom boxes’ design that gives your products a prominent look and makes customers remember your brand. Moreover, an ideal packaging design makes your product look different from your competitors and a chance to stand out from the competition.

Having no idea about it? Worry Not! In this blog, we explained why it is important and how you can design custom boxes for your brand, the crucial elements or steps that you need to follow. Let’s dive in!

Why Designing Custom Boxes Matters?

In today’s world, personalization is the key to enhancing the overall appearance and presentation of your packaging. A good design can help you in several ways, such as:

Remain distinctive from others
Boost your brand identity
Enhance product presentation

Packaging is the first element that gets noticed by a customer and builds a long-term relationship between the buyer and the brand. A catchy design makes that moment memorable while leaving a phenomenal impression on the customer’s mind that they won’t forget for a long time.

According to research, 8 seconds is enough to grab customers’ attention. On the other hand, a customer takes 90 seconds to decide whether he wants that product or not. That’s why designing custom boxes is important. It not only appeals to your packaging but also attracts customers, which leads to an increase in your brand sales.

What Are The Basic Things A Packaging Design Must Have?

If you are going to design your customized packaging boxes, then there are a few things that you must consider during packaging. As they are the key element that makes them functional, appealing, and informational. The things you must remember are:

Design Packaging Using Template Or Die Line
Decide Your Packaging Type
Typography That Talks For Your Brand
Color Combination For A Remarkable Look
Material Selection For Quality Prints
Choose Printing Techniques For Futuristic Prints
Special Coatings For A Sophisticated Look

Design Packaging Through Template Or Die Line

Designing packaging looks simple, but it is not. You need to be very precise about the size, design, or shape of your packaging boxes. To do it physically can take a lot of time and money. Moreover, a missing calculation can ruin your packaging.

To prevent that from happening, you can go with a suitable option, like considering a custom-designed template or die line in 2D or 3D format that ensures accurate dimensions and layout before going further.

Don’t want to use pre-designed templates? Then you should choose a packaging partner who will help you in designing your packaging boxes.

Like Custom Boxes Market, a well-known and reputable packaging company with decades of packaging design experience. You can consult with us, as we have a skilled design team that will provide you with the best and custom-designed packaging template according to your brand requirements. This will change the overall appeal of your products.

Decide Your Packaging Type

Most of the brands are using the same type of packaging boxes to pack their products. That’s why you need to decide which type of packaging box you want for your premium products. Don’t hurry! As all your product appearance depends on it.

You should choose the style of your boxes by considering your product requirements. As a style makes your product look distinctive from your competitors, and also gives customers a memorable packaging experience.

What styles can be added to packaging boxes? The box styles you can use for your product packaging are:

Sleeve Boxes
Gable Boxes
Telescope Boxes
Pillow Boxes
Mailer Boxes
Reverse Tuck End Boxes
Straight Tuck End Boxes
Auto-Lock Bottom Boxes
1-2-3 Bottom Boxes
Hang Tab Boxes
Window Boxes

Color Scheme For A Remarkable Look

To elevate the packaging boxes’ appeal, you need to choose a unique and high-quality color scheme. Normal or single colors do not give the boxes an aesthetic appeal that captivates customers. That’s why you need to choose a combination of colors to conjure up specific emotions, create visual interest, and establish brand identity.

Adding different colors to packaging can spark off various physiological responses and influence how a design is perceived. The top manufacturing companies hold professional designers who use color theory to create harmonious and contrasting effects on the boxes.

What is color theory? It is a study of color on how they interact with each other and how they affect human perceptions or emotions.

Color Theory And Combinations

Colors	Combinations
Complementary colors	Blue and orange
Analogous colors	Blue, blue-green, and green
Triadic colors	Red, yellow, and blue
CMYK	cyan, magenta, yellow, and key(black)
RGB	Red, green, and blue

Typography That Talks For Your Brand

Typography is also stated as a typeface that gives packaging the ability to provoke customers’ emotions and perceptions. It also acts as a visual language of the brand to communicate with the customers, showcasing the brand’s unique personality, values, and tone.

Moreover, you can also choose the typeface according to your brand logo to write any text or message on the retail boxes, and the color combinations according to your brand theme. The typefaces mostly used are:

Serif fonts: Times New Roman
Sans-serif fonts: Helvetica

High Printability Materials For Promising Results

Packaging materials play the most important role in giving packaging a luxury and premium feel. Not all of them are made for graphics; some can withstand the chills of shipping. So choose the one that offers high printability, so whatever design you print on the surface of these materials, they give promising results that catch customers’ eyes at first glance.

These are the following materials that offer high printability:

Coated Paper
Kraft Paper
Cardstock
C1S and C2S Cardboard
Corrugated
Rigid

Boxes with descriptions, applications, and examples are mentioned below:

Boxes	Description	Industries	Examples
Folding Cartons	Lightweight and easily customizable	Retail, food, pharmaceuticals & cosmetics	Cereal boxes, cosmetic boxes & retail product boxes
Kraft Paper	Durable and biodegradable	Retail & E-commerce	Grocery bags an Takeaway meal boxes
Cardboard	Thick, durable & Bio-friendly	E-commerce, Food Industry, Healthcare & Retail	Shipping boxes, Food delivery boxes, medicine boxes, point-of-purchase (POP) displays
Rigid Boxes	Durable and sturdy, mostly used for luxury products	Cosmetics, electronics, gift packaging & high-value items	perfumes, smartphones & high-end jewelry
Corrugated Boxes	Lightweight and easily customizable	Shipping, e-commerce, industrial products, and storage	Shipping boxes for online orders, industrial packaging for machinery & storage containers.

Choose Printing Techniques For Futuristic Prints

Printing techniques are the key to getting high-quality and astonishing designs that give products a remarkable look, so make sure you choose the right one for designing your custom display boxes, as without a quality design, the packaging doesn’t appeal to customers. This means no customer is attracted to your product, leading to no sales, which is a big loss for the brand. The best techniques you can choose for futuristic prints on the surface of your packaging boxes are:

Printing Techniques	Description	Best For
Digital Printing	Print digital files using inkjet or laser technology	Customized boxes, prototypes & small to medium-sized orders
Offset Printing	This printing technique uses plates that transfer ink to rubber for printing the image onto the box	High-volume orders and detailed designs & when color accuracy is crucial.
Silkscreen Printing	Pushes ink through the mimeograph onto the cosmetic boxes	Bold graphics, simple designs & visual effects
Flexography	Uses a Photopolymer that is attached to the cylinders to transfer ink to the box	Large-scale production, labels & flexible packaging

Special Coatings For A Sophisticated Look

After designing your packaging boxes, you can select premium coatings that give your boxes a luxury appeal and enhance customers’ experience. Not only that, they can also enhance the protection of the packaging, giving the ability to control moisture, tear resistance, and prevent scratches and scuffs that mostly occur due to the shocks or vibrations during shipping. You can go with the following coatings for your custom printed boxes. Such as:

Aqueous Coatings
UV Coatings
Varnishes
Soft Touch Coatings
Gloss Lamination
Matt Lamination
Embossing
Debossing
Foil Stamping

Keep Your Packaging Design Simple

Keeping the packaging design simple gives you more benefits than a customized box full of design. What does it offer?

Reduced production costs
Enhanced customer appeal
A sustainable approach

Not only that, a simple design can also allow the product itself to take center stage and improve comprehensibility while creating a modern yet simple look.

Concluding Remarks

You must know that designing your custom boxes is not only about the presentation of your premium products. It also represents your unique brand identity. So don’t hurry to design your packaging, be precise. Follow every single step that is crucial for designing packaging that looks remarkable while displayed on the retail shelves.