When your beer smiles at you
Summary
Studies from a wide variety of disciplines have long noted that people tend to attribute human features to nonhuman forms and events. Cartils, a branding and packing design consultancy, was interested in if this phenomenon could be used in packaging design and what influence this would have on the consumers. This study examined the effect of the presence of latent facial features and emotions in packaging design on prominence and appeal. The first part of this study examined which abstract shapes and emotions should be present in label designs, using a search task and a questionnaire. Based on the results, in part two of this study six beer label designs were created, representing a happy, angry and neutral emotion. These design were tested on prominence and appeal, using a three search tasks and a questionnaire, existing of order ranking and interview questions. Results showed to that angry designs stood out the most, but happy designs appealed the most. Further research was recommended to further investigate these effects of emotional packaging, and besides to Cartils was advised to use the methods of the present study for testing label designs in the future.