Let's talk aesthetic product packaging.

🎥 More about this video:
Aesthetic product packaging is everywhere these days - from phones, to computers, to makeup, to watches, to the food in our grocery stores. But what is it about aesthetic packaging that draws us in, has us obsessed, and what are the financial & environmental effects? In this video, we discuss the phenomena of aesthetic product packaging while unpacking the psychology behind our love of it.

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Time Stamps:

0:00 Kawaii culture
02:01 Historical aesthetic packaging?
03:14 Freecash
04:09 Aesthetics & brand communication
06:53 The Psychology
09:17 Financial effects
11:33 Environmental effects

Keywords for some sweet, sweet metadata:
Personal finance, money management, deinfluence, deinfluencing, budgeting, budget, credit card, debt, personal loans, culture, hauls, video essay, video analysis, social media, tiktok, instagram, Pinterest, materialism, overconsumption, consumerism, climate change, shopping, spending money, viral, influencers, cara nicole

[rahulGKUMar]

“ I am not attracted to my Shampoo bottle” Exactly something a person attracted to a Shampoo bottle would say.

[carolyncuesta]

This makes me think of how chip and snack companies will use a more matte bag to make their item seem healthier because the shinier bag makes us think of oil and grease

[ethanmayact]

I appreciate that you don’t leave a stone unturned in these videos. We went from Kawaii products to sexy shampoo to psychology to environmental impact all in about 15 minutes. Good shit.

[cs]

soap bars then: cut into bricks
soap bars now: formed into an amorphous shape, imprinted with a logo, wrapped in wax paper coated with glossy plastic with foil embeds, printed with ink, bound with twine, sent to you in an amazon bubble-lined plastic mailer

[CaroleBoulware]

History buff here - check out vintage perfume bottles, pre-WW1. Some CRAZY packaging there.

[luizurtiga]

The first thing that came into my mind is cookie tins...they even use paintings instead of product information because they know everyone will buy those to use them afterwards

[leannerae]

I think a good example of "packing" catching people is books. First you get a paperback. Then you get the hardcover. Then you love the art on the Penguin edition, then Barnes and Nobles does a gold edged version. And you end up with a whole shelf of copies of the same story, with different "packaging"

[blueskythinking]

The “take a picture” advice is SO GOOD. like I often see stuff I don’t actually want but I want to show off and taking a picture ALWAYS stops me buying it. And this also works for stuff without packaging that looks really beautiful/appetising. If you’d be happy with a photo, don’t bother buying it!

[darias]

I'd say one of the oldest and most commonly used aesthetic packaging is perfume bottles. Imagine if all those expensive liquids all came in plain boring bottles. The sales would fall through the floor.

Also, fancy packaging for sweets and tea has been around for over a century. Fortnum and Mason's, the fancy London shop selling tea, coffee, sweets and ceramics nailed it decades ago. Their metal tea boxes are so pretty that I keep them after the tea's used up and refill it with other tea (I buy their tea and flower mixes 1-2 times a yeat when i go to London for work). And so do millions of other people around the world, probably! To give them credit, those boxes are really practical as well as pretty :)

[iliketoknit]

I’m a packaging engineer. I like SPC (sustainable packaging coalition) as a resource on sustainable packaging. Lots of major companies share their packaging goals through SPC.

[lischiAK]

I honestly love your videos because they are so calm! No hate just calm information for the viewer. And I always feel like you have something to add to the topic and aren't just reciting what has been said many times before.

[ruiqi]

I heard that pretty pictures first got printed on flour sacks so that after you were done with the flour you could sew the sack into a new dress

[kimoconnell]

I'm an engineer who uses CAD software made by Dassault. I was NOT expecting to see one their commercials on one of your videos, haha. Great video!

[palasiksivain]

i'm a victim of the kawaii, can't help myself when my inner child is screaming for me to get it all 😭 no but fr i think aesthetic packaging is cool if you can repurpose it! for example i use the wrappers of the sanrio inspired candy as material for my bullet journal. i also have a huge collage of cute cardboard package designs up on my wall as decor! when you know you REALLY like a certain style or aesthetic, buying products within that aesthetic can give you many creative outlets to repurpose stuff you wouldn't necessarily even think about using afterwards.

[ab-vufj]

this reminds me of Flower Knows makeup packaging. It’s so cute it make you feel like a princess

[FebruaryJulia]

I'm a sucker for minimalist packaging: single-color cardboard boxes, esp. in pastel palette, with nothing but a name on them in small simplistic font, or transparent glass bottles. Just gets me every time.

[khaldub]

I imagine the sneaker industry isn't your main focus here, but collab culture in sneakers does borrow a lot from this, primarily with different/unique flairs to everything from the paper kicks are wrapped in to the lace options that are packaged with them.

[darkartexorcist]

I love buying things with cute packaging but I always find away to reuse it: wrappers get stuck in sketchbooks, labels go on walls to fill gaps between posters, cups and cans hold art supplies, tins and boxes can hold anything that looks out of place in my room and so on. Makes me feel less guilty for buying something just cuz it has cuter packaging

[theecologicalhotspot]

I have grown to find aesthetic packaging as a turn off. When I see it I tend to first think about how wasteful all the extra plastic is to make fancy caps, bottles, tubes, ect. My second thought is about the quality of the product. I noticed a trend between aesthetic skin care packaging and product quality. High quality dermatologist recommended skin care is usually in plain packaging while more trendy or gimmicky skincare is in bright, flashy packaging. Not to say that all fancy packaged skincare is bad, but there is definitely a noticeable trend.

[parrotperson]

Taking a photo really helps me, too! It gives me time to think about the item and I can always come back for it. Most of the time, I forget about it.