Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

For today's mobile phone brands, the box is only the last link in the design of mobile phone products. But for consumers, the "insignificant" box is indeed the first link in the use of mobile phones. From the seal of the box and the hand of the envelope to the touch of the printed surface of the packaging material, every step of the phone out of the box is actually serving the "ritual" of the phone.

However, it is obvious that in the environment of paying attention to environmental protection, almost all brands choose to keep packaging "simple", and the ritual of opening the box is no longer the primary consideration of packaging design. how to reduce the cost of manufacturing and logistics has become a priority for mobile phone brands. On the premise of "environmental protection" and "economy", mobile phone packaging is becoming more and more boring, and the kind of packaging that makes people send out "Wow" and "Awesome" is becoming more and more rare.

But what if this simple packaging is what mobile phone packaging looks like in the first place? Yes, the trend of mobile phone packaging is also a reincarnation.

Although the mediocre "ancient times" says that mobile phone packaging is a reincarnation, compared with some mobile phone brands that do not provide mobile phones with chargers and protective cases, "ancient times" mobile phone packaging seems to be a little more luxurious. In the Nokia 3310 product page auctioned by ebay user bargainsbazar, we are fortunate to see the appearance of the mobile phone packaging at that time, as well as the characteristics of the mobile phone industry at that time.

Photo source: ebay user bargainsbazar first of all, 3310 of the boxes use the classic horizontal tiling layout, rather than the multi-layer vertical stacking layout commonly used in modern mobile phones. Secondly, the front of the package not only lists the brand and model of the mobile phone, but also has a "make-up photo" of the mobile phone. This design was also in line with the sales model of the mobile phone at that time: the horizontal screen layout could maximize the front projection area of the mobile phone packaging, and in that era when the mobile phone was placed on the shelf behind the salesperson, larger packaging area can get better visual effects, so that consumers can see the product at a glance.

Photo source: ebay users redsquirre76867 but internal packaging, the mobile phone brand is not so concerned: seeing the inner packaging means that the user has bought the phone home, so what else is worth designing? On the product page posted by ebay user london777plus, we can see that the packaging of that year was dominated by "practical", which simply put all the accessories in plastic bags and then stuffed them into blow molded trays. This packaging style strives to make WYSIWYG for consumers and to reuse the same set of packaging materials in as many markets as possible.

In addition, because there was no concept of "screen ratio" at that time, mobile phone brands often used wild imagination to design mobile phones, so that the maverick appearance was the greatest competitiveness of mobile phones at that time. So how to promote your biggest selling point in an era when there is no online self-media? Yes, it depends on packing color boxes. In fact, with the exception of Nokia N97, a "high-end phone" that needs black to maintain its mystery, the vast majority of mobile phones adopted a similar color box design before 2008.

However, limited by packaging and printing technology, color box printing can not show the true texture of mobile phones most of the time, coupled with the fact that many brands began to tamper with "fixed make-up photos". Users soon realized the fact that mobile phone color boxes are "for reference only". So what should the brand do to show the true texture of the product?

It's very simple. Just let the product out.

Photo: YouTube Channel Jonathan Morrison2004 year, Apple released the fourth generation iPod. Unlike the products that used cardboard boxes in the past, the fourth-generation iPod packaging uses a transparent plastic top cover design, and through the stacking layout to directly show the most real products in front of consumers. From the results, this packaging method has achieved unprecedented success, and laid a solid foundation for the follow-up color shell iPod, and even been used in the follow-up iPhone 5C. However, in terms of cost, this complex packaging also significantly increases the manufacturing cost of product packaging, so only "high premium" products will consider this complex packaging scheme.

The turning point from realism to abstraction, but as smartphones moved into the Android era, the packaging style began to change: taking Galaxy S, the benchmark of Android at the time, Samsung began to use different packaging designs in different markets: some markets still used color boxes, but some markets began to switch to gilded black boxes similar to modern phones.

The subsequent release of Galaxy S2 carries out this design that still embraces the pipa and half covers the shy face: except for the packaging customized by a very small number of markets and operators, Galaxy S2 in almost all regions adopts the packaging style of black boxes of silver characters. In addition, Galaxy S2 began to cover the core selling points of the phone on the back of the screen protective film and packaging box.

Photo: Carousell user redsquirre76867 from a packaging design point of view, this design is full of "counterintuitive" elements, after all, no one will start to pay attention to the selling points of a new phone after buying it. But considering that mobile phone brands had begun to advertise on the online platform at that time, the separation of product promotion from product packaging was actually very clever. After all, mobile phone sales at that time no longer relied on traditional over-the-counter sales, and open stores began to display real phones for demonstration. From then on, the significance of mobile phone packaging has shifted from publicity to "texture", and has become an important part of creating a high-level and ceremonial sense of mobile phones.

Of course, not all mobile phone brands like this black-based packaging style. For example, HTC, once half of the Android camp, insists on the design of real machine pictures on a white background for a long time, and uses hand-drawn patterns to reflect the characteristics of products close to users.

But even HTC didn't stick it out on the road to the real machine on a white background. The smartphone market has become so competitive in 2013 that HTC, once the leader of Android, needs a product that is good enough to reverse the impression that HTC lags behind the industry. In this context, HTC handed over his "turnaround" answer-HTC One.

With its integrated aluminum alloy housing, BoomSound audio, UltraPixel camera and Snapdragon 801 processor, HTC One has achieved unprecedented success. The successful sales also led HTC to extend the name HTC One to HTC One (M8) a year later. But compared with the first generation HTC One (M7), which was packaged with color pictures on a white "lunch box", M8 began to take some precautions in product packaging:

Photo: HTC Community in 2014, HTC released a special version of the phone called HTC One Fashion Edition, along with a collection package designed by YANG DESIGN Studio. According to HTC, "the packaging uses innovative renewable materials, and when the phone is taken out, it becomes a stylish scene light." It is from here that mobile phone brands finally begin to do "whole work" and "abstraction" in mobile phone packaging.

LG, for example, has designed a bendable package for the LG G Flex to reflect the phone's self-repairing features after bending; Huawei's phone with Porsche Design uses a lot of leather and metal elements in the packaging to reflect Porsche Design's luxury and craftsmanship.

In the later era of the folding screen, the feature of the folding screen left full room for mobile phone brands to play. For example, Samsung used the open-box folding mechanism to create the effect of slowly lifting the phone from the box and letting people shout "Awesome".

A reincarnation on packaging design, but as mentioned earlier, mobile phone packaging design is actually the same as fashion, focusing on a reincarnation. In recent years, more and more mobile phone brands begin to pay attention to the field of environmental protection. The most over-packaged representatives of complex mobile phone packaging have also been labelled as wasteful.

All in all, in this era of sales channels such as official websites and e-commerce platforms, mobile phone packaging has got rid of the task of "function display", and even many users do not pay attention to what is written on the mobile phone packaging at all, otherwise there will not be such a confusing operation as "look at the USB-C interface to distinguish the origin of iPhone".

In other words, users do not care whether the design of mobile phone packaging has personality or not, and mobile phone packaging is no longer a carrier for brands to show mobile phone characteristics, but a part of mobile phone brand business cards.

Image source: Sony such as OPPO will use recognizable gray packaging, supplemented by clever typesetting text to unify the tone of the brand; Sony will make extensive use of its iconic native eco-friendly materials in the box and use relief molding to reduce the amount of ink used in product packaging. Even Apple has developed plastic-free paper-based boxes and paper-based shopping bags, and yes, the shopping bags offered in Apple Store's offline stores are now made of recycled paper.

Reviewing the development of mobile phone packaging, the history of mobile phone packaging can be regarded as a mirror of the mobile phone industry, reflecting the changes of consumer demand, brand image, environmental awareness and sales strategy. Under the background of environmental protection and practicality, I think the future functionality will be the next development direction of mobile phone packaging. Future mobile phone packaging may not only be a container, but may also include some innovative functions, such as acting as a charger, wireless charging board, protective cover or other utility.

And when the mobile phone packaging fully turned to practical development, I believe even Apple can not find a reason to "buckle" the user's charger, right?

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: small Lei Beep (ID:xiaoleibbb), author: a Tian Ming

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