Why more food, toiletry and beauty companies are switching to minimalist package designs

For decades, marketers of consumer goods designed highly adorned packages, deploying bold colors, snazzy text, cartoons and illustrations to seize the attention of shoppers. Conventional wisdom held that with thousands of products competing against one another in the aisles of big box stores and supermarkets, companies needed to do everything in their power to make their products stand out.

But recently, there’s been a move toward simplicity. The stripped-down packaging you’ll often see is reminiscent of the minimalist art that flourished in the 1960s. A reaction against overly complex, representative works, the art that emerged in this period was characterized by spareness and abstraction. Any elements deemed unnecessary were removed.

What’s behind the move toward elegant but uncluttered packaging designs? Recent research I conducted with marketing professors Rosanna K. Smith and Julio Sevilla explored whether shoppers actually prefer this packaging – and, if so, why.