PACKAGING

TERMINOLOGIES

By: Pooja Sri V S

Packaging
• The wrapping material around a Product item that serves to contain,
identify, describe, protect, display, promote and otherwise make the
product marketable and keep it clean.
Prototype
• A prototype is a design term used to describe an early model or mock-
up of the proposed design. Prototypes are a preliminary version of
the final developed concept. They’re not made to look pretty but
rather to evaluate the functionality of it and to understand how they
look. Sometimes also called a “blank dummy”. It is highly
recommended that you prototype your packaging before you order a
shipment.
Primary Packaging
• Primary packaging is referred to as the wrapping or containers
handled by the consumer. Basically, primary packaging is the last thing
your user touches before fully touching the product. Like the
wrapping before a burger or a lid to a pickle jar.
Secondary Packaging
• If the primary packaging was the last thing a user touched before
interacting with the product. Secondary packaging is used to describe
the packaging/protection that is used to group primary packaging and
packaged goods.
• Cases, boxes and point of sale units (POS) that facilitate shipping,
distribution and shop display can be considered secondary packaging.
Stock Keeping Unit (SKU)
• A stock keeping unit (SKU) is a term applicable to retail industries and
is a coding system that expresses each individual product line and size
variant. Each SKU is unique to each product and each retail chain,
although they’re very common to be located next to or underneath
the bar code.
• This number of stock keeping unit is useful for store managers to
understand if there’s a need to restock, whether they’re products
missing or how many products have been purchased. SKU have
different categories, and or often composed by numbers and letters.
Tertiary Packaging
• Often also referred to as bulk or transit packaging, this type
of packaging is used to group larger quantities of SKUs to transport
them from point A to point B (e.g. from production facility to point of
sale). During this stage, products are handled as distribution units.
Substrate
• Substrate the name given to the material that the design is printed
onto. This could be any material such as carton, board, polypropylene,
metalized film. etc.
Structural Packaging
• Structural packaging is a design term that describes the three-
dimensional (3d) forms aspect of a product’s packaging.
Universal Product Code (UPC) Bar Code
• This is an important one. A UPC bar code consists of the first 12
numbers that are randomly (but unique!) assigned to each product.
• The UPC bar code identifies the number and symbol of a product. It
also gathers information on size, color, configuration, name and other
additional attributes.
• If you’re thinking of designing or getting your product’s packaging
designed is one of the earlier steps that absolutely critical that you
preemptively signed up for your universal product code.
Over packaging
• Over packaging is a very relevant
design term, especially in today’s
environmentally focused
landscape.
• As the name suggests, the term
is used to refer to the situation
in which products have
unnecessary packaging or are
dramatically over packaged for
no logistical reason whatsoever.