Packaging & Branding Glossary

Updated October 2026

Definitions for the packaging and branding terms that come up in MarkaWorks projects, each written from a named source. This core opens with 23 terms and grows when measured search questions ask for more: it is a working reference, not a complete dictionary.

How to use it. Three steps, in the order a decision actually gets made.

  1. Find the term in the section that matches the question you are answering: identity terms for what the brand looks like, pack terms for what it is made of, method terms for how a choice gets tested.
  2. Read the named source beside the definition, because the figure belongs to that source and not to us, and a supplier may work to a different one.
  3. Take the term into the brief in the form written here, so that the designer, the supplier and the regulator are reading the same word the same way.

Identity terms

Brand identity and visual identity

Visual identity is the part you can see: the logo, the type, the colour system, the imagery rules. Brand identity is the larger set it belongs to, covering the verbal side, the tone, the naming and the behaviour that stays consistent when the visuals change. People use the two terms differently, but both come back to one root: telling the brand’s story through what people see.

Logotype

A logo built from the brand name set in designed type, with no separate symbol carrying the meaning. The name is the mark.

Wordmark

A logotype based on the brand’s full name. Coca-Cola and Google are classic wordmarks: the entire name, styled, is the identity. Examples from our own work in 2026 are on the Logos & Marks 2026 page.

Lettermark

A mark built from initials rather than the full name, used when the name is long or the space is small. IBM and HBO are lettermarks.

Brandmark

A symbol that identifies the brand without any letters. It only works when the audience already connects the symbol to the name, which is why young brands rarely start with one.

Colour palette

The set of colours a brand commits to, written as values rather than as swatches on a screen: a spot colour for the elements that must not shift, process values for everything printed beside them, and a screen value for digital surfaces. A palette is usable only when each colour carries its value per process and the condition it was measured under. ISO 12647-2 sets the process control targets for offset printing, and ISO 13655 defines the measurement conditions, M0 and M1, that make two readings comparable. Without those two lines a palette is a picture, not a specification.

Lockup

A fixed arrangement of identity elements, usually the mark with the name or a descriptor, released as one asset so the spacing cannot drift between applications. A brand normally carries several, one per proportion it has to sit in.

A logo that sheds detail and switches to a smaller lockup as the space narrows. The idea comes from the Responsive Logos project by Joe Harrison, published in 2014, and the project page states plainly that it is a personal experiment with no connection to the brands it uses. It is a demonstration, not an industry standard, and the production equivalent is a planned set of lockups. In our own work, the apex-shaped “A” of the AKME Performance wordmark doubles as a standalone symbol for smaller applications such as social profiles.

Brand architecture

How a company organises the relationships between its brands. The taxonomy in general use comes from Aaker and Joachimsthaler, “The Brand Relationship Spectrum”, California Management Review 42(4), Summer 2000, pages 8 to 23, and it names four models: house of brands, endorsed brands, subbrands and branded house, with nine sub-strategies beneath them. “Hybrid” is not one of the four, whatever the diagram you were shown says.

Packaging terms

Supplement Facts panel

The mandatory nutrition panel on US dietary supplements, regulated by the FDA. Its typography is fixed by rule: body text no smaller than 8 points, column headings and footnotes no smaller than 6, boxed with hairlines in a single colour, with the “Supplement Facts” heading as the largest type in the panel.

Structure/function claim

A US label claim that a nutrient supports a normal body function, as opposed to treating a disease. It requires an FDA notification within 30 days of first use, and it is a different legal regime from a health claim, which needs prior authorization.

Food supplement

The legal sales name UK law requires on supplement packaging. UK labels also carry a 1,2 mm minimum x-height for mandatory text.

EVOH barrier

An oxygen-barrier layer used inside flexible and rigid packaging, typically 2 to 10 microns thick. Its barrier performance depends on humidity, which is why the material choice follows the product, not the artwork.

Dieline

The flat template of a pack, drawn to the cutting tool that will make it: cut lines, crease and fold lines, glue areas and bleed, with the artwork placed on top. Standard constructions are catalogued, so a brief can name a style instead of drawing one: the ECMA Code of the European Carton Makers Association covers folding cartons, and the FEFCO-ESBO code covers corrugated and solid board boxes. The final dieline still comes from the production partner, because it has to match their tooling and board, and the artwork is drawn on it rather than the other way round.

Foil stamping

A finish the design specifies when a mark has to read as metal rather than as printed colour. It is a decision made at the design stage, because it changes what the artwork can carry: the Foil Stamping and Embossing Association guide sets the working floors at no type below 8 points, and a laminated surface needs a dyne level above 40 before the finish will hold. Two consequences for the drawing: a logotype can take the finish, an ingredient line cannot, and a surface chosen for its feel may rule the finish out before anyone draws it.

Minimum order quantity

The smallest run a supplier will accept. It belongs in a glossary for designers because the number is set by the tooling a design asks for, not by the material, and the design is where that is decided. Rotogravure is the clearest case: a converter publishes cylinder setup at roughly 120 to 200 dollars per cylinder, so a six to eight colour design carries 1,000 to 1,600 dollars of tooling before a single unit is made, which is why the process only makes sense in the tens of thousands. Those figures are the converter’s own and are not independently audited, so treat them as an order of magnitude. The design decision that follows is the colour count, and it is taken before the artwork is final.

Method terms

Block test

A two-stage shelf-visibility method described by Kantar: packs are shown in a competitive block, and the measure is whether a design is found and recognized in context rather than admired in isolation.

Design tokens

Named values for the decisions in a design system, colour and spacing and type among them, stored so that design tools and code read the same source. The Design Tokens Community Group published the first stable version of its specification in October 2025; files use the .tokens or .tokens.json extension, and each token carries a required $value and $type. Delivered as tokens, a system can be applied by a developer without interpreting a PDF.

Vox-ATypI classification

The typeface classification system long used as the industry standard. ATypI withdrew it in 2021 and no official replacement has been adopted, so any current source that presents it as the standard is describing the situation before 2021.

Rights terms

Colour trademark

A registration that protects a colour as an identifier of one source. Two cases mark the boundary. A confectionery registration for a specific purple was struck down on appeal because the application described the colour as the “predominant” one and that word was too imprecise to define what was owned. A footwear registration for a red sole survived, but only for soles that contrast with the rest of the shoe. What gets protected is the colour in a described context, not the colour.

Open Font License

The licence most open source typefaces ship under. The current version is SIL OFL 1.1, published on 26 February 2007, and it is still the only version; there is no 1.2, and the absence of an “or later” clause is deliberate. It permits use in a logo. It forbids selling the font software on its own, and it reserves the original name for the original release.