How Do You Design Packaging for Many Flavors, Sizes and Formats and Keep the Range Consistent?

Design packaging for many flavors, sizes and formats by fixing one shared structure and letting only 3 things change per product: flavor color, flavor name and product icon. The brand mark, reading order and information block stay in the same place on every can, pouch and box. In the US, the flavor name also follows FDA rule 21 CFR 101.22.

Decide what the shopper sorts by first

A range with many flavors, sizes and formats asks the shopper 3 questions at the shelf: is this the brand, is this the flavor, is this the size. The packaging answers them in that order, and the answer to the first question never changes from pack to pack.

Our packaging and product design page describes that order on one of our own ranges, AKME Performance: “every pack reads brand first, then product name, then supporting information, and fine color accents tell the products apart across tubs, bottles and pouches.” The brand holds still at the top of the reading order. The product name and the color cue do the sorting.

Write the sort order down before any artwork. For a coffee range it may be roast, then origin, then bag size; for a snack range, flavor, then pack count. A range that gives 2 sorting cues the same visual weight makes the shopper read both before choosing.

How the rules cope with products that do not exist yet is covered in our article on how to create a packaging system that can grow. This article covers the range on sale now: several flavors, in several sizes, in more than one format.

Give each flavor a code that reads from a distance

Color is the cue a shopper reads before any word, so it carries the flavor first. Our service page lists what may move: “Variant color, flavor name and product icon are the parts allowed to move.”

Color alone has a limit: a long range runs out of clearly different hues, and some flavors share an obvious color. A second cue solves that. For Sophia’s Tea, a US-based herbal tea brand, “We designed a pattern per flavor, each with its own illustration and color combination.” The case study explains why it works: “a buyer looking for one blend among a dozen recognizes the pattern from a distance, then confirms with the name up close.”

That 2-step reading is the test for any flavor code. Vero Gelato applies it with a tone per flavor, “letting someone find a variant without reading, then confirm it by reading.”

Three rules keep the code working:

• Tie each color to the flavor it suggests where the link is obvious, and to a fixed place in the palette where it is not.
• Keep the brand colors out of the flavor palette.
• Check every pair of neighboring flavors side by side, in print and on screen, before approval.

Name the flavor the way US labeling rules require

In the US, how a flavor appears on a food pack is set by the Food and Drug Administration in 21 CFR 101.22. The rule applies when the label “makes any direct or indirect representations with respect to the primary recognizable flavor(s), by word, vignette, e.g., depiction of a fruit, or other means”. A strawberry illustration counts, not only the word.

The rule then ties the flavor to the product name. The name of the food on the principal display panel “shall be accompanied by the common or usual name of the characterizing flavor, e.g., “vanilla”, in letters not less than one-half the height of the letters used in the name of the food”. That sets a minimum height for the flavor line on every pack in the range.

The wording changes with the source of the flavor. The regulation’s examples include “natural strawberry flavored shortcake,” and, where artificial flavor is used, “artificially flavored strawberry”. In some cases the words “with other natural flavor” follow the name. Those words belong in the flavor zone of the layout, not in small print elsewhere.

So every flavor needs room for its longest legal form. A layout drawn around a short flavor such as lime can fail when the range adds a flavor with a 4-word qualifier. The brand’s regulatory adviser confirms the wording per flavor, and the layout is drawn to hold the longest version.

Keep the reading order fixed on every variant

Once the flavor code and the flavor name are settled, nothing else should move between variants. A shopper buying a second flavor already knows where to look.

US food rules set the base of that order. Under 21 CFR 101.3, the statement of identity “shall be presented in bold type on the principal display panel”. 21 CFR 101.1 defines that panel as “the part of a label that is most likely to be displayed, presented, shown, or examined under customary conditions of display for retail sale”.

The case studies apply the same discipline to the information panels. On Mogan Tea, “Tea type, flavor profile, and brewing guidance sit in a fixed order, so the shopper reaches the answer without hunting for it”. Sophia’s Tea carried a heavy copy load on a small label: “the pattern was kept to the outer area and the text block given a fixed position across the range.”

In practice that is one master layout per panel, with named zones: brand, statement of identity, flavor, net contents, information block, barcode. A variant changes the flavor zone and the color, never the position of a zone.

Scale the layout across pack sizes

A smaller size is not a reduced copy of the larger artwork. The panel loses area, the mandatory text keeps its size, and the flavor name keeps its relation to the product name.

The panel area is measured. For a rectangular package, 21 CFR 101.1 gives “the product of the height times the width of that side”, so each size starts from its own area.

Decide in advance which elements scale and which are replaced:

• The brand mark scales, down to a minimum size written into the identity guidelines.
• The flavor color and pattern scale, and the pattern can be cropped rather than redrawn.
• Secondary marks replace the full logo where it no longer fits; Sophia’s Tea has “a set of secondary marks was built for the places a full logotype cannot go.”
• Mandatory text keeps its legal minimum and takes space from decoration first.

Design the smallest size first. If the system holds there, the larger sizes have spare room, filled from the same rules rather than with new elements.

Adapt the system to cans, bottles, pouches and boxes

A format change moves the panel. On a box, one face is the front. On a can or a bottle the front is a band on a curve, and 21 CFR 101.1 measures it as “40 percent of the product of the height of the container times the circumference”.

Packs with 2 fronts raise a third case: “Where packages bear alternate principal display panels, information required to be placed on the principal display panel shall be duplicated on each principal display panel.” A pouch that can face the shelf either way may need its front information twice.

So the system has 1 rule set and a master layout per format:

• Box or carton: brand, identity and flavor on the front; the information block on a side panel.
• Can or bottle: brand, statement of identity and flavor name inside the visible band.
• Pouch: front information repeated on the back if both faces can face the shopper.
• Multipack: the flavor code at the scale of the outer pack.

Each master layout is drawn on the supplier’s dieline for that format; whether that is a stock structure or one drawn for the product is covered in custom packaging or stock packaging. The same rules carry to the screen, covered in our guide to carrying packaging design into a Shopify store.

Each flavor and size is a separate product in the barcode system

GS1, which maintains the GTIN standard behind retail barcodes, counts a new flavor as a new product: “Any new product requires the assignment of a GTIN”. Its examples include a flavor “that does not currently exist in the brand owner’s portfolio”.

Size has its own rule: “Any change (increase or decrease) to the legally-required declared net content that is printed on the pack, requires assignment of a new GTIN.” A range of flavors in several sizes is a grid of separate products, each with its own number, even where the design differs only by a color and a line of type.

Keep the barcode zone fixed in every master layout, so a new variant gets a new number without moving anything else, and keep a variant list beside the artwork: flavor, size, format and GTIN on one row. GS1 publishes 10 rules for when a change needs a new number; the 3 that matter most for a growing range are in our packaging system article.

How MarkaWorks designs multi-flavor ranges

MarkaWorks is a branding agency for product brands. The categories table on our packaging service page lists 25 published case studies for nutrition brands, and names what that category forces: “Mandatory information panels, range logic across flavors and formats.” Coffee and tea has 20 case studies and food and drink 17; examples are on our food and drink branding page.

On a multi-flavor range we work in this order:

• The sort order: what the shopper reads first, second and third.
• The constants: “mark position, type hierarchy, information block, shelf-facing panel.”
• The flavor code, tested in pairs.
• One master layout per format and size, smallest first.
• A proof set with every flavor side by side.

The proof round is where a weak color pair shows up, and clear comments then save a reprint; our guide on how to give design feedback covers how to write them. To plan a range, start from our contact page.

Questions brand owners ask about multi-flavor packaging

How many colors can a flavor range use?

There is no fixed number. A range can use as many flavor colors as stay clearly different side by side in print and on screen. When the colors run out, a second cue such as a pattern or an icon carries the flavor, as Sophia’s Tea did with a pattern per flavor.

Does the flavor name have a minimum size on US food labels?

Under FDA rule 21 CFR 101.22, the characterizing flavor appears with the name of the food in letters not less than one-half the height of the letters used in the name of the food. Qualifiers such as natural or artificially flavored have their own size rule.

Should every size of a flavor look identical?

The flavor code and the reading order should match across sizes, so the shopper recognizes the flavor at any size. The layout changes with the panel area, and small packs can use secondary marks instead of the full logo.

Does each flavor need its own barcode?

Yes. Under GS1 rules any new product needs its own GTIN, and GS1 counts a new flavor as a new product. A change to the declared net content printed on the pack also needs a new GTIN.

Can one design system cover cans, pouches and boxes?

Yes, with one rule set and a master layout per format. The brand mark, reading order and flavor code stay the same, and the position of each zone follows the shape and the principal display panel of that format.