Utilising the Potential of Design Briefs in Sustainable Packaging Development

Sustainable considerations in the development of product-packaging combinations require activities on both the strategic and operational level. As part of a company’s vision, the strategic level of development targets the desired implementation of sustainability considerations. The activities of the multidisciplinary teams of marketers, designers and engineers, which specifies the achieved sustainability in finished packaging concepts, largely determines the operational level of product-packaging development. Within multidisciplinary development teams, the challenge for designers is to process requests and ambitions into packaging design proposals. Packaging engineers and technologists translate these design proposals into feasible packaging concepts which meet producability, efficiency and cost requirements. Design briefs for packaging development are drafted by marketers and packaging developers, in cooperation with other disciplines; marketing and packaging design (sometimes development) are leading in checking and updating design briefs. Marketers are often in the lead concerning decisions related to the design and development of packaging, supported by management. This research is based on surveys amongst Dutch packaging experts and interviews with members of packaging design teams. The findings are illustrated with practical packaging development cases, from the perspective of a packaging design agency. Design briefs form the interface between the different disciplines in development teams. However, current design briefs from marketer to the development team are currently not always applied for the specific implementation of sustainable considerations in packaging development. This article addresses this issue and the relation to the alignment of the desired (strategic level) and achieved (operational level) implementation of sustainability considerations in product-packaging development. Literature on the suitability of design briefs regarding the implementation of sustainability from the perspective of product-packaging development teams and the relation to both the strategic and operational level is limited. We describe current issues regarding design briefs, focused on multidisciplinary teams and the implementation of sustainability considerations in product-packaging development processes.