One purpose that the packaging serves is to protect the product's contents to make sure they don't spoil or break. That's probably a more important purpose than the look and the usability of the package because if the product inside doesn't work, it doesn't matter how well designed the package was. An example of this is the flash drive that I mentioned in an earlier blog. The reason they have such bulky, annoying packaging is to protect the product inside. Another purpose of the packaging could be to make the product easy to store and sell in bulk. An example of this is toothpaste. It's very easy to stack up and organize a bunch of smaller boxes, while it would be very hard to organize a bunch of tubes of toothpaste. It's very easy to stack the small boxes in the store as well, making it easy for the consumers.

This article suggests that designers should make environmentally friendly packaging as well. Just to think about the environment when designing a package would make a big difference to the environment. This can be done by minimizing the plastics used and instead use more cardboard and paper. An example they gave in the article is just to do a simple thing like use paper bags instead of plastic. At a place like Target, it's really easy to get 4 or 5 bags worth of groceries. It's hard to find a good use for those bags at home, so usually we end up throwing them away. If paper was used, this wouldn't be a problem because paper bags are easily recycleable. Another example is bottled water. Bottled water is a huge industry, but it's horrible for the environment. The bottled water companies should find a way to use a more environmentally friendly bottle instead of using plastic, which is very hard to dispose of.