Packaging has always been a means of communicating a brand’s value proposition — who your product is for and why it’s better and different than anything else on the market today. But in today’s increasingly competitive consumer product landscape, the critical need to stand out is inspiring marketers to push the boundaries of design in new and unexpected ways. Based on what we’re seeing from design projects on our global platform, here are five new trends that will dominate packaging design in 2020 and beyond.

This past spring Major League Baseball (MLB) changed its famous logo of the iconic silhouetted batter. The ubiquitous logo was originally designed by Jerry Dior in the late 1960s and has remained largely untouched.

Even before birth, gender norms are thrust on all of us, from gender reveal parties to pink and blue blankets. Gender has traditionally been treated as a foundational building block of our identities.

Our single-use disposable packaging world is about to change. And this time the change is being fueled by consumer demand.

PACK EXPO Las Vegas and the co-located Healthcare Packaging EXPO, presented by PMMI, the Association for Packaging and Processing Technologies, takes place Sept 23-25. The event will cover 900,000 net sq. ft. of exhibit space, with 2,000 exhibitors and 30,000 attendees from nearly every market.

As pet ownership among boomers declines, pet food brands are turning their attention to millennial and Gen Z consumers. These younger generations are quickly redefining what it means to be a pet parent, including everything from how they bond with their pet to how they shop for them.

While many brands are striving to create lighter, more environmentally friendly and innovative packaging solutions, there are still too many products on the market today that are heavily over-packaged or over-engineered.