With the biggest gift-giving season of the year rapidly approaching, many product designers are in the final stages of designing the most eye-catching packaging they can that will also keep their products safe and secure.

We can provide our expertise in designing custom cardboard boxes to help with this process, but the decisions that are associated with designing the best box possible have as much to do with sales and presentation as with practicality and cost.

Whilst a small box can be easier to ship and have lower material costs, it can be far more difficult to make it stand out, and often requires some creative assembly and design to minimise the space requirements whilst improving the customer experience.

It is so important that many companies have had entire meetings discussing the box size of proposed high-end products, and there have been various phases and considerations that have gone into these decisions.

With that in mind, here are some of the reasons why some companies opt for bigger and smaller boxes for reasons outside of necessity, cost and a desire for standardisation.

Shelf Appeal

The meeting described above was filmed for a 1984 documentary entitled Commercial Breaks, and specifically focused on a proposed “Mega Game” called Bandersnatch that would ultimately never be released.

Computer games, alongside mobile phones and other relatively small electronics, have a wide scope of variation when it comes to packaging design, and several philosophies have emerged when it comes to the question of big box and small box packaging.

The advantage of a big box is that it immediately stands out on a retail shelf, as there is more space to fit eye-catching artwork, product images and notable features. The additional size could be left empty, or it could be used to store additional game items or feelies to enhance the experience.

One of the reasons for the vinyl revival was less about the music format and contents of the vinyl sleeve or box, but instead was more about the artwork and the complete album experience.

At one point, it was such an important aspect of retail that many companies would release multiple boxed releases of a game which conformed to different size standards in order to maximise their appeal on a shelf.

Other companies would go even further and incorporate unusual box shapes and elaborate designs inspired more by puzzle boxes in order to catch the eye of a potential customer more easily.

Postage

One of the reasons for the end of the big box era in computer games was the rise of mail order and particularly online shopping, which meant that the priority changed from providing the largest plausible eye-catching canvas for a product to minimising the space required.

Mobile phone boxes changed in size from closer to A4-sized to exceptionally small, compact packages, and a big reason for this was the rise of e-commerce, which made the physical size of a big box package a liability rather than a strength.

This has caused a lot of box design to change course, focusing on clever packaging solutions and establishing quality through other means, typically incorporating higher quality cardboard, packaging inserts and high quality printing and embossing to maximise the impact of the limited room.

Perception Of Quality And Luxury

Possibly the biggest and most contentious debate surrounding box sizes is whether a bigger box implies a higher quality product that is therefore worth a higher recommended retail price.

The argument surrounding Bandersnatch, a computer game expected to retail for between four and eight times the recommended retail price of its contemporaries, was that it needed to be sold in packaging that would justify its cost.

The argument in favour of a bigger box was that the artwork by Roger Dean would be more eye-catching if printed in a larger size, and could be filled with additional gifts and trinkets alongside the game and the add-on hardware needed to run it.

The counter-argument was based on model kit boxes such as those by Games Workshop and Airfix; most people who buy them know that the majority of the box is air, and the larger size could perhaps imply a lack of substance, particularly if the box felt light when picked up.

Ultimately, this particular debate would be redundant given that the game was never released, but it has become relevant for board game designers and consumer electronics, where box space requirements can vary considerably.

This is an argument that may never end, and a lot of companies compromise and hedge their bets by offering certain products in multiple different box sizes.