Culture drives design

Speaking of Polyglot Packaging

Modern packaged products are traded around the world from Atlanta to Amritsar or Shanghai to Stockholm. The visual and brand communication carried on the packs aims to satisfy universal human needs. Brand owners frantically aim to improve their distribution by creating “global packs” targeted to work world-wide. Alas, realities are different. Cultural differences and a babble of languages around the world demand polyglot packaging - packs that “speak” and “connect” one-to-one, writes Deepak Manchanda.

July 31, 2009

“My son must learn English,” the illiterate peasant woman in interior Maharashtra is reported to have told Rahul Gandhi, “so that he can read the names at least on the toffee wrappers sold in our village shop.”  A moment’s reflection on this incisive comment by a person from a marginalised section of consumers reveals the huge forces that packaged products can exert on a society. Here is a simple, underprivileged woman who aspires to educate her son in English simply because of the power of the packaging she sees around her – but cannot understand. Here is packaging that reaches an interior village shop, speaking an alien language – English, in this case – and fails to connect with its intended buyers. ...cont´d

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