After speaking to Cosmetics business on how the under 16s ban will change the way in which we navigate brand worlds and how the tangible will become ever into focus, this got me thinking, this is not only true for Gen Alpha but is much wider with the oncoming of AI.

The irony of contemporary branding is that we’ve never had more tools to create experiences, yet so much of what we design feels increasingly intangible, our worlds are mediated by screens.

Products are discovered through feeds and AI is flattening the image. Packaging is encountered first through a thumbnail, a reel, or a still image and yet, our desire for experiences that feel tactile, material, and human has only intensified.

For designers, this presents an interesting paradox because packaging is inherently sensory. It is about weight, texture, resistance, sound, and ritual, it is meant to be held, opened, turned over, and experienced in the hand but increasingly, it must communicate all of those qualities through a two-dimensional screen.

Translating this onto social media must mean that it evokes sensation, brands must bring the sensorial elements like the ‘M&S Taste the Difference adverts’ to their product which when is not F&B may feel like a daunting task.

However social media and brand campaign can no longer function simply as documentation, a clean product shot and a list of features are rarely enough to create desire – the most compelling packaging imagery today does something more ambitious: it evokes sensation.

This can be a detail such as a close crop of an embossed surface to invite the feeling of touch or light catching a foil detail to suggest movement, a hand creasing paper implying texture and sound whilst shadows create a sense of depth and weight. Through carefully constructed imagery, the eye begins to imagine what the hand cannot yet experience.

The objective is no longer to show packaging in its entirety. It is to communicate its physicality, to make materials appear almost tangible and to create images that trigger memory, anticipation, and curiosity.

The brands that succeed will be those that understand a simple truth: in an increasingly virtual world, people are not searching for more images, they are searching for experiences that feel real.