Nokia's official blog, Nokia Conversations, today published a post that talks about the company's approach to the packaging of its accessories products. It's a good example of the amount of thought and effort that goes into producing what sits on retail shelves, beyond the actual products themselves.

The post explains that Nokia has recently simplified its accessories packaging, with an aim of doing a better job of "selling the product". The materials used in the packaging has also changed from 3D vacuum formed plastic parts to die cut foldable plastic parts. This has allowed the Nokia Design team to create a bigger window (the clear see-through area in packaging), which is better able to show off the product inside, but also makes it easier to open. 

Nokia Design's Chris Merrick Nokia Design is quoted talking about the design of the new packaging:

What we have now is an easily viewable product. A concise product name supported by a short sharp descriptive headline, explaining the product and its benefits. This is the first read, to either introduce and/or identify quickly that this is the product you were searching for.”

At a secondary level, we have a category label on the side panel to identify the segment this product is within – so if it’s a charger, a dock, a headset, it tells you exactly that on the side of the package.

Last but by no means least, we have a set of icons, which we call our ‘accessory vocabulary’, those icons are the same icons found across our devices, so there’s a familiar language there. This helps build awareness across all our products.

Ulla Uimonen, from Nokia Design, is quoted talking about the new packaging:

The bigger windows bring much more light to the product and allows narrower packaging,” says Ulla. “We can showcase the product better. There’s a nice detail where we’ve used curved white cardboard underneath the product, so the card actually deflects light, creating a backlit effect. It’s only possible with a particular design.

Packaging is not a subject that's going to set the world on fire, but nonetheless it does help create that vital first impression and also has an impact on the environmental credentials of a product. Most Lumia smartphone owners should be somewhat familiar with the drawer, box, and layer packaging design used for Lumia devices, but what they may not know is that this design, which was first used for the Nokia N9, was Nokia's first Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified package and is made up from 100% certified renewable or recycled material.

Nor is just the way it looks or what it is made of that is important. The size of the packaging has an important impact on transport costs. A few years ago Nokia moved towards shrinking the size of its boxes, a move that is now complete and has saved the company tens of million of Euros, as well as being better for the environment.

It may seem like a lot of effort, but its worth remembering the scale of Nokia when thinking about the potential impact. Shipping hundreds of millions of products a year uses a lot of paper. For example, in 2011 Nokia used 23,032 tonnes in retail packages and a further 9,948 tonnes in transport packages. The total, 32,980 tonnes, is the equivalent of 6,600 fully grown elephants.