When printing packaging bags, designers incorporate specific colors and backgrounds to enhance aesthetic appeal and promote the product. Food packaging, in particular, serves as a key means of showcasing the product. So what aesthetic psychology underlies food packaging design?
Flavors vary in intensity, ranging from mild to strong. To convey such a spectrum of taste on packaging—beyond the primary distinctions of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and spicy—designers must accurately communicate flavor sensations to consumers. This requires designing in alignment with human cognitive processes and patterns for perceiving the world. For instance, vibrant red fruits suggest sweetness, so red packaging primarily conveys a sweet taste. To accurately convey taste information to consumers, designers must express these sensations based on human cognitive patterns. For instance, ripe red fruits evoke sweetness, making red packaging primarily signal sweetness. Additionally, red conjures associations of warmth, celebration, and revolution. Thus, red on food, tobacco, and alcohol packaging carries festive and passionate connotations. Yellow evokes freshly baked pastries emitting an enticing aroma. Consequently, yellow is frequently used to represent the fragrance of food. Orange, positioned between red and yellow, conveys a taste akin to oranges—sweet with a hint of tartness. To express textures and flavors such as freshness, tenderness, crispness, and sourness, colors from the green spectrum are typically employed.

1. Overview of Color Psychology

Color psychology encompasses knowledge accumulated from past life experiences. For instance, the idiom “salivating at the sight of plums”  stems from people seeing green plums and associating them with sourness—a subjective psychological response triggered by the objective world of color. People's color perceptions of food packaging are actually a synthesis of multiple information inputs. Experience tells us these plums are very sour, thus eliciting corresponding physiological reactions.

2. Warmth and Coolness of Colors

Warm colors like red, orange, and yellow evoke associations with the sun or flames, eliciting a sense of warmth. Cool colors like cyan and blue evoke associations with ice, oceans, or clear springs, eliciting a sense of coolness. Additionally, adding red generally makes a color appear cooler, while adding black makes it appear warmer. Beverage packaging often uses cool colors, while liquor packaging often uses warm colors.

3. Perceived Weight of Color

Red is perceived as the lightest. Dark, low-brightness hues and warm-toned colors feel heavy. Color weight is primarily determined by brightness. Light, high-brightness colors and cool-toned hues feel lighter. Black is perceived as the heaviest. Among colors of equal brightness, high-purity hues feel lighter, and cool colors appear lighter than warm colors.

4. Color Distance Perception

Some colors on the same plane appear prominent or closer, while others seem recessed or farther away. This sense of distance primarily depends on brightness and hue: generally, warm colors appear closer, cool colors farther; light colors closer, dark colors farther; pure colors closer, grays farther; vivid colors closer, muted colors farther; high-contrast colors closer, low-contrast colors farther. Vivid, clear warm colors effectively highlight subjects; while muted, grayish cool colors provide a softer backdrop.

5. Color's Taste Perception

Colors can evoke taste sensations in food. Upon seeing red candy wrappers or food packaging, people perceive intense sweetness; encountering pale yellow on cakes evokes a milky aroma. Generally, red, yellow, and orange suggest sweetness; green implies sourness; black conveys bitterness; white and cyan suggest saltiness; while yellow and beige evoke a milky flavor. Packaging colors corresponding to different food flavors can stimulate consumer desire and achieve better results.

6. Color's Implications of Luxury vs. Simplicity

Colors like red, orange, and yellow convey a strong sense of luxury as vivid hues with high saturation and brightness. Conversely, cooler colors with lower saturation and brightness, such as blue and green, appear simple and elegant.

7. The Relationship Between Color Psychology in Food Packaging and Age

As people age, their physiological structures change, and the psychological impact of colors also varies. Children generally favor extremely vivid hues, with red and yellow being common preferences among infants. Four- to nine-year-olds most often prefer red, while children aged nine and above tend to favor green. A survey revealed boys' color preferences rank as green, red, yellow, white, and black, while girls' preferences are green, red, white, yellow, and black. Green and red are universally favored by both genders, whereas black is generally unpopular. These statistics indicate that adolescents favor green and red because these colors evoke associations with vibrant nature and the lively red flowers and green trees found in the natural world. This preference aligns with adolescents' energetic, innocent, and naive psychological traits. Adults, however, possess richer life experiences and cultural knowledge. Their color preferences stem not only from life associations but also from greater cultural influences. Therefore, tailoring food packaging designs to the color psychology of different age groups allows for targeted and effective marketing.