7. What to Know Before You DIY Packaging Design with Lauren Felter

Lauren Felter is a design educator for non-designers and the owner of Felter Unfiltered. In this interview with Lauren, we’re breaking down

• ​​What inspired Lauren to start teaching design to non-designers

• What to know before you DIY your design

• How to view a design through the lens of a customer

• Lauren’s top piece of advice for designing product packaging

• When to hire a designer vs. when to do it yourself

Hi, and welcome to Product Packaging and Profit, where we help product-based businesses turn packaging design into a competitive edge to attract customers, grow sales, and boost profits.

I'm Kelley Kempel, After 20 years of designing packaging for national retailers, I founded Hidden Path Creative, a graphic design studio that supports entrepreneurs with branding and packaging to get their products seen and sold. I'm sharing the secrets that launched big brands so your products can stand out.  Let's get started.

This episode of Product Packaging and Profit is sponsored by the Packaging Printer List.

If there is one question I've heard from almost every product entrepreneur I've talked to, it is, where can I get my packaging printed?

No, really, If we were on Family Feud, this would be the answer at the top of the board. The Packaging Printer list is a curated directory of over 45 packaging printers and suppliers across various product categories, packaging types, and locations.

I've handpicked all of the entries so you can be sure you're starting with a vetted shortlist. To grab your copy of the packaging printer list, head over to www.hiddenpathcreative.com/packagingprinterlist.

Intro

 Welcome back. Thank you so much for joining me again here on Product Packaging and Profit. This week we have a very special episode. It is our first guest interview. I could not be more excited to share this interview with you. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with Lauren Felter of Felter Unfiltered and chat about DIY design and all of the things you need to know if you are going to start designing your own product, packaging, branding, any sort of visual marketing that you need to design. Lauren is your gal, and she shared all of her secrets. A little bit about Lauren. She is a design educator for non designers and former ladder climber. She spent the first decade of her career overseeing marketing operations and technical systems for a university admissions office.

While also teaching design as an adjunct faculty member after following the path to traditional success, but only finding intense burnout and an identity crisis at the top. She blew it all up in January of 2020 to do it her own way. She turned her highly sought after university design course into one specifically for business owners, VAs, and professionals who aren't graphic designers, but find designing an inevitable part of their regular to-do list. She prides herself on a no shame, no shade approach to her education, branding services, and website design.

This was such a fun interview and I hope that you all find some really great information and tips and tricks in this interview.

Here we go.

Interview with Lauren Felter of Felter Unfiltered

 Kelley: Fantastic. Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on Product, Packaging, and Profit. It is so great to have you here and I think that your experience teaching non-designers design is gonna be so helpful to the listeners.

Lauren: Yeah. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Of course. So, you know, I've given a little sneak peek into what you do, but why don't you go ahead and tell me and the listeners a little bit about yourself and your business?

Lauren: So I am a design educator for non-designers, so I have a design course. I also do branding work and full-service website design. But really my whole thing is that I pride myself on a no shame, no shade approach to design. So I know that the majority of people that I'm working with, design is just one of the things that they have on their to-do list that day.

It's not the only thing. They don't want it to be the only thing, it's like another thing to get done. And so a lot of people are approaching from a lot of different ways, you know, whether it's like hiring a professional to create some things and then going from there, or going to tan, going to Canva and working with templates or you know, really just like DIYing it all together. But, what I really, pride myself on is taking design from like an indescribable art where a lot of people say, I can look at something and I can, I know that it looks good, but I don't know how to do it on my own.

And so I take that art and I turn it into an easy-to-follow set of rules. So I really break it down and I teach people, you know, what fonts and colors mean and certain rules to follow so that they can kind of crank out good-looking designs time after.

Kelley: And I think that that's so important because good design is so helpful to any business, especially product-based businesses, but any business. But there's not always the time or the budget or whatever to bring in a professional designer. So I think what you're doing is super helpful. What inspired you to start teaching design to non-designer?

Lauren: Yeah. So early on in my career I was actually working at a university overseeing marketing and operations for an admissions office. And like one of the things that I did was, Being adjunct faculty. And so I taught a course called Visual Communication, which was essentially it was a required course for like freshman or sophomore communication students.

And it was, they, I taught them InDesign and Photoshop, Illustrator and an Adobe video product. So, Either Premier Pro or Premier Rush. But really the core of that course was kind of what my design course is now, which is like no matter what program you're using, no matter what you're doing, how can you take what you have and make it look good?

And so, really enjoyed teaching college students. It was a very rewarding experience in person. During the pandemic, I did it online, and that proved to be very challenging for a lot of reasons. Students just really didn't have the tools to be able to advocate for themselves in an online environment with so many things going on in their lives.

And so they would just kind of like ghost and then pop up at the end of the semester, you know, having missed a ton of assignments, a ton of projects. And then it was like all of a sudden this hair on fire, you know, what can I do? I'm failing. And like, that's not fun for anyone. So I worked with a career coach to figure out like, okay what do I need to be doing with like my life, with my career? Like I was working, you know, doing all this like gig work, like all these part-time jobs that I was piecing together. And I really wanted to do something that was unique that I was good at and that could help people. And so that's how I found this and started my business.

Kelley: That is so amazing. So you started the business in during the pandemic.

Lauren: Yes. So actually the brand Felter Unfiltered, which is my business's name started in January, 2020. I initially wanted to be a motivational speaker and I did about a zero research and had no idea how competitive it was. And then the pandemic happened and it was like, okay, yeah, the life that I envisioned of jet setting and going to, conferences and things like that isn't quite going to pan out. So that's when I pivoted to design education.

Kelley: I love it. I feel like the pandemic changed things for a lot of us. You myself included. You know, prior to the pandemic, I was in corporate retail doing design, and I started this design business during the pandemic. So and even a lot of the product businesses that I've worked with, they started during the pandemic because, there was more time and shelter in place.

And what are you gonna do when you have all this time at home on your hands?

Lauren: Yeah. Absolutely.

Kelley: So getting back to DIYing design and the people that you work with who are doing design for their businesses on their own, what do you think is important for someone to know before they decide to DIY their design?

Lauren: Yeah, so something that I talk about a lot is that regardless what the words on the page say. All fonts, colors and shapes are communicating something before someone reads a single word. So your thing could say, you know, we are elevated and you know, we are whatever. Whatever the words say, font, colors and shapes are communicating something before the words are red. So it almost doesn't even matter what the words say. So basically all of those choices need to be really, really intentional. You can't just pick the color pink because it's your favorite color. You have to pick pink in a specific shade of pink because you're trying to communicate something, you know, with that color choice, with the font choice.

And so I'll go back to Canva. It's a really, really powerful tool and it has broken down a lot of barriers between like prior to Canva, people had word or publisher or some like crazy thing that they downloaded from the internet, but like things like InDesign and Photoshop were just so inaccessible to your average person.

So I love that Canva has given people the ability to be able to create the things that they need to. But the problem is that when you have all of these templates, people don't always realize that like they're picking something that doesn't necessarily align with their brand or what they're trying to communicate, or they're picking this really, really trendy looking design that I then scroll on Instagram and see like nine other people using, you know, the exact same one.

Kelley: Yeah. Oh man. You have like so much right there to unpack. I wanna go before we dive into Canva, because I think that there's a really interesting conversation there. I want to go back to what you said about the intentionality of picking colors and fonts. You know, one of the things as a designer working with clients, it's real easy to fall into the trap of like presenting work and then saying, do you like it?

Because, and what I sometimes tell clients and what I've told business partners in my prior life was if I was designing something so that I liked it, it would be purple and have sparkles, like purple's my favorite color. So I would make it purple. purple is not necessarily gonna communicate an elevated look or feel or an active look and feel.

So I think it's really interesting that you point that out about choosing the color and not just choosing things because you like them, but choosing them for what they communicate.

And I think it's, it's really easy to fall into that trap of, well, I like it. So we should just do that

Lauren: Yeah. And that's, so whenever I work with people, the first thing that we do, like no matter what, I have a ton of different services, you know, I always make them pick five adjectives that they would want their ideal person to use to describe their brand. And so then if I'm providing a service that you know is a complete done for you service, when I then provide them with options, I say, okay, these are the five words that you gave me, and these are three options. And option one communicates. These two words. Cause I used this font, which is more this and this shape, which is professional.

But then I used, you know, circles in this one because that's a little bit more casual. And like educating them on the options and what they're looking at so that they can then make a more informed decision instead of just, oh, like I, I like the look of this one. Because I do find, like that is something that I talk about when, in my education work for like professionals, because a lot of times their boss is not necessarily someone who's ve very educated about design, and so I teach professionals how to coach their boss to get the information that they need to work through edits. Like oftentimes people won't be able to tell you what they don't like about something.

They'll just say, I don't like it. So, you point at different things and you say, what if this was a different color? Or what if this was here? And you know, like lots of different things that you can do because yeah, like people don't have that vocabulary and they don't always know like what they're looking at to be able to give those edits and then give that feedback.

Kelley: Yeah, that's really true. I love the adjective tool. I use that myself as well. I feel like it's like one of the best ways to get somebody who's looking at the design to take that step back and look at it through the eyes of their ideal client or customer, whoever's gonna interact with that piece of design.

Because you're right, it can be really hard to articulate feedback when the the words of design, the language of design, is not your everyday language.

Lauren: And I also think sometimes they, people get a little embarrassed sometimes, like they, because you're this like expert and they feel like a little intimidated by you. Like they don't know, like they don't want you to like, I'm so stupid, you know? And so they kind of clam up and just say something or like repeat a word that they've heard before.

Kelley: That's really true. I mean, one of the things I like to, to talk about with my clients is we don't need to solve it. I just need to know what you're seeing or what are you feeling when you, when you look at the design. Then as a designer, I can then take that back and figure out what the, what is like, does a color need to change?

Does a layout need to change? But that then, I guess, if somebody's a non-designer doing their own design, how do you kind of talk them through, or what advice do you give somebody for editing their own work when design isn't really their first language?

Lauren: Right. So in my course I have seven rules of design, which as a designer you probably know a lot of them. You know, like hierarchy and contrast and things like that. And so I give a lot of examples and show like, do this, not this, do this, not this. And so really it's almost like they have a checklist to work through.

Like one of the things I teach with fonts is only use two to three fonts in a single design. Like that's a checkbox item right there that you can just look at your thing and say, do I have more than three? Do I have less than two? You know, and that's like an easy improvement, right?

Kelley: That's a great framework. And word to anyone who's listening, if you ever see one of those beautiful designs that's got like 17 fonts, know that that is a master designer, like somebody who just knows how to balance all of those things together. That is, that's a real unicorn designer there.

So if we take this and we relate it back to packaging, what is one piece of advice you would give a non-designer designing their own product packaging?

Lauren: Yeah, so I love this question. Very excited. Okay, so I was recently in a hotel. My boyfriend and I moved across the country from Mississippi to Oregon. So we stayed in, every single type of Hilton over an eight day period. And we were in a hotel in Salt Lake City and there were these like two tubes on the wall in the bathroom, and it was like two bright yellow tubes.

Like we didn't really know what it was at first and at the top it had the name of a brand that neither of us were familiar with. It wasn't like Neutrogena or Aveeno or you know, something like that. Then it had these two little taglines, like one of them said like, isn't it fun to play in the rain? And then the other one said like, I love a happy day or you know, whatever. And then very small at the bottom it said lotion and hand soap. And I pointed to him and I was like, this is an example of bad design. Like we had no idea what this is. We had to read a whole bunch of words to just figure out that this is soap and this is lotion. And so the tip that I have is to really pay attention.

Hierarchy. You have one thing and only one thing. That can be the biggest thing on your packaging, and so you have to decide what is that one thing? Is that one thing? Your brand name is that one thing the. Actual description of what it is, like this is shampoo. This is lotion. Is that one thing, like a unique value proposition, like this is, you know, a hundred percent vegan or you know, handmade like, and it's probably gonna take a lot of trial and error.

It's gonna take maybe some market research and some user testing, but like, especially if this is something that someone is not buying online, that they're buying in person or that they're interacting with in person. Like that level of education needs to be there. And it can't be three things. Like it can't be handmade and lotion and the name of the brand and that it's vanilla scented.

You know, those can't all be the same size. Like one thing has to stand out as the biggest, the boldest, and you have to decide the most important thing,

Kelley: This is an amazing tip. This is gold. I love it because you're so right and it, there is this trap in designing packaging where you wanna tell the customer everything right away. You wanna tell them what it is, who you are, why it's so great, why it costs so much, you know, all of all of the...

Lauren: The flavor is,

Kelley: Yeah. What the flavor is, and you, you know, it's kind of like going to a party and everybody's talking at once. If all of those things are the same size, you can't hear any of them.

So you're right, like, and you just, you have to pick that one thing that you're gonna lead with. And it may change over time too.

Lauren: Yeah, and, and that doesn't mean that you can't have a second thing, that's the second biggest and a description that's smaller than that, but it's, you have to design with the size of something equaling the level of importance. And only one thing can be the biggest.

Kelley: Yes. That is so good. So good. I feel like you just gave everybody like such great information right there. I'm so excited.

Lauren: All because of the bad soap in Salt Lake City.

Kelley: Exactly. All right, so that being said, when should somebody consider hiring a designer versus doing it themselves?

Lauren: So I am a very frugal person. I've really prided myself on, you know, being really lean with my business decisions and, you know, None of us are, most of us probably don't have the money to just spend, you know, whatever we want, on whatever we want. So I realize that, you know, all the things that you have to invest in are all.

Very expensive and a lot of times people have to end up DIYing something just to get going. It's like I'm just gonna set up a Square Squarespace website with a logo that I made in Canva, and then a little bit from now, you know, I'll pay someone or whatever. So really what I see people not able to do themselves is achieve consistency. And so I work with a ton of business owners where I'm not necessarily like the first you know, service provider they work with. Like, I typically work with business owners once they're maybe like. Two to three to four years in business because I take them from DIY to that next level.

Like they paid someone to make a logo. They did their Squarespace website themselves, and then I step in and help them get. Everything on the same page. Like, let's tweak the logo, let's refine the fonts and the colors. Let's make the website look really nice. Let's make all the social graphics look the same.

Let's tweak the product packaging so that it also looks like the social graphics. You know, people really have a hard time achieving consistency. All platforms, all channels, all items on their own. I've seen some people, you know, have nice looking sites that they purchase and you know, a template or whatever, but then that doesn't quite translate to the social graphics and, you know, like a trade show booth or, you know, whatever else.

Like they can't quite get it all to look on brand across all the different things.

Kelley: Yeah. Consistency is really hard. even as, as a designer, because you have to keep track of all of the different moving parts and pieces and different things impact your design, whether it's screen size or you know, colors changing from screen to print. It can take a little tweaking and trial and error to find that consistency.

What's, what's one of the things that you do to help maintain consistency?

Lauren: So first things first is we pick those five adjectives. Like I make them all start from the same place, and then we say, okay, the logo like, is the logo, do we feel that the logo matches these? All right, how about the fonts, the colors, the shapes? And then we kind of define that. All right, so then this is gonna be our brand library, and then we work from there to make sure that everything is on brand and something that you.

Graphic designers are incredibly talented, incredibly creative people, but I think that something designers are not good at is teaching people how to use the things that. They've designed, and so that's feedback that I get from so many people that I've worked with is like, yeah, I hired someone to make my logo and they like made it and then like gave me all these other things like these patterns.

Like what do I do with these patterns? Like I don't know, like what, I don't know what to do with this or. I was talking to someone the other day and she was like, yeah, like someone, you know, I did a VIP day and someone made my website, but she was like, I have no idea how to like, make another page on my website and make it look like enough, but not exactly the same.

You know? Like she was like, I, I don't even know like where to begin with that. Or she's like, my website now doesn't look anything like my social graphics, but I like it. But you know, so it's. it, it's that it's really the consistency that people are really unable to diy.

Kelley: Yeah, I would agree. And it's hard sometimes as you're designing things to explain why they're consistent, right? Because you're gonna use different elements in different ways. in different places, and as a designer, you're trying to make them all look and feel consistent, but it's a little bit of a dance, right?

Because you don't want everything to look so cookie cutter. Like everything having the same exact framing on it or using the same pattern in the same way. To go back to this pattern example, as designers, we all love patterns for brands. We love them , but I've heard that before that that you know, brand owners, when they get those assets, they don't necessarily know what to do with them.

So, what do you think we could do to explain how to use those things to the brand owners?

Lauren: Okay. I'm gonna have to think about this.

Kelley: That's like a left field question.

Lauren: No, it's okay. I don't know. I mean, I hate to say that it's like you either have it or you don't. I mean, like, some people just I think don't have the skill of educating, like it's like I can do, but like I can't necessarily like teach you to do it the same.

I think that there are much better designers than me, but I'm a designer who's also an educator. So there are designers who are really, really good at design and not great at educating. You know, I think it's just it's just like a skill that you, that you have or you don't. I mean, I also think it comes down to personality.

You know, some people as service providers, like, it's like, let me do this and then like, let me move on to the next thing. Like, I don't wanna teach an accountant how to work with patterns. Like I just wanna create and like, that's what I'm good at, you know?

Kelley: So let's circle back to this Canva conversation, because that came up a couple of times and you know, I have to say, as a diehard Adobe fan, that's where I learned to design. At first, I was like, Ugh. It's just all templates. I like, I'm not, you know, I'm seeing a lot of the same stuff come out. And then I'll be honest, I got in there, I started doing my social media graphics in there, and I'm like, this program's way more intuitive.

I like being able to see different layouts that work, for a space. to use just as a foundation and then like completely change everything about it so that it looks nothing like the template. But you're right, we do start to see a lot of these same templates over and over again. So what tips would you give somebody who is using Canva to DIY their design to maybe use it but not, but use it in a way where they're still making things that are unique to their business?

Lauren: So I would say don't pick a new template every time. Don't just change the fonts and the colors and think that it's then on brand, like, you know, figure out what do I want my brand to communicate those five words and go back to those five words and pick line with that like some templates. Squiggly lines in them. Some have straight lines, some crop, a picture to a square, some crop, a picture to a circle. Like try to be really, really mindful of the shapes, the alignment, and pick several that look similar in that way. And then customize the fonts and the color. and then stick with those like I teach in my course, it's called the three by three plan for Instagram, where I basically.

Pick three templates for, you know, social graphics and create at least three versions of those in different colors. And then those are nine plus templates that you can use on your grid at any given time, in addition to pictures and you know, different things. And so it's really having an understanding of what font, colors, and shapes communicate and being intentional with those decision.

Kelley: I think that's a fantastic tip, and I love the that three by three method that you just described, because I think that that's one of the reasons why maybe people pick different templates is that they're looking for variety and newness that attracts attention. But you're right, by taking three templates and making three different versions of each, you are creating that variety without.

It’s the chaos that makes it look inconsistent.

Kelley: That's really fantastic. You do such a great job of breaking down design into those rules, which as designers. If we went to school for it we learned all those rules, but we internalized them. So we don't necessarily speak them all the time anymore, but you do a great job of really always coming back to those rules, always coming back to those foundations.

And I think that that is probably one of the things that your clients and the people that take your courses really respond to, because I think it makes it, to your point, so much more accessible to understand why design is working.

So I love that. All right, so I have one last question for you before we wrap it up, and it is, what is the last item that you bought because of the product packaging?

Lauren: So when I saw this, I immediately knew the answer. And it is wine always. When I am shopping for wine, I'm like, which one is the cutest label? Which font do I like? And my boyfriend always gets so annoyed with me when we're, you know, in the wine now. Cause I'm like, . Ooh, I saw this font on, you know, I think Rent the Runways using this font for their emails right now.

Like, I am like a font savant. Like I see a font, I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, I saw so-and-so, like, they're using this font in that commercial, or you know, whatever. But yeah, it's always wine. Like I pick the one I go to, like a certain price range, and then I pick the one with the cutest label and that is how I make my.

Kelley: I love that. I love that. Wine labels, any kind of like beverage labels are like the most fun because you're, you know, you're looking at these like artistic expressions of what the flavor or the beverage or the experience is. So you're, you're right, and you sound like you are like me to shop with, where I'm just like, I'm like zeroed in on that packaging.

You sound like you're the same way where like, products be darned. Let's, let's just take in this great packaging.

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely.

Kelley: Awesome, awesome. Well, Lauren, where can everyone find you.

Lauren: Yeah. So my Instagram is Felter Unfiltered. I give lots of great little tips like I gave in this episode today. So follow along my website is felterunfiltered.com. So you can learn more about me. I have blog posts that I post every week with design tips, and you can also learn more about my course, create with confidence and see some of the services I offer and if we're a fit to work together.

Kelley: Fantastic. Yes. So everybody, go follow Lauren on Instagram and check her out. And thank you so much Lauren, for joining us. I really loved our conversation and I. Think that everybody's gonna get a lot of really great insight.

Lauren: Thanks so much for having me.

 In Closing

Thank you for listening to Product Packaging and Profit, a podcast for product entrepreneurs looking to level up with packaging. We hope you'll join us next time to hear more about how packaging can help propel profitable product businesses. Next week I'm gonna be back with another bonus episode where we chat about my designer toolkit and why you'll want to learn Adobe Illustrator if you're looking to design your own package.

So join us next week. Until then, this is Kelley Kempel of Hidden Path Creative. And don't forget what's on the outside matters too.