23 | What makes great Christmas packaging?

How do you stand out when every brand is working with the same toolkit?

It’s one of the most constrained briefs in branding, where clients expect Christmas colours and shoppers look for recognisable festive cues. In sectors like grocery and pet, those visual rules are deeply baked in and you have to think of new ways to use red, green, gold, snowflakes, stars. 

It makes standout even harder to achieve, but festive design doesn’t have to follow the same pattern. In categories like luxury, we’re seeing a more expressive approach, with brands like Fortnum & Mason opting for purples and silvers and leaning into tradition in a different way. It proves that while festive recognition matters, the real opportunity is in how your brand brings its own point of view to the season.

Our team works with brands to find that balance, meeting expectations while creating space for surprise. Whether you’re working with tinsels and turkey or toys and treats, our belief is that the most magical festive ranges are strategic, scalable, and still unmistakably you.

So how can you really make your Christmas range stand out from the rest? That’s where strategy, consistency, and restraint come in.

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ASDA Mid-Tier Christmas: Refining a festive favourite

We’ve worked on ASDA’s Mid-Tier Christmas range for a few years now. In fact, we designed the previous festive identity that’s run on shelf for the past three seasons. It was a bold, bright, pattern-led system that became a bit of a supermarket icon; however, after three years in store it was time for a change.

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The challenge wasn’t to fix something broken, but to create something exciting and new. It needed to feel more refined, cohesive and grown-up. Food, fashion and gifting were starting to drift apart visually, and more cohesion was needed throughout the store.

Our solution was to simplify the brand identity and bring it back to one unifying symbol: the star. A single, confident graphic device that we could scale, crop and adapt across everything from cheese truckles to gifting panettone.

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What ASDA has now is a festive, elegant and ownable mid-tier Christmas range. Most importantly, it's built for real-world application at every scale – from packaging and gifting to hanging signage.

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Webbox: When pets are part of the family

This isn’t our first festive outing with Webbox. In fact, we designed the 2022 Christmas range too (the bright green one you might recognise from shelves), but after a full brand refresh, it was time to update the seasonal range too, bringing everything in line with Webbox’s new identity.

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The design challenge hinged on the fact that pet food is no longer just practical. Today’s pet parents treat their animals like family, which means pets are getting gifts, advent calendars, stockings and more. We wanted to make sure the packaging reflected that shift.

Our design was built around a playful, giftable feel, anchored by a Christmas jumper–inspired pattern of stars, snowflakes, cats and dogs. That festive backdrop balances joyful detail with brand coherence, retaining the Webbox ‘W’ and keeping key equities intact.

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It’s proof that even in the most category-coded space, where festive packaging often ends up looking the same, you can still bring a fresh layer of meaning and magic.

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The magic of seasonal design

What ties these projects together is a belief in festive creativity and charm. Great Christmas packaging needs to tap into how people feel at this time of year.

It’s a time of family, tradition, surprise and nostalgia. Seasonal design gives brands the rare chance to show up a little differently, often creating a world of their own that sits apart from the core brand but still feels right. Whether that’s ASDA’s Mid-Tier range with its own typographic system or Webbox’s festive pet treats that feel like stocking fillers, these are brand worlds with their own kind of sparkle.

Christmas is a big moment, but it’s also a fleeting one. In that short window, great design can deliver a disproportionate amount of joy.

Planning for Christmas 2026? Let’s talk about how we can help you create something that’s festive, functional, and full of feeling.

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