How to Design a Custom Shoe Box: Design Ideas and Best Practices

If you’re in the business of selling shoes, you’ll need packaging to suit your most stylish soles! 👟

Designing a customized shoe box is an excellent opportunity to showcase the originality of your brand while giving your products a secure home. There are many design ideas that you could adapt to your own business or later modify in order to match it.

However, if you are not following some of the best practices when doing so, you might end up overdoing the design and start adding features just for the sake of it, which often results in a negative outcome. Plus, you want to avoid using excessive or bulky packaging materials so that your product can really shine! Let’s see how you can avoid that.

A practical example of designing shoe boxes

Custom shoe boxes can be modified in a very wide variety of ways. The simplest approach when designing the packaging yourself is to choose a brand that is close to yours in terms of identity, and one you really like.

For example, if you are selling high-end products in sports and you are a fan of Air Jordan sneakers, check out the history of the 10+ shoe box design ideas that Air Jordans went through before finding the current one, which is unarguably the best yet.

The brand went through redesigning key elements of the packaging like the shape of the boxes and added multiple boxes within one casing, as well as a string to be used as a handle. However, none of this did the brand a favor. In the end, what made the packaging look and feel premium was an embossed golden logo stamped in the middle of the black box.

In the 21st century, simplicity is becoming synonymous with premium quality. Just take a look at big premium brands like Tesla, Apple, and Rolex. Rolex’s packaging is fairly simple but just oozes luxury. It contains soft padding inside, and there is nothing hanging anywhere. Every piece of paper, the guarantee, and the instruction is hidden underneath the watch itself, which is the main point of interest of the customer.

Yet simplicity doesn't have to equate to leaving out your distinctive artwork or logo! Here's how to design a beautifully balanced custom shoe box.

Best practices when designing custom packaging

Do you want to emphasize your product in the package? Or do you want to complement it so as to awe the customer? This choice is up to you, and the answer greatly varies from product to product, but there are some general rules to follow when designing custom shoe boxes.

1. Don’t overdo it

Trying to create something brand new often leads us to complicate already existing designs. Pick something you like and make it yours. You can change the colors, look, and feel of the materials, as well as the overall appearance of the package, without having to redesign the whole thing. Get creative with your branding, but be sure to remain authentic to your business’s personality so that your shoe box is identifiable without looking too visually busy.

2. Think brand first

Is your brand luxurious? If yes, then simplify things. Are you selling to parents who mainly purchase products for their children? Then make the boxes interesting with bright colors, cartoon characters, labels, etc. Think of what suits your brand’s story and theme best, and you’ll do well to display it onto your shoe box for maximum impact during the unboxing experience.

3. Don’t forget important labels

When you are creating a design, it could happen that you forget about the size or information labels and then have to stick them on top of beautiful imagery, which might ruin the amazing customized shoe box you’ve come up with. So plan the design with the labels in mind from the beginning.

4. Know your shoe box dimensions

Regardless of what box you are trying to create, don’t deviate too much from the standard sizes that are used for the creation of shoe boxes. Shoe box dimensions are standardized for a reason. The shoes need to perfectly fit and don’t be too loose inside. Find below the most commonly used shoe box sizes in the US:

Average width, height, and length for shoe boxes in the US according to ParkourShoesGuide.

5. Originality

Your design needs to speak for your business and represent or complement it to keep your brand’s presentation consistent throughout the entire unboxing experience.  All of that means that you first must know your customer and what they would like. After all, you are doing it for them. If they like it, you will succeed and increase the customer’s lifetime value for your businesses alongside their loyalty. Try conducting customer research and survey what aesthetics your customers might gravitate toward.

Pro tip: make it interactive and eco-friendly

More than 85% of the active consumers worldwide have become eco-friendlier in the past couple of years. People are willing to pay more for a product that cares about the planet. Be advised to use eco-friendly packaging and proudly state it with a label on your boxes or on your brand’s website, which you can tie back to your packaging with a scannable custom QR code. Including a QR code on your shoe box is a clever yet effective way to engage customers in a digital experience after the first physical interaction during the unboxing.

🎁 Wrapping it up

Making a customized shoe box begins and ends with thorough research. Check what your favorite brands have been doing. Get inspiration from them, then make the packaging yours by displaying your branding. Then, design your dream packaging that’ll wow customers, stylishly and sustainably!

If you are ready to take the next step for your business and create custom shoe boxes, make sure to check out noissue’s easy process of doing so. Pair your personalized shoe packaging with branded tissue paper, custom drawstring bags, and more to make a statement during the unboxing experience and elevate your brand!

Not sure which box might be best for your business or industry? Here’s a helpful guide to our shipping, mailer, and retail boxes.