For decades, packaging followed fixed category rules.

Toothpaste looked clinical. Medicines felt sterile and text-heavy. Makeup relied on bold colours and visual excess. These weren’t strategic decisions. They were conventions.

But Gen Z is questioning those conventions — and in the process, reshaping how packaging design and brand refreshes work today.

The Glamification of the Ordinary

Once considered boring and mundane categories, the rehaul of these brands is now a cultural phenomenon.
Brands like Graza (the fastest growing olive oil brand in the US) disrupted the oil industry with a playful squeeze bottle that was easy to use and stood out among the hordes of green glass bottles.

The same shift is happening in medicine. Brands like Ritual and Cabinet Health are flipping the script on what vitamins and prescriptions can look like. No more text-heavy labels that make you feel sicker just looking at them. Instead, a clean, wellness-forward visual language that feels like self-care, not obligation.

Brands are relooking at how audiences interact with them as well as solving for how it integrates in their life with ease, all while saying we don't need to be boring. They are leveraging how consumers feel and connect to thir product and making mundance products more desirable and lifestyle-focused.

Why This Matters

Design trends aren't just aesthetic choices—they're cultural signals. They forecast how a new generation sees the world. Gen Z has grown up questioning inherited norms. If something feels outdated, unnecessary, or disconnected from how they actually live, they ask: Why does it have to be this way?

And increasingly, the answer is: It doesn't.

This generation was born online, and they want products that fit their world, not a brand's idea of what their world should look like.

This is what makes them so hard to reach with a generic design or mass messaging. They're not looking for brands that speak to them. They're looking for brands that speak like them. 

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