10 Ways to Design the Look of Your Box With Custom Tape

We’re big believers in the power of custom packing tape. With your design repeating foot by foot, you can make a humdrum shipping box or mailer into a solid branding tool. But how you apply the tape says just as much about your brand as the design or the color. We took 5 brands with different aesthetics and gave them each different tape treatments on a corrugated mailer box. It’s a small detail that makes a big difference on your packaging and creates a unique, cohesive, memorable unboxing experience.

To choose between packing tape and gummed paper tape, check out our comparison post so you can pick the one that’s the best fit for your brand and your budget.

Minimal Logo

Brand: Bulletin Tape: Packing, flood coated

Bulletin’s clear flood coat tape is full bleed with their geometric sans serifs running off the edges. The look is minimal and playful, and like the idea of wrapping a strip of tape around either side, running parallel to each other and meeting in the middle. We also like emphasizing the full bleed by laying the tape right along the very front edge of the box.

Handwritten Logo

Brand: Whiskey and Honey Tape: Gummed, white, flood coated

There’s a real energy in handwritten logomarks and branding. They can feel spontaneous, genuine and energetic. The Whiskey and Honey tape alternates their handwritten logo with their hand-drawn lids and lashes. To get in all of the hand-drawn glory, we first played with wrapping the tape diagonally around the bottom right corner of the box, reminiscent of a signature. This application would also be ideal for a more calligraphic mark. Next, we just laid the tape straight across the middle. When your tape is illustrative, with a lot of spunk, there’s nothing wrong with keeping the layout simple. 

Rustic Logo

Brand: Tobacco Road Purveyors Tape: Gummed, reinforced, kraft, flood coated

The Tobacco Road mark is elaborate and textured. It feels like vintage wood signage, so we wanted to embrace a more utilitarian feel for the tape layout. First we sealed the box with one strip, going 2/3 of the way across the bottom of the box — simple and unique. For the second option, we tried two strips of tape, one on either side, to mimic the feeling of handles.

Elegant Logo

Brand: Deathlings, by Laura Pol Tape: Gummed, reinforced, kraft

The Deathlings beetle mark is anything but creepy. With the black ink, fine lines and crisp, delicate details on kraft, we wanted to keep the tape application subtle. Vertically, down the center, the beetles adorn the box like a ribbon of hieroglyphs — curious and classy. With just one beetle showing on a strip of tape in front, the box suddenly feels a bit more serious and formal. When you're working with repeating illustrations like this one, it’s fun to see what you can do with a few inches of tape showing only one of the elements in the sequence.

Clean & Quirky Logo

Brand: Stamped & Stoned Tape: Packing, white

We found a lot of logomarks that didn’t quite fit in with our other genres. They weren’t too textured or minimal. They weren’t overly stylized or simple. We’re calling them Clean and Quirky. Lots of fun shapes and clean-line illustrations complementing modern marks — like this pattern from Stamped and Stoned. Glyphs from their logo create a patterned packing tape, with lots of potential for more than sealing boxes. We could see this wrapped around mailers or on the backs of hang tags.