Reading the market and category rules

(1) Visit three different kinds of outlet, for example a supermarket, a neighbourhood shop and the search results page of an e-commerce marketplace. Photograph the whole shelf or the whole page, not individual products. (2) Print the photos, place them side by side, cover the names. (3) Split the photos by price tier first, because mass and premium products on the same shelf often use opposite codes; mixing them produces false rules. Within the tier where the business intends to stand, mark what recurs across most products: background colour, shape, lettering, photography style, familiar wording. Those are the category rules. (4) Split the rules in two: show the covered photos to a few buyers, ask what product this is and have them point at what helped them guess. What they point at is an entry ticket; what recurs but nobody uses to guess is habit. Pass: one page listing the rules, each with a photo and a label, entry ticket or habit. Fail: a map built from polished photos on brands' own pages, because those photos do not show how the product looks in a crowd. The map is an internal working document, not a tool for judging or criticising anyone's product.

(1) Ask three sellers in three different places, without the owner present, five questions: what customers ask first; what customers usually compare it with; whom customers confuse it with; which sentence makes customers decide to buy; why customers return it or complain. (2) Write the exact words. (3) Only then ask the owner the same five questions. (4) Put the two sets of answers side by side. Where they diverge is where the brief risks being wrong. Pass: at least one thing surfaces that the owner did not know or believes differently. Fail: only people chosen by the owner are asked, with the owner present, and the answers repeat the owner. Sellers hear customers state the category rules every day in the customers' own words; the owner hears them through reports. If the owner has already been heard first, as when the owner filled in the intake form and sat in the first discovery session, the test still works: ask sellers the same five questions and compare, remembering that your ears heard the owner first, so look hard at the gaps. If sellers cannot be reached, the brief states plainly that it reflects the owner's view, and schedules a check at the direction meeting.

(1) Lay the design direction over the category map and mark every place where it departs from the rules. (2) Each departure must have one sentence: we break this rule so buyers see what. Any departure without that sentence goes back to the rule. Keep one main break, at most two; the others go back even if they have reasons, because many simultaneous departures make buyers sort the product into the wrong category. (3) The default place to break is among the habits. Breaking an entry ticket is an exception, allowed only when another category signal compensates, such as the product type printed large or a shape familiar to the category, and that break must go through step (4). (4) Place the mock-up into a real shelf photo, cover the name, and ask a few strangers what product this is and what catches their attention. Pass: they name the right category and point at the place deliberately made different. Fail: they name the wrong category (the break went too far), or nobody points at the difference (different, but nobody sees it).

(1) Before the first drawing, list the mandatory label content for the exact product type. Decree 37/2026/ND-CP on product labelling (replacing Decree 43/2017/ND-CP and Decree 111/2021/ND-CP from 23/01/2026) sets out required content such as product name, responsible organisation, origin, and specific items by product type; some categories also require mandatory warnings. (2) Reserve enough area for that content on the real packaging die line, at a readable size, before laying out the brand elements. (3) List what must not be said in that category: the Advertising Law 2012, amended by Law 75/2025/QH15, together with sector regulations, bans or limits certain claims, for example therapeutic claims for products that are not medicines, and some products may not be advertised at all. (4) For cosmetics, health supplements and some other groups, the label must match the product notification dossier. For some groups, such as health supplements, advertising copy must also have its content confirmed by the competent authority before use; for cosmetics the advertising content confirmation procedure was abolished from 15/02/2026, but copy must still match the notification dossier and the product owner bears responsibility. Ask whoever prepares the notification dossier whether the project's product group currently needs advertising content confirmation and whether a label change requires re-notification, then put that time into the project schedule. (5) Export goods follow the labelling law of the importing country. Laws change over time; each project checks the version in force, not the list from the previous project. Pass: the first drawing already has the mandatory panels in the right place and the copy avoids the forbidden list. Fail: the mandatory content is squeezed in last, the type shrinks, the layout breaks, or a whole batch has to be reprinted. This is craft advice, not legal advice: where the risk is real, have a lawyer or the person preparing the product dossier review the final version.

(1) Marketplace: place the product image into a screenshot of a real search results page on a phone, at the exact tile size used there. Add the promotional frames and marketplace badges currently in use on the image corners, crop square as the marketplace does, because corner details are the first to disappear. Look for two seconds, look away, say the name and product type. (2) Shelf: print a full-size mock-up, place it among real products or a full-size printed shelf photo, stand about two metres away, under light similar to a shop rather than office lighting. (3) Have someone who has never seen the design repeat both steps. Pass: the product is recognised in one look, the name is legible or the mark is recognised. Fail: you must come closer to tell whose it is, or the detail most praised at the approval meeting disappears at small size. For a mark placed beside other marks on the same shelf, also check by 8.08.