Sometimes, it’s good to step back from the speeds, feeds, and tech specs to reflect on the fact that packages and labels can be, well, downright beautiful. Eye-beguiling examples of the aesthetic gems that high-end production makes possible are all over the Internet.

Savor this roundup of “60+ Beautiful and Creative Packaging Designs” from youandsaturation, Bruno Moura’s design blog. JoAnne Hines, known to many people as “The Packaging Diva,” keeps a gallery of standouts she calls her “500 Club” on Pinterest. Each year, Package Design magazine devotes an issue to award-winning entries from various professional packaging competitions. Brand Packaging has its own annual showcase of editor’s picks.

None of this is just art for art’s sake. If a consumer-product package looks good, it’s all in the interest of promoting and popularizing the brand it serves. Writing in Forbes, marketing expert Roger Dooley notes that even the relatively plain packaging used for shipping can exert a strong influence on the recipient’s perception of the product it contains, depending on the crucial first impression the package makes when delivered. “That first impression can make the product better and the brand more desirable, or it can create a negative perception that will tarnish both,” Dooley observes.

A package looks the way it looks primarily because of the emotional reaction it means to stimulate. The look is becoming increasingly less generic. Filip Weymans, director of marketing for labels and packaging at Xeikon, recently told attendees at a packaging conference in Sweden that triggering personalized emotional response has become as important a function for packaging as conveying information about the product.

“As a consumer, an individual…we have the ability in various ways to express who we are, by the way we dress, and the media and the Internet and other channels. We see that brands start to experiment with this,” Weymans said. He predicted the coming of an “age of emotion” in which brand owners and their service providers will find new ways to use packages and labels as emotional levers.