Design is critical to most businesses, they need great branding, iconography, marketing and sales collateral and, critically, product development.
There is a vast array of brilliant agencies out there to help and guide you through the process and make your vision a reality.
However, when it comes to the design of packaging and promotional print, there is a strong and consistent message from the market that this area of design often falls outside of the parameters of what would constitute more traditional ‘creative services’.
1) They understand how products are actually made.
Many of us have had the experience of working with a fantastic agency and enjoying every minute. Great ideas, boundless energy and the buzz of creativity as we bring our business to life. Yet …. this can get in the way when it comes to our packaging design. Yes, we all want awesome! We all want innovation, incredible multi-layered graphic impact, delight in customer experience. However, we have to ensure that what is designed can be made and what can be made can be afforded within our budget…
This is the great advantage of engaging and employing an expert manufacturer to join the party at this point. Their skill in the actual process of making something, their understanding of how machinery works to create end product and their ability to marry this to your commercial requirements makes them invaluable to you at this critical juncture. They can make your dreams come true, not just on paper, in actual product.
2) Print! Print! Print!
Just as packaging comes in a myriad of different forms so does print. Flexographic, screen print, lithography … digital. All have their unique requirements when it comes to achieving what you want. Each needs expert assistance to ensure that the print detail is provided to production in a way that can go straight to machine. Each process tackles the huge complexity of colour in a different way. We know it should be intuitive but so many businesses don’t engage with manufacturing when it comes to print. Bring the manufacturers to the table and employ them to work with you to get the results you want. It can avoid a huge amount of disappointment and issues further down the line.
3) Prototyping Services.
One of the key ways to assess our new/amended/updated products and their packaging is through high quality prototyping; the closer we can get a prototype to an actual finished product, the better for our sales and marketing teams. Prototypes also allow us to engage with future suppliers to show exactly what we want and how we want it made. An expert manufacturer with the correct prototyping equipment is well placed to work with you on bringing your vision into being a reality and, furthermore, ensuring that the final product is what you want.
4) Cost Effectiveness.
There is no more finely tuned supply chain than that which supplies the manufacturing sector. Regionalised, nationalised and global procurement expertise has driven efficiency and cost management through the supply chain for several decades. Manufacturers are acutely aware of this and will ensure that cost effectiveness is a key component of the creative and design solution. Expertise in the understanding of substrate, print methodology and manufacturing process being a significant factor as to why we should engage and employ manufacturers for our packaging and promotional print design.
5) Sustainability
As with cost effectiveness, manufacturing has led the way in sustainable sourcing and in using its expertise and innovation to look towards alternatives in designing and creating greener options for packaging. There are a vast array of initiatives already either implemented or underway for cardboard alternatives to plastic product and in reducing the amount of unnecessary packaging used throughout the supply chain. If we want to explore and create more sustainable packaging then it’s critical to engage and employ the companies that can guide us through the process and who understand the viability of implementing these alternatives into our own process.
Get in touch and find out what our team of expert designers can offer you.
