Success by Design

Package design has become increasingly important to the success of a product. With all the visual noise customers face as they shop, a package must be distinctive, eye-catching, and, nowadays, useful to the customer beyond holding the goods purchased. It also must be able to be processed in packaging lines that often are not customized. Designing such packaging poses several challenges to designers everywhere and to the printers who furnish the materials to be run on the lines prior to shipment. Printers play an important role during this entire process.

Kimberly-Clark (K-C, Dallas) recently engaged Great Northern Corp. (Appleton, Wis.) to create a package for its new product, Kleenex® Hand Towels. The package for these hand towels contains 60 single-use, disposable paper hand towels. It doubles as a dispenser that can sit on a counter or towel bar. The product line is completely new and launched in March. The resulting design is due to close collaboration between K-C and Great Northern, which manufactures the cartons at its StrataGraph facility in Oshkosh, Wis.

Design criteria

Great Northern offers structural design services along with its printing capabilities. For this product, K-C designed the carton and the graphics, and Great Northern implemented them in the finished product, according to Andrew Bakken, technical leader, family care global growth for K-C. "We worked with Great Northern to prototype every aspect of the carton: inks, coatings, die lines, perforations, scoring, adhesives, and so on," he says. According to Don Schroeder, president, Great Northern, K-C was looking for something eye-catching and unique, and something that would provide secondary usage in its design. One aspect of the package is its rhombus shape. "This particular case is designed so it can set on a vanity when it is oriented with the point up," says Schroeder. "It can also be used with a towel rack with the point down. You tuck the box into the towel bar, and you can pull towels out one by one."

Bakken adds, "The carton was designed to be used either upright on the counter or upside down on a towel bar. We wanted to provide the towel right where the user needed it. We wanted the carton to fit into a bathroom décor so we chose colors that would match or coordinate with bathroom fixtures. The metallic finish and embossed pattern added to the 'fixture' look." Colors of the cartons include bronze, platinum, and aquamarine.

Graphically, Schroeder states that K-C required two elements: to make sure all the consumer information was available and that the consumer can throw away all that information that is no longer needed while maintaining the box's "elegant appeal." In essence, it needed to communicate as well as maintain shelf appeal.

Structurally, the package had to fit a packaging line that was being designed concurrently with the packaging, so there were a number of prototypes. "It was a significant challenge primarily because filling equipment was built specifically for this product," says Schroeder. "So we couldn't necessarily test the product on the filling line because it did not exist. As the filling line was being developed we could work back and forth and develop specs that would work for both the box maker and the equipment manufacturer."

The design of the total package presented a number of challenges for Great Northern. First, the package is two parts: a folding carton in a unique shape and the overwrap. Also, there was an inside printed window with critical placement to aid single-pull dispensing and provide additional in-use brand recognition. The box also featured a 45-degree grain direction scoring profile to form on K-C's custom-designed filling equipment. It required customized interior flaps that would form and seal on automated equipment, and the perforated tear-out provides an easy-open, clean window, and holds its integrity throughout the production and supply chain.

Printing challenges

Schroeder cites two significant printing challenges for this project. First, the boxes use a very high level of metallic inks to provide 100 percent coverage. Metallic inks are difficult to print because of the large particle size in the inks. Great Northern also had to come up with something that would have a high rub resistance. The company worked with its coating vendors to run a variety of machine trials to come up with the right recipe. The need for the high rub resistance has to do with the embossed areas of the carton. "Not only is this going to have some pretty heavy-duty use in the rest room, but if you look at the bottom of the box, you have embossed bumps sticking up," says Schroeder. "If you slide those back and forth, they are real susceptible to abrasion. So coming up with a really high rub-resistant coating was a challenge."

According to Bakken, the StrataGraph operation at Great Northern was, "instrumental in recommending and providing key components such as inks and coatings that gave us the scuff and water resistance required for this product. It also supplied adhesives tailored to provide an easy release of our outer poly wrap without leaving a residue on the carton."

Carton specs

The Kleenex Hand Towel package's 45-degree angled top joins a shiny embossed rub-resistant surface, and a film overwrap.

Great Northern used UV inks and UV coatings for the carton, for two reasons. "We used them primarily because they allow us to run the process at a much higher speed because the inks dry almost instantaneously with the energy curables," asserts Schroeder. "In addition, UV inks and UV coatings allow us a lot of flexibility in terms of gloss levels. We were able to move back and forth with K-C to get the exact gloss level of the carton coupled with the rub levels that made sense for them."

The paper used for the carton was also carefully selected. "We chose a grade that was certified and maintained our chain of custody through the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC)," says Schroeder. "That way, you'd have full environmentally friendly credentials on every box." Choosing a grade of paper and manufacturer this way allows K-C to know exactly where the paper came from. In addition, the grades chosen allow Great Northern to do an effective job with the embossing, as well as building moisture resistance into the grade so it wouldn't fail in environments high in moisture. For example, where cut edges might have microfractures in the coating, the paper itself underneath is sufficiently strong to prevent any problems.

Printers play key role

Package printers have become a critical part of the design process. No longer are they just expected to print whatever the designer devises. Today, the printer must be brought in early in the process. There are more variables today than ever before that must be addressed before dropping a design on a printer's doorstep.

"The earlier you can get the printer and package designer involved in the process the better off you're going to be relative to material selections," says Schroeder. "Also, if [the CPC] has a certain look or feel it's trying to achieve, the printer has a lot more experience working with a variety of different customer bases and might be able to offer suggestions that the CPC hadn't even thought about."

For K-C, the printer's role is very important to economically maintaining the brand. "The Kleenex brand has developed a high level of aesthetics, and, to maintain this, we have an internal design process," says Bakken. "For us, the printer and package supplier play a role in delivering this design in a cost-effective manner. This includes helping modify the design as needed to run efficiently on our package-filling equipment."

Schroeder adds that CPCs invest a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to develop a look or feel. Therefore, he reiterates that a CPC should work with its printer and package producer and their design teams, up front, to come up with a package that is going to perform throughout the entire supply chain from graphic reproduction to working with an automated filling line. "I would encourage CPCs to seek out and work with packaging companies that really have invested significantly in their design backbone so that they know they can have a reliable supplier to help them meet their packaging needs," he concludes.

Bakken concisely sums up what it ultimately takes to design a successful package. "Understand and identify what the consumer wants, and then deliver it flawlessly." pP