Presentation is Just Part of the Story

Integrating packaging design with the realities of process capabilities is key to a project's success.

WHY DO WE reach for one package and not another on the grocer's shelf? What makes a package unique? On the continuum from concept to production, where does innovation live? The answer, in a word, is design.

The transformation of an idea into a dimensional shape with identifiable characteristics begins with a designer's aesthetic and emotional connection to that idea. As the creative cycle builds, additional factors come into play: the requirements of the product engineers, marketers engaged in product development and brand extension, procurement personnel, and printer/converters, whose concerted effort will deliver a package manufactured to specifications, at the lowest practical cost, under optimal conditions, by the right print provider.

According to Dean Lindsay of Dean Lindsay Design, an independent Chicago-based design firm specializing in package design and consumer products development, "What the loop usually is missing is the creative input. Consequently, the design brief I receive directs me to create an innovative package." In doing so, however, a designer has to understand the real-world constraints of the project, including budget and process, to conceive and create a package that will both grab a consumer's attention and fit the required performance specifications.

"We look at the entire supply chain if we are doing our job correctly," Lindsay says.

In fact, the need for a roadmap that details mutual understandings and process details up front is so important that it is largely responsible for a trend among packaging suppliers to control more of the process by bringing their design agencies in-house. This value-added trend is also reflected in the growing menu of services provided by mega trade shops like Schawk and Matthews International, as well as in the proliferation of design-specific enhancements to popular packaging workflows.

Communication and control

Berlin Packaging, the largest stocking supplier of rigid packaging in the United States, favors an integrated approach with the dedicated design function at the hub. The company offers custom branding and package development services through its Studio One Eleven design division.

Studio One Eleven was established five years ago as a virtual studio staffed by a cadre of freelance designers. When the concept ultimately proved unworkable, Berlin determined that product development work requires close collaboration and must be done in-house rather than outsourced.

According to Director Scott Jost, all Studio One Eleven designers have consultative backgrounds. This is important in the agency's ability to bring a marketing perspective to the production side and process knowledge to the marketing side. Jost himself holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.

"In that initial meeting, we go to great lengths to let the client (brand owner) know what the options are, such that nobody is left up in the air as to techniques and process," Jost says.

Designer as facilitator

As a dedicated design house, Studio One Eleven starts a project not by asking what the client (brand owner) wants, but by asking for the brand charter, its history and its evolution. "Then we go away and analyze it, and eventually produce an analysis document maybe 30 to 40 pages in length, wherein we dissect the label and every aspect of the brand—its hierarchy, architecture, structures, human factors, materials, finishes. Then we make a list of recommendations. This is something you don't get from an independent design house without a six-figure price tag," Jost says.

"You can look at the distribution business as a commodity business," Jost says. "Over time, Berlin, found that the profit on a custom-designed package was higher, as were the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty associated with custom-designed packages. Thus, the decision to establish and support an in-house design studio was made primarily for economic reasons."

"We can have conversations with people who don't normally talk to suppliers and communicate what we're trying to achieve from a branding point of view," Jost explains. "We speak marketing's language. We can ask the questions nobody is asking because we understand both process and marketing."

Meet the middle man

At the other end of the spectrum is the printer/converter, upon whose shoulders the burden of high-quality, low-cost, and timely production ultimately rests. The primary concern of most printer/converters is to be able to work with an error-free file. Consequently, the brand owner or design house will often turn to a trade shop to manage the process.

According to John Czlapinski, IT manager for Schawk-Kalamazoo, this could involve placing artwork and design personnel on-site with the packager, in effect, recreating the in-house environment á la Berlin Packaging/Studio One Eleven. Or it may involve selecting or recommending an appropriate print partner from a network of geographically convenient contacts, saving the client potentially tens of thousands of dollars over a conventional design shop. The goal? "We would like to manage your brand," Czlapinski states.

When issues involve communication and control for a color-critical, high-quality brand, Studio One Eleven claims to have benefited from the involvement of mega firms like Matthews and Schawk in shepherding a project to completion. "With their level of sophistication and process knowledge," Jost says, "we know up front who the box printer is and what the level of production and scrutiny is likely to be. Everything is set. You know what to expect."

"The first thing to understand is that the design agency never really touches the printer," says Kevin Chop, operations manager for Matthews Packaging Graphics & Design (Matthews PG&D), a division of Matthews International. The company provides creative design, prepress, digital asset management, 3D renderings, digital photography, and Web site development to the packaging industry and its end-users, primarily consumer product companies, converters, and ad agency customers. In addition, the company provides early support and expertise in planning, developing, and integrating media programs of all types.

The operative word here is "early." If Matthews has a brand-owner relationship, Chop says, the expectation is for Matthews PG&D to sit in as far upstream as possible to avoid bottlenecks later. "We keep our finger on the pulse of realism," he adds.

Color by numbers

While Matthews PG&D has its own in-house design agency, Chop also conducts training with outside design agencies, sharing generic color profiles for flexo, high-end sheetfed, folding cartons, etc. Much of the training centers on image editing, showing designers how their monitors are affected by environmental conditions (variable temperature, changes in lighting, etc.), and that decisions based on perceived color alone are unreliable. Some designers are receptive, others are not.

"Designers try to do everything by color," Chop says, explaining that a designer's highly subjective reliance on the visual can result in something being sent to the proofer that is "a nightmare"—when a file has to be rebuilt to the target proof, a costly and time-consuming process. As color separation specialists, he says, "We do it by the (color) numbers." If this offends some artistic sensibilities, Chop says, it is a necessary precaution to take if the goal is to build a file that can be accurately reproduced on press.

Hook me up, plug me in

It helps to have the right tools for the job. Mindful of the need to integrate preproduction and production workflows in package printing, software and workflow developers are marketing a variety of user-friendly, packaging-specific plug-ins designed to reconcile trapping and high-end packaging workflows for maximum consistency. Recognizing that the packaging market needs dedicated attention to its unique requirements, for example, Esko-Graphics recently launched its DeskPack suite of plug-ins for Adobe IIlustrator and Adobe Photoshop, enhancing those ubiquitous design tools with prepress functionality specifically for the packaging industry.

According to Jan De Roeck, Esko-Graphics' marketing director for packaging software, 80 percent of all packaging designs are initiated in Adobe Illustrator. While Adobe's suite of workflow tools "makes sense for general needs," he says, "the nature of packaging workflow, with its high-value brand assets, demands special attention."

High-performance plug-ins enable the integration of structural and graphic design, and provide support for special inks and varnishes, object selection, alignment, and styling tools that aren't part of the "generic" Adobe Illustrator toolset. To avoid file format conversions, DeskPack also builds in a preflight function that flags errors, ensuring a clean file.

Schawk-Kalamazoo uses DeskPack for its trapping features, which permit the designer to take a job created in Adobe Illustrator and stay inside it, without the need for cumbersome file conversions. In terms of prepress production, not only does DeskPack enable "total control over how files are built," Czlapinski says, "it sure beats doing it by hand."

Available from Artwork Systems is its ArtPro workstation software for the pre-production of labels and packaging. ArtPro, a high-end stand-alone package that runs on the Macintosh platform, includes many dedicated functions and tools to prepare graphics for a wide array of packaging production.

Jean-Marie Hershey is an author and editor specializing in the

graphic communications industry. She can be reached at

jmh@writehandcom.com.