Build it
Make it sell
Keep it running
Packaging design
Three tests that look like one job.
A pack is seen at two metres on a shelf, at reading distance in a hand, and at four hundred pixels on a white product page. Those are different problems, and solving one of them often breaks another.
The two ends
The shelf and the screen want different things.
On a shelf a pack is seen from two metres, at an angle, beside competitors, under light nobody chose. It has to be identifiable before it is readable — a shape, a block of colour, one word. Detail at that distance is not detail, it is noise.
On a product page the same pack appears at four hundred pixels, alone, on white, with nothing beside it to compare against. Now the detail is the whole argument: the surface, the finish, the small print that somebody will zoom in to read before deciding.
Designing for one end and photographing for the other afterwards is where most of the avoidable cost hides. We plan both from the start — the packshot session is booked while the artwork is still open, not after it has gone to print. On the shop side that continues into the product page itself.
In this order
Three stages, and only the first cannot be undone.
Once tooling exists, the first group is settled for the life of the product. Everything after it can still be changed.
Stage one
Settled before anything is drawn
The unglamorous part, and the one most often skipped.
- The dieline from your actual producer, not a template that is close
- Material and finish, because both change how the colour comes out
- Print method, because it decides what is even possible
- Every piece of information that has to appear, and the room it needs
Stage two
Then designed
Where the pack becomes recognisable at both distances.
- Shelf presence: shape, colour block, the one word read at two metres
- The label at reading distance, where the detail earns its place
- A variant system, so the second flavour does not need a new design
- How it photographs — planned here rather than discovered later
Stage three
Checked before the run
Four checks that cost a day and save a print run.
- A proof on the real material, not on office paper
- Colour against the press profile your producer actually uses
- Everything positioned against the real dieline once more
- A physical mock-up, folded, held, looked at from two metres
The reason stage one gets the emphasis is that it is the only one where a mistake is permanent. A colour can be adjusted between runs; a die cannot. Which is also why we ask for your producer’s specification before we ask what the pack should look like — and why the identity needs to exist before any of this starts.
What you receive
Files your producer opens without calling back.
- Print-ready artworkPDF/X with the press profile your producer uses, fonts embedded, bleed and trim where they belong.
- Artwork on the real dielinePositioned against the actual cutting die rather than a template that was two millimetres out.
- A folded mock-upSo the pack can be held and looked at before anybody commits to a run of ten thousand.
- The packshot for the shopPhotographed in the same session, cut out, sized for the product page and ready to upload.
- Variant filesSet up so a new flavour or size is a small job rather than a repeat of the whole thing.
- Editable source filesYours to keep. If you change producer, the next one starts from your files rather than from a PDF.
The packshot is the item most often forgotten and the one your shop needs first. Photographing the pack while the artwork is still open costs almost nothing; doing it six weeks later, after the run, means booking a session for a single object. More on how the two halves connect on the brand and shop page.
Do you have a producer already?
If you do, send us their dieline and material specification — that is the entire starting point. If you do not, that is the first thing to settle, and we will tell you exactly what to ask them for.