Hello and welcome to design and business conversations for creatives. I'm
Cheyney and today i'm chatting with you about packaging design and how to work
with a packaging designer like myself. This video is going to be for you if you
have a business and you're looking to engage the services of a graphic
designer, who might specifically label themselves
as a packaging designer or not, but that's beside the point. In this video
I'm going to go through an overview of how to work with a graphic designer
and just share some tips. I'll go through barcodes and the differences between the
two most commonly used barcodes, then I'll go through the information that
needs to be on your packaging, then we'll discuss dye lines, mock-ups, and proofs,
and then lastly I'll just share some things for you to consider if you're new
to the packaging design process. So before you pitch your job to your designer,
you are going to want to consider who your packaging is for, you're going to
really want to understand who your ideal client is, and who you are targeting your
product to. If you're at the stage where you're working with a packaging designer,
I'm going to assume that you've already gone through the process of developing a
brand and an identity. If you haven't, stop watching this video and work on
that before you get to the packaging. When you approach your graphic designer
to work on your packaging project, it's good to supply them your logo in an eps
or ai or vector format and any accompanying brand guidelines or
style guidelines. I've said it once and I'll say it a thousand times, I am a
Pinterest freak. It is really helpful for me when a client comes to me with a
Pinterest board that's full of ideas, because it gives me a really good idea
of what style they like and perhaps what they're after in their packaging. You'll
want to think about where your product is sold. Have a look at the shelves in
the context where you envision your products sitting. Have a look at your
competitors and analyze what they're doing well in your opinion, and what
they're not doing well in your opinion, with selling their product.
Brief the designer and then let them do their magic. Step number two is
barcodes, and this is generally the first question I ask my clients. I'm not sure
why, I don't, it doesn't really make sense for why it's the first question but I do
want to ensure that the client has thought long term about where they want
their product to sit. If you have a product that will be in the supermarket,
or in a pharmacy, or if you're selling to retailers, you will want to consider
using a barcode. There are two main types of barcodes, UPC and EAN. UPC stands for
universal product code and has 12 numbers. UPC barcodes are generally what
are used in North America. The other type of barcodes are EAN, which stands for
European article number and that barcode has 13 numbers. If you're watching from
New Zealand, it's most likely that you want to use the EAN barcode. These, of
course, are just two of many many different variants of barcodes. If you
visit GS1, you can find out more about the different barcodes and what they're
used for. The next thing I ask my clients, before I work on the packaging, is what
information will be going on the packaging. So in different countries
there are different regulations for what need to appear on labels of different
products. Using the example, specifically, of food labels and cosmetic labels. I
can't speak for the rest of the world but I can speak for New Zealand, if you
are creating a label or packaging for food,
you must list the ingredients in order of the most to the least. Say you have a
tomato sauce and tomatoes is the main ingredient in your sauce, that will
appear first in the ingredients list. Another thing you must do with food
packaging and cosmetic packaging, is list the allergens. These will need to be in
bold and separated out. If your packaging is, say, alcohol, you have certain
obligations to meet in terms of how many standard drinks,
and do not drink if pregnant, and this will change from country to country so
if you aren't sure, make sure you find out what your label regulations are. Your
designer should have a good idea of these, however, you know your product best
and if your contract manufacturing a product, the person that formulated the
product will be able to tell you all of this information, which then you can pass
on to the designer. Another thing that will need to go on your product is the
weight, so either the mLs, or the ounces, fluid ounces, grams, whatever your product
is this will change. You need to have listed on your packaging contact
information, and that isn't just a website. You need to go as detailed as
having a website, an address, the more information you can get on the product,
the better. The buyer of your product needs to be able to contact you and in
New Zealand this is a label requirement, so make sure that you give this to your
designer before they start. Not everyone will have the budget to invest in
working with a copywriter for their packaging information or the blurb that
sells the product. However, I highly recommend you do this if you can.
Copywriters have a beautiful way with words and will help you sell your
product. I always read the blurbs on packaging on shampoos and conditioners
and it's so obvious when a company has not invested in a copywriter.
There are people out there reading the backs of product labels. Think of a wine
label, how many times have you been around someone and they turn over the
label and read the notes and the characteristics and want to know the
story of the product. So next I'm going to go into dye lines, mock-ups, and proofs.
This is one of the areas that when I have clients come to me, clients will
understand the least about it, so I just want to give a little bit of explanation
around what a dye line actually is. I printed out a blank dye line for you to
have a look at. So the process of working with a dye line is either, your designer
will create a unique dye line for you in your packaging, or if you're working with
a supplier, they might have an existing dye line that you will send to your designer.
I would say, for me, it's about 70/30. 70 being the client supplying me with an
existing dye line from their supplier, and about 30% me actually making
the dye line, and coming up with a creative solution to package the product.
So how does it get from a dye line into the packaging? This all occurs on the
print side, so the printer will have what we call a "knife", and the "knife" is a
wooden block with a blade in this outline cut out, which creates
essentially a cookie cutter for paper. So the "knife" will come down and stamp out in a
thick stack of paper, which will then create your dye line. I have an example
of a dye line which I designed, and had a knife made, and then what it looks like
when it is stamped out. This was, Camille Co was my first business baby, and this
is soap packaging. So if we go back to the dye line, these red lines indicate where
the packaging will be folded, and this outside line just indicates to the
designer to bleed the artwork off the edge, so when the cookie cutter comes and
stamps out the artwork, there is some leeway for it to move. About three
millimeters generally. When your designer receives the dye line, or makes the dye
line, they can then fit the artwork within the dye line and create magic.
A packaging designer will be able to think from 2D into 3D. They will understand
very well, how to get this flat piece of artwork into a nice-looking box. For
example, this dye line into this box, with a front, and a top, and a bottom, and sides. I
have some examples of some packaging design that I've created for clients in the
past
This one here is a box for a serum. I don't know if you can see the texture on
that. When I'm working with clients on their packaging, I work through my design
process which is probably a whole other video. I present mock-ups to the client,
which are just small-scale, printed out, and mocked up versions of my idea for
their packaging. When you're working with a designer on your packaging,
specifically if you're working with a third party supplier that might shift
anything around on the artwork before they print it, you're going to want to be
sure that you get a proof. A proof is just something that you can glance your
eyes over and potentially mock-up yourself even, to check all the details
on your packaging, and check that it folds in the way that you want to, and
it's going to work in its 3D form. Lastly, I'll just share some things to
consider or some things that are worth mentioning that sometimes people don't
know about or don't understand. If your product is a cosmetic, it's worth talking
to your supplier, or if you're making the product yourself, forecasting whether
that product will change in color or texture over time. Quite often cosmetics
with vanilla fragrance in them will brown over time. If your product is
light-sensitive, you might consider putting it in an opaque vessel, or if
it's in glass, maybe amber glass instead of clear glass. If you're selling food,
quite often people who will be purchasing food products will want to
see the food. If not via a window, perhaps via an image. This isn't always the case
and there're definitely products out there that sell well without a product
window or an image. But if you think of a loaf of bread, generally you can see the
bread. Or if you think of a muesli bar box, they'll generally have the picture
of the muesli bar on the packaging. Another quick little tip is this little
line here. This is a packaging project that I worked on for a client and this
little line here just indicates, to the crimper, where the middle of the
packaging is. This this little symbol here, it's like a little container with 12M
in the middle. That is indicative of the shelf life, so if you're working with
food you're going to need to have a best before date or an expiry date or a batch
number. For products, you're going to need to put on a shelf life, which can be given
to you from your contract manufacturer or supplier. I hope this gives you enough
information. Feel free to message me in the comments if there's something you would
like me to talk about, just let me know and I can make another video or answer
your questions in the comments below. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up,
click the links below to subscribe. Thank you for watching and I'll see you next
time. Bye.