The Designers Guide to Packaging

Here are five top tips for packaging design!

1. Pantones are King

In packaging the importance of Pantones is paramount, whether it be your standard 485C or a Metallic 877C, knowing how to work with them in both Illustrator or Photoshop is ESSENTIAL.

2. If you don’t know ASK!

Because if you don’t ask you won't know how a good artworker can be the key to finishing a design well. You may think you can handle channel splitting an image into 3 Pantones but without experience it’s simply not as easy as it looks (and it doesn’t look easy). So if the thought of such things gives you chills during the night get yourself a good artwoker for a day or two and head to the bar for a relaxing alcoholic beverage.

3. Know your market

Although point 2 states “Don’t be afraid to do something out of the ordinary” it doesn’t hurt to know your market, so we say research, research, research, because as the Art of War states “if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.”… For those that didn’t get it, that’s a metaphor for do lots of research.

4. Resources are there to be used

From a good photographer, typographer, illustrator or visualiser there’s a world of resources out there to help you produce award winning designs. Some great resources for design professionals is The Directory of Illustration, also illustration and photography agencies such as Illustration Web, or just search on google.

Also the use of low cost image banks for preparing mock ups of first stage designs. Check out Shutterstock, iStock, Thinkstock, Photos.com and Fotolia to get yourself started.

5. Learn your shortcuts

You spend 8 hours a day using Adobe’s fine wares so why not speed up the design process by dedicating some to time learning some shortcuts. Also using tutorial sites such as lynda.com or YouTube, which is full of amazing tutorials delivered to you by world class tutors. Our top tip for photoshop: shift + alt + delete = Fill preserving transparency, chances are you didn’t know that !

Disclaimer: Some images hosted on this blog have been collected from external research associates to be presented as stimulus to those seeking news from the cutting edge of packaging. The imagery is not being presented as our own and copyright still belongs to the owner/creator of said work.