Challenges faced by packaging designers

As a packaging designer, how do you view the value of prepress, printing, and paper processing to your value? Is it very useful or not necessary at all? Do you think that understanding of these related knowledge is necessary and can help you design a perfect packaging pattern?

Maybe some people's answer is negative, because he thinks that having these understandings in his head will only make himself more aware of many limitations in actual production, hinder the development of design ideas, and his talents will not be displayed. And some people's answer is yes, because without this knowledge, you can't design a product that can actually be produced, but only a pretty picture, or a design concept that can never be turned into a real commodity.

From the point of view of the prepress professional, in order to realize the beautiful packaging design to the actual product, the prepress designer knows as much as possible about the prepress, printing and paper product processing process. necessary.

Let's start with how to define what kind of packaging design is called successful design. A successful design product should meet or exceed all prepress requirements; increase product sales through visual presentation; have brand awareness, increase brand asset value, and achieve cost savings through design improvements and/or material savings effect. This is what I think is the perfect design - a "pretty picture" that meets the packaging design definition.

Design items tampering

If you don't think about printing in the design process, your work may be changed during the prepress process. There are many possible changes in the work, perhaps the original author's subjective design changes in accordance with the needs of the production, may need to be changed so much that the original author's design intentions become bland or even completely obliterated.

These changes are necessary to meet the needs of the printing and paper processing processes. When the changes are very obvious, the new proofs must be handed over to the product owner or design company for reconfirmation. For small batches of India, reaffirmation is a very tedious, time-consuming and costly process. The time schedule also has to change, putting a lot of pressure on prepress workers, leaving little time for post-processing such as printing and paper processing. All of this extra work comes at a price, but if you know more about prepress, printing, and paper processing, you will avoid these unnecessary tasks.

Investment charging

When corrugated packaging graphic designers take the initiative to invest in production processes such as prepress, printing, and paper processing, they have the ability to display the originally designed graphics on the product sales shelves, without or with minor changes. Thus it is possible to retain the initial design intent of the package.

What needs to be learned? At present, there are many kinds of printing methods are used in various forms of packaging and printing, including flexographic printing, lithographic offset printing, gravure printing, screen printing, wet compression printing, digital printing, and mixed printing. If designers want to be able to design qualified works for different printing needs, they must learn the basic principles of prepress, printing and paper processing.

The best way to get this knowledge is to work with prepress companies who have a wide range of customer print processes. Communication at work allows you to gain a lot of knowledge, so that you can understand how to design your project from the perspective of the prepress, and can understand the advantages and disadvantages of the process of printing and paper products. If you work with prepress staff, you have access to a series of prepress, print, and paper processing processes. For you, this experience helps you understand what kind of design is suitable for actual production. , And can be sensitive to the necessary design process.

Many prepress companies and printers have a strong relationship of cooperation. Through these relationships, you can follow your design work step by step until it is finally made into a packaged product. This kind of training method to track product production is the most effective way for designers to learn professional knowledge.
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Benefits after training

A designer with professional knowledge can complete design work with confidence. A professionally trained designer will understand the process behind his/her designed product – various advantages and limitations in the process of printing and paper processing. The following information will also be obtained:
* Need a few color printing
* Can a spot color be broken down into four colors
* Whether it will use varnishes (waterborne, UV), whether to print white ink
* Is it possible to use spot colors (e.g. metallic paint, silver foil, fluorescence)
* Overprinting of several colors of ink (for example, printing on wet-on-wet printing, printing on corrugated paper and flexible materials)
* Screening method (random, traditional or hybrid)
* Handle small patterns correctly (multicolor, small dots, dot gain, etc.)
* The width of the thinnest line and the weight of the printing material on the Yang picture and the Yin picture
* Registration problems (front and back register, register lines)
* Substrate materials (metal, coated paper, offset paper, face paper, kraft paper, etc.) that will be used
* Image processing (RGB, ICC profile)
* The largest possible network expansion
* Whether the package needs embossing
* Consider the connection of the folded text when folded
* Printing and bleeding
* file format
* Whether there will be missing fonts A well-designed solution should include a file format that meets the requirements, with all the linked files and all the necessary elements for the transfer to the prepress company. When you have all of the basics of prepress, printing, and paper processing, you can solve all your doubts before risking blindly into the design process.

Are you interested in gaining a good reputation in the packaging industry? Do you want to design a work that breaks through the printing requirements? Do you want your work to help increase the sales of products and the value of brand equity? Do you want to reduce the cost or material usage of the entire packaging production through your own work?

If your answer is yes, then I suggest that you go to charge and learn the basics of prepress, printing, and paper processing in the packaging industry. The knowledge you get will certainly play a role in the design process, so that your design concept will eventually be realized on the packaging, opening up a broader market for you.

Source: Bison