Monthly Archives: July 2023

A Guide to sustainability 

Packaging is a key part of sales driving, and this is true for a lot of things, including drinks.

When you’re packaging wine, beer, non-alcoholic beverages, even spirits, there are now new captivating and innovative designs. 

The way the packaging is done is simple, since you want something that’s impactful, shaping the perceptions a customer might have for these.

According to studies, it was found that almost ¾ of the customers that are there do believe that the way products are presented impact the decisions to purchase.

Even if you have the prettiest beverage item available on the market, you want to make sure that the design, along with the branding, is on point so that it shows off the product qualities and convince the people to buy them off you. 

Using a sustainable bottle type of packaging is a good way to get an advantage over others, due to the nature of the way customers are deciding what to buy, and their choices. Here, we’ll look at the different types of sustainable box packaging, and why it matters at the end of the day.

Drink Packaging 

The right design for drink packaging plays a huge role in making sure that the presentation of packaging is appealing, safe, and also shows off the variety of different drinks, including alcohol, soft drinks, and even tea and coffee. You’ve got to pay attention to this for the ideal packaging experience. 

Primary packaging is usually what houses the drink.  The primary packaging is the packaging that’s directly in contract in most cases when it comes to the product. The primary packaging must make sure that the safety, integrity, even the preservation is in place. 

For most of these drinks, you want the primary packaging to either be in cans of glass, metal, or even cartons and bottles that are plastic.

Glass is one that’s used primarily for wine and beer, as it’s sturdy, and offers protection, while also showing the clarity and the color of the product. 

Metal, especially aluminum, is the one that’s used for some alcohol, but most soft drinks such as cans because it’s durable, can protect easily, offers a flexibility to the design, and also is sustainable. It offers product preservation, quality, and it does cool the beverage down quickly. Also, due to it being light and easy to transport around, it’s usually one that many retailers flock to.

Plastic is the other one that’s used for most drinks due to the fact that it is light, and also offers versatility when it comes to design. It’s manipulated into different shape ranges, and also is sealed in order to stop leakage.

Finally, we’ve got paper and paperboard, which is what a lot of coffee, hot drinks, and even tea bags are put into.  This is great for storage and also for ensuring that this has the right integrity of the product that’s there, creating convenience and also offers product freshness preservation in a ton of cases too. 

The secondary Packaging 

You want to make sure as we all that you’ve got secondary packaging, which is the packaging along the outside that protects, and from there holds different drinks and their containers.  It’s great for organizing, grouping, and also separating different product items.

They can come in cardboard boxes, some mailers, postal boxes, and even different subscription boxes.

Remember that the goal of this packaging is to give support to the structure, and from there, protects the product when it’s being shipped, and gives the proper information for branding and other reasons as well too. 

How to Make Food Packaging POP 

If you’re someone who is stumped on how to bring your cupcakes and cake pops, or even jams and cakes to others, you’re not alone. The typical plastic container is so last season, and you want to use something that’s more eco friendly, while also looking good.

Well, we have the answer, and our food packaging is definitely quite unique, and provides you with a fun experience that you can do.

Food packaging doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s actually quite simple. The first thing to do is to measure the food packaging that you have, and the product itself. Chances are, you’re using something that’s not the right fitting size.

Because of the advent  of digital printing, there are now more ways than ever before to build and make packaging that really stands out. And what’s better, is if you’re not sure on whether a design will work, you can now purchase food packaging that runs only about 50 or so copies, so you can determine for yourself if this is the right option for you. 

The beauty of this packaging is its versatility. All of these come with snap lock base boxes, so they snap close, and will lock. This is great because it allows for product protection without having to add seals and other aspects. They’re easy to fold together, and then, once you have everything in place, you can place the items in there.

These are pretty sturdy and will withstand most jostles to a small degree. It might not survive from a high fall, but it may keep most of the product intact. 

Now, let’s talk about design.  Remember when we said these could be used for jams as well as cakes and other baked items? That’s true.  To put a product like that in there, just insert the jar, and then close this. The cool thing about this is that it’s very easy for you to get this set up, boosting the capabilities of this, wherever possible. 

As for the types of designs to make on this, the sky’s the limit. Your front is where you want to focus, and you should add the name of the product, the logo, and important graphics. For instance, orange jams may require you to put some oranges on there, and strawberries for strawberry jams. Whatever the case, go for packaging colors that fit the brand. 

If you have pink cake pops, consider a pastel color for these, as that will help with improving the way that this looks.

The top of this can have the name of the product there, for ease of use.  There are a lot of great ways for you to incorporate this, building the different aspects of the product however you wish to.

Finally, we’ve got the back of the box and the sides.  The back of the box can include nutritional information, which you can add into there if you need to. Not every single vendor may include the nutritional information for cake pops, but it’s a thought to consider, especially when you’re trying to improve your ability to boost the sales of the products that are here.

Finally, there’s the top. While it might not seem like much, there are still unique ways for you to boost this. consider adding some nice little design to the top of this to really add a nice effect.

Overall, food packaging is a great way to improve your items, and the right food packaging can win over customers. Consider these options when choosing to change your packaging too. 

Mandatory Information for Food Packaging 

The EU recently put in regulations on a European level to decide the mandatory information to be on food packaging of the products. What are they? Well, here, we’ll go over the food packaging that needs to be printed, and why each must be there. 

The Physical Product Form 

This is a product specification that discusses the state of the product. For instance, if the product is frozen, powdered, or concentrated. 

Table of nutritional Information 

Another thing that needs to be on there is the nutritional information table, which indicates the amount of calories in the product, along with the nutrients that sit within this product. Calories, fats, carbs, fibers, protein, and salt also must be included. They all need to be expressed on a per 100 grams or 100 milliliters of this product or based on a specified portion. 

Nutritional tables also need to be easy to see, and usually sit on the back part of the packaging, since the front is usually used for promotional purposes. 

Vegetable Fat and Allergens 

Along with the ingredients list in a lowered weight order, there are also lists for the allergens that must be in the product. For instance, gluten, nuts, eggs, and milk are commonly added. They also may highlight each of these allergens in a different font, size, or even a color so consumers can see this and realize it contains an allergen before consuming.

They also might specify the types of oils, or vegetable fats that get used in this. For example, palm oil, olive oil, hydrogenated fats, sunflower oils, and the like usually gets added. Most of the time, vegetable oils won’t do enough. Some companies, however, do bypass this legal vacuum and didn’t specify the exact vegetable oils that were used, so it hid that there was a chance they were using cheap, or bad ingredients. For example, palm oil and rapeseed oil were two common ones, and they usually were not included. 

Size of the Font 

The characters that get used for a lot of the food information needs to minimally be 1.2 millimeters, and usually the characters get printed in a lower case. For a smaller package, minimally, it must be .9 mm. 

Date of Expiration 

You also need to include the expiration date, especially on products that are very perishable, and usually, they precede it with the words “best if used by” so that the date that’s specified there talk about the best case for the product to be used.

Some products can handle a longer period of usage, and usually, that says “best before” instead.  That means that they can have this past that use date, without endangering themselves, especially in terms of health. However, there may be small changes in the health of a person if they use this after the expiration date. 

Storage conditions and the Usage Terms 

The person also needs to indicate on tehri products the best ways to store this. For instance, if it says to stay away from heat, or in a place that’s cool and dry, they must indicate such. 

Address and Origin country 

Finally, you need to make sure that you have the address of the company, and optionally, the production plant addresses. 

If there are certain products that have specific origins for their countries, you also want to make sure that you include this. 

Finally, everything must be written in languages that people are able to understand, especially in the EU. For instance, they will make sure that you have the same packaging that’s distributed to each of the different customers in various countries too. 

Creating Printing Files for Packaging Designs 

One thing that you’ll want to know how to do when you’re creating customized packaging, is make printing files for this.

Designing the right printing files is vital to your project’s success. This is because the source files have all of the information necessary to create great graphics, and results with the colors, and there are different elements which are positioned and designed based on the rules to avoid the ongoing problems with printing.

Most printing files must be created in what’s called CMYK mode to start with.

You can download different die cut templates that have printing files.  Your die cut is made up of three different kinds of paths. The green lines, which talk about the way the artwork needs to be extended outwards, the blue lines that talk about where the artwork will have some trimming, and then red lines that indicate the precise location for folding and scoring the box. 

The colors as well must not be used in the printing files that are there, because they do represent the way that the manufacturing information works. Some graphic elements that are realized through the spot colors options are not printed, or they may indeed get processed by the colors used for manufacturing.

Some beginners will look at this and think that their graphics should not cross the lines to cut.  This, however, is an incorrect thought, and ultimately, it depends on every single case. If you’ve got a background that’s colored, or an image that’s extended outwards towards these green boarders, during the creasing and die cutting part of this, your paperboard sheets might have some level of displacement based on microns, which is precisely why these graphics must be extended in order to bleed out so that the border isn’t totally white. 

Due to the requirements for the sheets, it’s vital to put together pictures, texts, and symbols that are 3/5 of a mm minimum from both the red and the blue lines, in order to stop them from being cut up, or on the crease itself. 

When you do this, try to overprint, because for these templates, this properly manages the colors. Be default as well, when you print out these colors and they overlap, the top color usually knocks out those under all of this.

Overprinting is oftentimes used to prevent the knockout of these colors, making them seem more transparent when it’s done in relation to the ink that’s underlying.

It’s vital to ensure that overprinting is done for the text in black that’s placed within backgrounds that are colored so that they aren’t out of register, a term that means that the text is not overlapping with backgrounds.

If this is not overprinted, there’s a white, bordered part of each of these typefaces.

In order to set the overprinting in your photo editing software, you’ve got to select the die cut layers, place this forward, and from there, choose the multiply layer effects. 

Then there is the black that goes along with this in the background colors, and the percentages are usually 100 just for the K a value. But, if you want to; enjoy a black background, and the K provided is not enough, you will have to change out the values of this, and the percentages ultimately depend on the technologies used. 

For images with higher resolutions, you want to make sure that the images, texts, and logos orientation is done based on what’s on the box.  Die cut templates show these external sides of the packaging as it’s opened, and each side makes the last part of the box.