When it comes to packaging, the market has set new and hard demands. Personalisation at scale is the ideal strategy for doing so, even though it initially appears gimmicky. A good example is personalised packaging. Brands want to develop a personal relationship with consumers so they can promote to them. Personalisation allows brands to speak directly to consumers instead of going through retailers, who are constantly guarding their customers’ data and purchasing patterns. In addition, almost all packaging technologies have evolved during the past few years. In places where conventional printing methods once ruled supreme, digital printing is now capable of producing shorter runs on a wider variety of substrates than ever before, and hybrid processes combine the advantages of conventional and digital technologies.
Making art requires a lot of work.
The process of packaging artwork design hasn’t changed all that much throughout time. It still relies heavily on manual labour. Packaging artwork is painstakingly created by packaging designers in programmes like Adobe Illustrator, then it enters a workflow for approval, goes through a post-processing workflow, and then goes through a step-and-repeat before being sent to the press. Due to how identical the artwork is for various iterations of the same product, a lot of the production effort is repetitive and low-value. The creation of variations of the same packaging takes a lot of work.
More variations of products are being released than ever.
Product lines are being expanded by several brands. It is a crucial tactic for businesses looking to increase their revenue and market share. Companies regularly produce new variations or improve products at the end of their life cycles because consumer demands, interests, and tastes vary over time and in order to stay ahead of the competition. Brands can increase sales by offering new varieties to their existing clientele, who are simpler to persuade than potential new clients. Variety is what consumers demand, and brands are eager to provide it. The number of variations keeps growing, and some firms go even further by producing limited or special editions of an already-available product.
The number of variations increases the number of resources needed.
The majority of the resources are needed for variant manufacturing; for example, if a product is available in 3 sizes and 5 flavours, the designer must produce 15 artwork files. We’re up to 45 files if the artwork needs to be translated into three languages. Many times, designers will produce each of those files individually. All 45 files will need to be approved by a product manager. Short-run digital production has the potential to add even more interest. For example, a local market might wish to conduct a campaign based on a sporting event or a local merchant might want to design regionalized packaging. These requirements act as further multipliers. It doesn’t take long for the amount of effort and chance of error to become overwhelming.
Packshots require additional iterations for e-commerce
In the past, a product’s packaging was the best place to provide information about it. The majority of purchases were made in a physical store where customers could see, touch, and examine packaging. The choice to buy was made when a product was actually placed in the shopping basket.
Consumers still add items to shopping carts today. However, the carts are now all digital. Additionally, buyers are more likely to use their phones’ “add to cart” buttons, which presents some additional difficulties for pack shots.
Even with an image only a few centimetres wide, the client must be aware of four crucial pieces of information: the brand, the product, the variety, and the number in the box. Merely downscaling a pack photo won’t do this. Specialized mobile ready hero images are needed for mobile e-commerce (m-commerce). A standardisation guideline published by GS1 demonstrates how pack shots for mobile e-commerce can be adjusted to successfully communicate the four fundamentals.
This means that packaging designers must create an entirely new set of versions for usage online. Additionally, they might need to be developed to meet the unique needs of various e-retailers.
You are expected to use the data that brands have carefully curated.
Brand owners work hard to safeguard their reputation and maintain accurate product information in centralised databases. Images and other resources used in packaging artwork are stored in digital asset management systems, and product information management systems have access to every last bit of information in multiple languages about a product and all of its variants, including the right name, ingredients, nutritional information, legal information on allergens, preparation instructions, and a virtually endless list of other details.
There are two ways things can go wrong when adding product information into the artwork file: human error, or updates to product information that don’t make it into the finished artwork because the designer is not notified. These curated data sources are thought of as the only source of truth. The link to curated data must be live in order to prevent content problems and guarantee accurate information. Any modifications or updates to it must be incorporated in the artwork document instantaneously, without any involvement from the designer, and they must be able to flow to the document as a result of a query.
Now What?
If you create packaging artwork today, you have a decision to make: do you want to automate the tedious, repetitive aspects of the process and produce at scale, or do you want to rely on more traditional, manual procedures that can scale only by adding more manpower?
In either case, the market’s expectations are changing so quickly that you should probably reconsider how you create packaging artwork. Large portions of the production process can be streamlined, automated, and error-proofed with Design Automation, albeit the initial master files still need to be created by an experienced specialist. The greatest opportunity for optimization may be seen in the development of various versions and mobile-ready hero images; these processes could be carried out with less manual effort and more technology.
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