Commissioning packaging that survives a shelf and a courier

Packaging is read in about a second

On a shelf or in a listing, a package gets a glance. What must survive that glance is what the product is and why it is different — in that order, and usually in fewer words than feels comfortable.

Designers who work in packaging spend most of their effort on hierarchy for exactly this reason.

The legal parts are not optional

Depending on what you sell, a label may have to carry weight or volume, ingredients, manufacturer details, a country of origin and other declarations. These take space and cannot be shrunk into illegibility.

Give your designer the full list before they lay anything out. Discovering a required declaration afterwards means redrawing, not adding.

• Everything legally required to appear
• Any certification marks
• Barcode, if you use one
• Contact details

Materials change the design

Ink behaves differently on coated card, uncoated card, kraft and film. A colour chosen on screen can look quite different on brown board, and fine detail can fill in on absorbent surfaces.

Decide the material early and tell the designer, rather than designing first and discovering the constraint at print.

Think about the whole journey

Packaging is handled, stacked, shipped and opened. A design that only works face-on ignores most of the time somebody spends with it, and a finish that scuffs in transit will arrive looking cheap.

Design the range, not the item

If you will ever have a second product, brief the system now. Deciding how variants differ — colour, a band, a symbol — is far cheaper before the first one exists than after.

Test it the way a customer meets it

Print one, put the product in it, and leave it on a table for a day. Problems that are invisible on screen — a fold in the wrong place, text lost in a crease, a colour that looks tired under a shop light — turn up immediately.

This is the cheapest quality step available and the one most often skipped.

Design for the shelf you will actually be on

Packaging is never seen alone. It sits beside competitors, under particular lighting, at a particular height, sometimes stacked so only part is visible.

Tell your designer where it will be sold. A design that works in isolation and disappears in context has solved the wrong problem.

Know your print constraints before designing

Material, finish, minimum order and how the pack is assembled all shape what is possible. A design that assumes a fold where the die has none has to be redrawn.

Ask the printer first and give the answers to the designer. It is a five-minute conversation that prevents the most expensive kind of rework.

How to start

Everything runs through one place. Artists sign in at the artist studio, upload work, choose which products each piece suits, and see what they have earned. Customers browse the artwork, pick a design, and choose what to put it on.

Nothing about it is exclusive. You can sell the same work elsewhere at the same time, and there is no listing fee and no minimum.

• Apply with three pieces so we can see how you work
• Choose which products each design belongs on
• Get paid by bank transfer on what sells

Common questions