This article originally appeared in the June, 2024 issue of PRINTING United Journal, the exclusive member publication of PRINTING United Alliance, and is republished with permission. To learn more about PRINTING United Alliance and its vast member benefits, visit: www.printing.org.
Printed packaging providers play an essential role in helping brands achieve their goals. One way is by helping designers experiment with new package designs to attract customers. Another is by helping to wade through the challenges of print technologies and sales channels. How a packaged product looks on a shelf continues to be important, but e-tail opportunities have changed where those shelves reside. Shoppers are buying products from both brick-and-mortar and online stores.
How Buying Habits Change Packaging Concerns
Consumer behavior changes continue to drive e-commerce’s growth; perhaps not at the COVID-related pace of 2020, but still impressively. According to Digital Commerce 360’s analysis of U.S. Department of Commerce data, U.S. e-commerce rose 7.6% in 2023, while total sales grew 3.8%.¹ While that’s much different from the pandemic-affected e-commerce boom, when 2020 online sales grew 42.8% over 2019, it still shows that more and more people are comfortable buying things online.
We’re not having that off-the-shelf experience quite so often. Sometimes it’s “off the web.” Think of the many retailers you visit. The closest parking spaces are for handicapped persons, but the second nearest spots are often for those who purchased online. People want convenience. They gain product knowledge with the help of online images — often 3D prototypes — not even the real product. So, there are many packaging considerations for products purchased online and in brick-and-mortar retail. One of the more significant differences is that the package is not typically shown next to others. This means that brand colors might not need to be quite as precise because the consumer doesn’t compare them. If an M&Ms bag has faded a bit, no one would buy it from the shelf. But an online shopper doesn’t have the same choice because someone else picks the pouch off of the shelf for the consumer.
There still is an expectation of what is purchased online versus what is shipped. You have to make certain that color is accurate enough so that when the package arrives at the door (car or home), it matches what the customer saw on screen. RGB monitor displays, with a wider gamut than CMYK, can meet more colors. But the color will only be as accurate as the viewing conditions. Consumers can shop from their mobile phones, tablets, and laptops, so the color presentations for shoppers will likely not match. Printers have viewing booths to control conditions for the brand and printer, but just not for the consumer.
Multiple Factors Can Impact Color Accuracy
What can a printer do to make sure a package looks its best and matches perfectly both online and on the shelf? Color software can be used to correct and optimize measurement data. Today, software can edit primary color and substrate colors, and recalculate measurement data. A full system, as most printers who read this Journal probably already know, combines tools for measurement data optimization, profiling for different output requirements, and an automatic color server. When combined, they offer color measurement and data optimization, ICC profiling, and PDF conversions. The elimination of manual and trial-and-error tasks and batch-processing of files can save many hours of prepress time and increase consistency with color.
Color must be consistent whether the package is produced digitally or conventionally. Yet, matching brand colors on a digital press can sometimes be a challenge. You must know if the color space of your digital press is wide enough. They typically have a large gamut, but it does not cover everything. When printing packaging digitally, you often don’t have complete flexibility of adding new color inks and building separations to that process to reach the required gamut. Effects such as fluorescence and bright colors become a challenge. For example, your digital press might print a green, but not a fluorescent green. You can get a red, but not fluorescent red. We need to be universally transformable between shorter digital runs and longer traditional printing. If there’s going to be re-utilization, printers and converters need to meet this off-press; not off-flexo-press, but off-press, whether it’s digital or flexo. Some people suggest — assuming a new product will be successful — that artwork should be developed for short-run digital printing as well as longer runs on traditional equipment. This approach will ensure the closest match between the two as product quantities increase in production or the product becomes regionally converted with variable data for a consumer experience.
It is possible to add a background environment to a package — with lighting.
Considerations When Choosing Color Management Systems
Modern printing companies also have to handle constantly changing print conditions and still deliver exact reproduction of spot colors. With different production scenarios and a variety of materials, the creation of ICC and DeviceLink profiles can be a challenge of its own. Remember, less is more. A printer should be able to measure a spot color once, store those values in the spot color library, and reproduce that color even on different materials and with a variety of print conditions.
A good color management system can help color manage artwork files, including conversions of spot colors to CMYK, ECG, or even RGB color spaces. With a centralized server, there is improved consistency, because all profiles and settings are kept in the server, ensuring results will always be the same. The use of tools like this allows the printer to replace more manual processes and reduce manual reliance on design tools to get the job done. Other features to look for include:
Fast, high-quality conversions of CMYK, RGB, and spot colors to multichannel ECG output spaces for conventional and digital presses. A good tool will easily handle the most complex package design, with transparencies, spot color gradients and blends, and even multiple color spaces.
Device link iteration is very helpful with digital printing because it enables output to be compared to a reference color and adjusted automatically.
Spot color iteration greatly improves digital press output, whether it prints in CMYK or CMYK plus orange, green, or violet. Entire spot libraries can often be iterated in only one or two rounds, with accurate results.
Full support of CxF data for spot colors, including embedded spectral data in PDFs. Full support of industry-standard ICC profiles, allow a printer to easily drop the color manager into existing workflows or exchange files with third parties without fear of incompatibilities, while still achieving high-quality results. A gradation module enables PSPs to choose between a simplified and automatic configuration while still having the possibility to define all variables in color management. This flexibility allows one to respect all different behaviors of the presses and materials to ensure the best possible quality despite print-related shifts.
In addition to this feature, printers should look for the following characteristics when choosing color management systems:
- The ability to modify CMYK values — should it be to adopt to a different color batch, to reproduce CMYK images with unusual color combinations, or to standardize a workflow by using a defined ECG seven-color set.
- The capability to use tone values to render a chart that is not yet perfect. With optimized data, a good color manager can generate an error-free, perfect ICC profile without the risk of some minor errors in the measurement data ruining your whole profile. After all, who has the time to reprint a test chart until it is perfect?
- ICC profile creation based on measurement data. Again, you want this data to be editable within the color management system and comprehensive. Include all that is available for RGB, CMYK, ECG, and spot colors so those measurements can be applied to any output scenario, whether it’s a photographical process; inkjet without a RIP; conventional printing such as offset, screen printing, flexo, or gravure; or even a monitor. Having all measurement data inside one solution helps avoid possible errors during transmitting data.
Why 3D Technology Is Essential for Packaging
In the traditional package design process, designers create a brief, develop the package, build a physical prototype, and then review it. In the past, it meant printing prototypes and then returning to the drawing board — a continual circle. With 3D technology, packaging designers have a powerful virtual canvas to create highly detailed, realistic prototypes quickly and easily. From them, designers can explore different iterations, materials, and structural enhancements. Thus, designers can virtually iterate on different ideas and refine the design without the time and cost of producing physical prototypes. Before ever producing a physical sample, a designer can test different scenarios, such as how a colored liquid impacts a bottle design.
Be sure to use 3D technology. There is an extraordinary difference between 2D and 3D images. There are just too many design considerations and errors that can only be seen with a 3D look. For example, specialty finishing is a simple layer in 2D, but its true effect becomes apparent in a 3D image. Simply put, one pops out and the other doesn’t. Furthermore, by integrating 3D rendering into their workflow, printers and brands can automate many of the processes around testing different designs, materials, and views. Specifically, printers can automate the functions of replacing artwork, materials, rendering different angles, and providing immediate 3D viewing of those changes. This allows people to get an interactive view of their packaging, comment or approve that image in the workflow, and swiftly move the packaging design through the rest of the process. Faster comments, iterations, and approvals of packaging concepts ultimately mean brands can get product into the consumers’ hands more quickly and cost-effectively.
In fact, on average, 3D rendering is estimated to be six times more cost-effective than traditional photo-based prototyping. It also eliminates delays and material waste associated with producing and delivering physical prototypes to decision-makers. Many brands now conduct virtual design reviews, looking at different package designs remotely.
A virtual design review is also a valuable tool for package printers and converters that eliminates errors, such as a flap in the incorrect order, and offering quality assurances to questions including: Does my artwork fit the package? Does my carton layout match the artwork?
Additionally, 3D rendering can enable a PSP to differentiate its services by providing high-quality, photorealistic visualizations that can help a brand start taking pre-orders. Say a brand is looking to work with an online retailer that mandates multiple pack shots for each product. The 3D images created by the PSP can become the detailed, 360-degree product images that accurately represent the brand. The online retailer’s customer can then spin the 3D images to get a good look at the packaged product online — delivering a superior first impression of brand and the product.
There are many 3D rendering tools available, but the best ones for packaging focus specifically on just that — boxes, cartons, cans, flexible packages, and shrinks. These tools offer features such as artwork adoption, special lighting effects, and the ability to build 3D models of packaging from scratch or modify existing templates. Once a 3D model is created, it is even possible to add a background environment with just about anything you can imagine and lighting to match. Best of all, the most user-friendly tools require little to no 3D expertise to operate.
Designing With Shape and Color
Prepress technology has come so far. Although multicolor separations are nothing new and scanner software in the 1990s could take a CMYK or RGB image and print the result in seven colors, the systems and results were clunky. There were limitations and required large printed test charts for every color, or to define each and every setting without any measurement data.
Today, prepress technology cannot only deliver accurate color but also 3D renderings that are so realistic that it is difficult to know if the images are photographs or built digitally. These systems can also help a designer work with iterations until the brand owner is happy. It also allows a brand to place a product online — often before it is even manufactured.
This can add another dimension and revenue stream to a printer’s services, while assuring a PSP’s customers are happy with the color of the printed packages.
References
¹ Digital Commerce 360. “US ecommerce sales penetration hits new high in 2023.” digitalcommerce360. com/article/us-ecommerce-sales
² Farjad Taheer. OptinMonster. “Online Shopping Statistics: How Many People Shop Online in 2024? optinmonster.com/online-shopping-statistics
About the Author
Heath Luetkens is a veteran technology and business manager, with more than 25 years of experience in strategic business planning, development, and implementation in printing and 3D markets. In 2023, Heath was named the business manager 3D for iC3D. In this role, he is responsible for the company’s 3D technological direction, including new product and feature advancements, launch strategies, and market research plans for production environments and brand product development. Previously, Heath was the director of technology at CGS USA, responsible for the company’s technological direction and new business development. Heath also was a production manager at Time Inc., leading all aspects of print production and employee management. Heath has also served as a corporate color analyst for Quad Graphics. Heath can be reached at heathl@hybridsoftware.com.
