§ S.03 Service All services
Packaging design
Container, label and product line. The brand doesn’t live in a presentation: it lives in stacked field crates, on labels a few centimetres wide stuck to a rough rind, and on a shelf where anything subtle disappears.
What it solves
The pack is the only advert the product always carries with it. On a supermarket shelf or a market stall it has one second to be seen, another to be recognised and a third to be preferred. If the brand can’t be read from a distance, if the product isn’t understood, or if the box from the cooperative next door says the same thing in the same colours, that second is lost.
Well-designed packaging resolves that reading in cascade: first the brand, then the product, then the variety or format. And it does so with the company’s real means: flexography on corrugated board, the label stuck on by hand in the warehouse, the tub that travels chilled and fogs up.
How I approach it
I start where the product is sold. I look at the shelf, the market, the warehouse: what light there is, from how far it’s seen, what sits next to it. For Peris that led to a yellow oval with the surname in outlined red: the oval isolates the brand from the noise of the shelf, the yellow holds up under warehouse light and the red survives direct printing on board.
Then I build the whole line, not the single piece: a system of colour, typography and layout that lets the melon crate, the watermelon tub and the onion net be recognised as siblings, and lets the company add a new product next year without starting over. Final artwork is delivered laid out on each pack’s real die-line, with the inks and overprints the printer needs.
§ S.03.1 What it includes
- Analysis of the shelf and the direct competition
- Concept and reading hierarchy: brand, product, variety
- Product-line system, expandable to new references
- Design of each container, label, crate or box
- Layout of mandatory labelling information and codes
- Final artwork on the die-line, in spot colours or four-colour process as the technique requires
- Colour proofs and review of samples with the supplier
- Product photography and pieces for catalogue and web, if needed
Agri-food products
It’s the ground I’ve worked most: the Valencian huerta, truffle, cut fruit, olive oil, the sweets of a pastry workshop. Products with a true story behind them — a family, a landscape, a season — and a common enemy: the generic iconography of the «artisan» and the «organic», which makes them all look alike. At De Carrasca the watercolour holm oak and the agricultural-seal oval tell where the truffle comes from without resorting to either cliché.
Retail and non-food products
The same craft serves a shop’s bag, a collection’s box or the jar of a cosmetics or CBD line. At La Barraca de maría the circular emblem works equally well die-cut on a kraft bag, painted on the shop window or shrunk to a jar sticker: when packaging comes out of a well-built identity, the whole shop speaks with one voice.
§ S.03.2 All projects
§ S.03.3 Frequently asked questions
Do you work with my printer or my crate manufacturer?
Yes, and it’s preferable: they know their machine. I ask for die-lines and technical specifications before designing, adapt the number of inks to what the technique allows and review proofs with them. If you don’t have a supplier yet, I can advise you on what to ask for.
Do you design a single pack or the whole range?
Whatever you need, but always thinking of the range. Even if the brief is a single box, I resolve it so the next reference fits without redoing anything: the colour system, the position of the brand and the hierarchy of text are fixed from the first piece.
Do you handle the mandatory labelling?
I make sure it fits, reads and doesn’t get in the brand’s way: name, ingredients, batch, origin, barcodes and whatever certification seals apply. The content and its compliance with regulations come from the company or its quality advisor; I lay it out on the pack.
What if my brand isn’t properly resolved?
Packaging often exposes that problem, because it’s where the brand is really put to the test. I’ll tell you from the start and propose the scope that makes sense: sometimes redrawing the logo is enough; other times it’s better to build the full identity and make the packaging its first application.