Digital Print – A Packaging Design Revolution
Recent innovations in digital print are helping to save time, labor and waste in the creation of packaging. Package designers are beginning to realize that they have the option to produce short-run, promotional package designs and realistic prototypes on digital equipment. As such, the packaging market is currently experiencing a package design revolution. There are a number of other drivers behind the evolution of digital print:
Cost savings: The digital printing process eliminates costly proofs, plates, and cutting dies, resulting in significant cost savings on short production runs.
Speed to Market: Traditional flexography and offset printing sometimes take weeks to prepare the plates or rolls. With digital print there are no plates or rolls to worry about, which usually results in a shorter production time. This allows brands to get new promotional products out to market much faster, and at a reasonable price. Have you noticed L’Oreal Kids Shampoo? The shampoo always has the latest and greatest kids movie character on it. Maybe your child isn’t even out of shampoo… maybe you just bought them the latest and greatest shampoo last week… but if they see Elsa from Frozen on the packaging they MUST have it.
Boldness: The shorter run of digital can allow the brand to be bold and experimental to see what works best in a live test environment. Are you interested in trying out a campaign but want to get an idea of how it might work in a smaller group first? Use digital for a short production run and test the campaign regionally before you go national.
Design Flexibility: Personalization and customization are two of the biggest benefits in digital print. The Coca-Cola ‘Share a Coke’ campaign was a wildly successful personalized campaign. The campaign was designed to allow customers to ‘share a Coke’ with friends, family and loved ones. The initiative featured a number of the world’s most popular names digitally printed onto labels. Having a Coke with your name (or your friend’s name on it) was something everyone just had to have, and then needed to share on social media.
Early adopters of this digital technology, like L’Oreal and Coca-Cola, have led the way for many others. Digital printing technology will continue to improve producing high-quality short-run promotional packaging and prototypes that allow brands to grow faster than ever.
HP Case Study Coca-Cola: http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetDocument.aspx?docname=4AA4-7299EEW
HP Case Study L’Oreal: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/services/hp-mps-showcase/loreal.html