How do you handle structure before decoration?

A rigid magnetic box and a folding carton cost very different money and behave differently in a customer’s hands. Decoration cannot rescue the wrong structure. Led with the structure in every build. The cosmetics serum gets a tuck-end carton; the watch gets a magnetic rigid box; the coffee gets a carton with a die-cut window; the poster gets a tube. The finish follows.

How do you handle one flood, one ink, most of the time?

Four-colour process on uncoated board goes muddy, and it is where a challenger brand’s margin disappears. The majority of these run one Pantone flood plus one ink. Full colour appears only where the product is a photograph, which in a hundred and twelve boxes was rarely.

How do you handle the mailer is the retail unit?

A printed inner box inside a plain shipper is two structures and two print jobs. Several of these collapse the two: a flooded corrugated mailer with a printed interior, strong enough to ship and finished enough to sit on a shelf.

Design exercise · Boxes · Peppermint

A hundred and twelve boxes, forty industries

A structural exercise across packaging: rigid, folding carton, mailer, drawer, tube and sleeve, built out across roughly forty industries to see where each structure earns its cost and where it is theatre.

Boxes for Print Peppermint design exercise with , emboss, spot uv, pantone flood, die-cut windows foil stamping, rigid two-piece, magnetic, drawer, shoulder-neck, clamshell, folding cartons, tuck-end, gable, pillow, sleeve-and-tray and corrugated mailers, shipping cases, tubes.

FoilsYellow Gold · 101, Deep Copper · 115-2, Silver · 120, Rose Gold · 117-3, Rainbow Iridescent · R1 TechniquesDeboss, Die Cut, Emboss, Hot Foil, Copper Foil, Gold Foil, Holographic Foil, Rose Gold Foil, Silver Foil, Folded, Raised Spot UV, Spot UV StocksRigid box board, Uncoated folding carton board, Kraft corrugated E-flute, Kraft natural 18pt

The idea

Packaging is where structure matters more than graphics, and the only way to learn that is volume. So: roughly forty industries, six structural families, and a rule that the structure had to be chosen before anything was drawn on it.

Three rules

01Structure before decoration. Led with the structure in every build. The cosmetics serum gets a tuck-end carton; the watch gets a magnetic rigid box; the coffee gets a c…
02One flood, one ink, most of the time. The majority of these run one Pantone flood plus one ink. Full colour appears only where the product is a photograph, which in a hundred an…
03The mailer is the retail unit. Several of these collapse the two: a flooded corrugated mailer with a printed interior, strong enough to ship and finished enough to sit on…

Why a hundred and twelve

Cosmetics, fragrance, spirits, chocolate, coffee, tea, cannabis, pharma, pet, hardware, ceramics, textiles, electronics, games, hospitality, florists, archives and a lot of e-commerce.