Package Design - January/February 2013 - 25

Peace Coffee uses its in-house
labeling system to change
descriptors on product labels to
more accurately reflect the flavor
profiles of each season’s fruit.

which needed 2,000 labels to brand a pair of SKUs
for the market launch of its Suave Naturals line.
The first step was the laydown of metallic silver
ink on clear, 2-mil PET label stock in the flexo
printing unit of the Digicon, a multifunctional converting line that also has lamination, rotary diecutting and slitting stations. Next, the HP Indigo
WS4600—a webfed press that prints color labels
with what HP says is quality equal to that of gravure—registered seven colors plus a double hit of
white ink to the silver using a target mark placed by
the Digicon. The labels then went back to the finishing line for lamination and kiss-cutting, followed by manual application onto bottles provided
by Unilever.
Kaleidoscope also called upon its in-house printing capabilities to help Skittles, a well established
candy brand, launch Skittle Riddles. When Skittles
decided to go to market with the new variation
aimed at 12- to 17-year olds, the brand asked its
agency to produce a short-run of sample packages
that sales reps could take to the retail outlets where
Skittles Riddles was to be introduced. Skittles Riddles are unusual in that the colors of the candy
pieces don’t correspond in the usual way to their

flavors—the “riddle” is in the tasting as kids try to
identify which fruit flavor they’re enjoying.
The agency, however, had to maintain a strict
match between the candy colors and the colors
printed on the 14-oz. sample bag, which it produced on flexible film in a run of about 1,200 packages. The expanded gamut of the seven-color HP
Indigo WS4600 press provided the chromatic fidelity, while the integrated Digicon line handled the
finishing of the bags down to the precision seaming.
“Digital systems are getting better and better for
short runs of this kind,” says Bert Hodapp, Kaleidoscope’s COO. He notes that the absence of makeready—the time-consuming and cost-incurring
mechanical setup that precedes conventional
printing—speeds job turnaround and saves money.
Technical capabilities count strongly as well.
The extended color gamut of the HP Indigo
WS4600 lets Kaleidoscope match branded colors
without taking chances on the approximation of
simple CMYK builds. Operating as a flexo printer,
the Digicon supplements the Indigo by providing
colors that the digital press isn’t built to handle,
such as the metallic silver ink needed for the Suave
Naturals project.
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Package Design - January/February 2013

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