Package Design - April 2013 - 18

Vivace
IdeatIon

Prototyping can turn up the creative
tempo for package design projects.
By Pat Henry and Linda Casey

O

ne of journalism’s greatest wordsmiths, Arthur
Brisbane, is famed for giving the advice, “Use
a picture. It’s worth a thousand words.” Peter
Clarke, CEO and founder of a brand strategy and
design consultancy Product Ventures, says that if a
picture is worth 1,000 words, “a prototype speaks
10,000 pictures” when designing packages.

Using prototypes to prove design
concepts carries a fraction of the
costs of actual package production
—both in time and dollars
Part of the prototypes’ power for ideation, adds
Tom Newmaster, partner at packaging, advertising
and multimedia design firm William Fox Munroe,
comes from the insight a designer gets “from the simple ability to correctly convey how well a design performs and an understanding of how package graphics
will look when scaled up to actual physical size.”

Resetting the clock on conceptualization
Using prototypes to prove design concepts carries a
fraction of the costs of actual package production—both in time and dollars—and it can be the
best way to convince a client to make or avoid a
packaging change.
18

april 2013

Brian Everett, packaging designer at IQ PKG,
the design arm of the packaging supplier formerly
known as Spartech and now part of the PolyOne
Corporation, says prototyping helped the agency
demonstrate a better alternative to the large stock
tubs that a customer was using for a hand-packed
food product. IQ PKG was able to show how a
redesigned package would deliver better stacking
strength, greater ease of use for the packaging line
workers and a “more fun” appearance that made
the finished package more competitive in its bigbox retailing environment by giving the client a
physical prototype that they can hold.
Jack Hinkel, executive director, implementation at brand consultancy Interbrand, says these
benefits also extend to virtual prototyping. “When
a client is trying to decide if a spot varnish is worth
the extra cost, I can use Interbrand 3-D [the company’s own branded virtual prototyping platform]
to show in real time what that product looks like
with the spot varnish on and with the spot varnish
off of the product.”
This, he says, is increasingly important as special effects such as metallic finishes are becoming
more popular with brands. “If you have a product
that has foil on it,” says Hinkel. “Depending on
where it is on the package and in the store, the foil
will capture light differently. In a shadow, the foiled
area will darken. By viewing the varnished and
Package Design - April 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Package Design - April 2013
