Dealing with Packaging Complexity: Tips 5 to 8
By Stephen McIndoe, VP Consulting, Be4ward
In my previous article, I discussed the first four tips on managing packaging complexity. In this article, I look at tips five through eight.
5. Control Brand Variation
Do you have a process to control the brand image and prevent unnecessary or undesirable proliferation of brand designs?
It is not uncommon for companies to have a range of brand images that have accumulated over time, such as:
- Locally generated brand names and brand images
- Response to local market regulations requiring unique local naming or branding
- Legacy brand images from acquired companies who once marketed the product in a specific country
- 2nd brands or co-marketed products
If standard brand images and packaging artwork designs can be maintained, it presents the opportunity to take a template approach to artwork, improving efficiency and reducing risk or error. This is discussed further in Tip 7.
Many companies now exercise strict control over brand images and packaging designs at a global or regional level, to ensure they present a common identity to consumers. It is extremely difficult to rationalize brand images after the event, due to regulatory constraint and consumer resistance, and therefore, clearly defined and mandated brand guidelines are an important tool in controlling brand variation up front.
6. Control Platform Sizes
Do you define and maintain a set of standard platform sizes?
Components can come in multiple sizes and shapes, and the challenge is how these can be controlled to an optimum number. Your approach to this will be heavily impacted by your supply chain design:
- If you have a few global or regional factories, rationalization can be targeted at a local level.
- If you have a high number of factories supplying multiple dose forms to many markets, you will be presented with a significant number of inter-dependencies making rationalization more challenging.
- If you purchase finished products from 3rd parties, you may be restricted to each supplier’s standards.
Many companies will have combinations of all of the above, so your approach may be global, regional, or by product/supply chain. For printed packaging components, the challenge is to reduce the range down to the smallest practical number of profiles. This gives less profiles to manage and will aid line change-overs. It is also a prerequisite for most types of late customization.
Platform sizes are normally driven by the size of primary components, and so it is often best to start with a rationalization of primary component sizes and shapes to reach an optimum range of platforms. For other components, such as spoons and measuring cups, try to rationalize to the minimum number of variants.
7. Standardize Artwork Templates And Layouts
Are there standard templates and layouts for artworks?
Standardizing the brand image, packaging artwork design, and component sizes, permits the use of standard artwork templates and layouts. In this approach, global or regional templates can be created including all of the standard design content. Areas for specific market or regional content can be provided on the artwork and these can be populated when specific local variants are required, either creating market specific artworks or as part of an online printing activity with semi-finished components.
This saves having to create a completely new artwork every time, which has obvious compliance benefits. It also ensures that areas, such as overprint areas, are always in the correct locations. Furthermore, it facilitates using tools to automatically add content to the template and automatically create the artwork.
8. Minimize Fonts, Illustrations And Graphical Elements
Are there defined standard fonts, illustrations, and graphical elements?
Artwork content such as fonts, illustrations, and other graphical content can provide hidden sources of complexity. It is common for companies to build large ranges of content that needs to be stored, maintained and updated. Proliferation of fonts may not seem significant, but licenses need to be managed and fonts need to be assured to ensure accurate replication across different platforms and machines. It also results in dilution of the brand image.
To control fonts, a defined house style set of fonts should be mandated within the corporate and brand guidelines with clear processes for the introduction of new fonts. Similarly, illustrations and graphical elements should be held in controlled libraries with standard images for particular uses.
In my next article, I will look at a four more activities that can help you control your packaging complexity.
Other articles in this series:
Dealing With Packaging Complexity