The Wide World of Packaging Prototypes

Just-Us Printers added folding carton prototyping to supplement its production-length printing. Image courtesy of Just-Us Printers.

For example, Madsen, whose agency advises brands in improving their creative and marketing operations, explains that most printers with a wide-format operation will have the skills to transition the use of that equipment to the creation of physical prototypes. However, he says that if these same printers want to supplement their prototyping capabilities with packaging design support, knowledge of Adobe Illustrator will likely be needed, rather than Adobe InDesign, which is often used in two-dimensional page layout.

“If you’re doing mechanical or artwork support for a company or brand you’re working for, you have to look for that talent around packaging,” Madsen says. “Packaging skillsets are very different than InDesign. They’re similar in that it’s page layout and it’s object oriented, but when you get into packaging, you start to look at layers of color, the science of those layers and how they lay down.”