15. February 2022
How to give your packaging design a personal expression? In this post, we give you inspiration on how to put your personal touch on the design of your packaging. Among other things, we touch on color choices and future possibilities for coloring plastic packaging — completely without chemistry. In addition, we highlight the advantages of several elements of the visual structure of the packaging.
The color of your product has a great impact on expression, decoding and reception. The standard four-colour printing works with cyan, magenta, yellow and black/key printing colours. Hence the concept of CMYK. These four are also called process colors. By printing process colors with residues on top of each other, an arbitrary color is obtained.
When plastic is dyed, colors called pantone colors are used. Pantone is a color provider under the category of spot colors, which are ready-mixed colors — as opposed to CMYK. Pantone colors each have their own personal pantone code, which is applied to obtain the exact color. This is how you can print pantone color tones that cannot be achieved by CMYK blends, including also metallic colors and neon colors.
Metallic colors can help give an exclusive and high-end look. Conversely, neon colors are flashy and they create attention. If you are interested in knowing more about the properties and meanings of colors, you can dive into the color spectrum right here.
When dyeing plastic materials, a chemical substance is added to the clear liquid plastic form, which gives the plastic material an arbitrary color throughout. It has the advantage that the wear of the material will not be as evident as with surface staining. In surface dyeing, the material is dyed after the casting process. It is therefore only a layer on the surface that does not tolerate abrasion. Therefore, staining is also more common because the color life of the material becomes longer.
Chemicals In large quantities are not good for you or the environment. When staining with coloring pigments, chemicals are used. But what color could we add to plastics — without chemistry?
Researchers at DTU are unfolding the color universe using nanotechnology and surface structures in the form of tiny nanoparticles. Nanotechnology is actually just a very small unit of measurement (nm). For comparison, a strand of hair has a thickness of 100,000 nm. The Nanoplast project has made them impossible to dye without chemical additives. Although already back in 2013 the first results were demonstrated, it is a technology that is still not widely used.
What is interesting is that it is not man's reaction, but rather nature's own. You know the structure from the colorful wings of butterflies. They do not consist of color pigments, but nanostructures in the surface. They are also called photonic crystals. Structures of that size have an effect with the light, which is reflected, thus creating the colors. The advantage of the technology is that colors do not fade with time like color pigments. For example, colors may fade if a product is exposed to sunlight. At the same time, it also requires only one material to create all possible colors. This also makes it easier to recycle and sort.
Logo reproduction in the form of direct printing
or label also enables a very personal expression. Are you in doubt,
Which method to choose, read on. As needed or
There is an advantage to both. Packwise wants to help you with your right solution. We want to find the one that suits your product best.
Embossing and printing on packaging can help give a more exclusive look. The visual element is directly integrated on and in the product packaging. The integration provides a different tactile experience of the surface. At the same time, the identity expression remains intact thanks to the integration. However, this method is typically a bit more expensive and often requires more start-up costs and larger inventory.
With a label, you don't have to rely on a product's branding. You can use the same container with different labels because labels are not integrated into the product. At the same time, labels can be reprinted quickly, as they can be produced and delivered in a matter of days. This gives you more flexibility in terms of product and marketing. However, you may run the risk that an etiquette will fray or fall off completely over time, which will have a negative impact on the expression of identity.
Although we cannot yet color using nanotechnology, we can still help you with your customized packaging solution with a personal expression. Contact us here and let us hear about your wishes. Then together we will find the perfect solution. You can also find much more inspiration at our Instagram.
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