The Fold line and You

Since entering the world of flexible packaging we’ve learned many noteworthy “Do’s and Don’ts” with packaging design. Most of these have been added to our Artwork guidelines. Over the next few months, we are going to break down these guidelines, what they mean, and why it’s important for you as a designer. In this post, we’ll be digging into the importance of consistent art across the fold line.

 

What does this mean exactly? Within the pouch converting process, there is a margin of variability with the location of the folded edge. This is important because it may influence your design approach on your next packaging project.

Above are some of the early runs of our promotional pouches using Color-Logic. As you can see, there is a bit of roll-over of the gusset’s artwork onto the back panel with all of these pouches. With this in mind, we’d suggest that no panel artwork ends directly on the fold line and flows into the gusset area. This avoids visible issues when the product is on the shelf. We’d also suggest applying the same methodology to a three-side seal or two-side seal pouch. We hope that this is helpful to all the graphic designers doing work in the flexible packaging space.