Carton Packaging - Design Solutions to Meet Customers' Needs

Carton packaging is not just to meet the needs of loading goods. With the rapid development of the commodity market, the exquisite appearance and unique style of packaging products have become an important factor in attracting consumers' purchasing power. Carton manufacturers have continuously strengthened their own production capabilities and began to pay attention to product design and R&D investment. The unique and novel design of carton products has become a favorable guarantee for upgrading the grade of interior products. In today's carton product design market, how can we design products that meet the needs of users? What are the future trends in the design of corrugated products? On this issue, we interviewed General Manager Kitahara Hiroyuki of Bangyou Technology Development Co., Ltd., and the technical information provided by Shen Yuxi, Technical Consultant of Bangyou Technology Development Co., Ltd.

Q: How do you design a product that meets your needs?

A: The most important thing is to understand the needs of customers. The customer's needs are the goals of our design. However, many times the customer's needs are very ambiguous. For example, the customer's requirement is a very abstract box requirement such as [attractive appearance, low cost], how to design the box for these requirements. The designer's design concept is always to look at the problem from the perspective of the goal, so the reporter will be required to broaden their horizons, be able to understand more of the different purposes of the box, and absorb the updated knowledge of the packaging structure. For example, boxes for home appliances/computers/precision instruments require certain weights to withstand/buffer shocks. Boxes for pharmaceuticals/foods require stringent airtight/hygienic cleaning standards. Clothing/jewellery, etc. require packaging with a high/personal impression. The requirements for packaging of daily life supplies are simple and convenient. In other words, only when we have a wealth of knowledge, can we provide practical advice and solutions for our customers from the market and purpose of use when responding to ambiguous and abstract requests from customers. As a good designer, we should develop the habit of observing and practicing anytime and anywhere in our daily lives. When we get a box in our hands, we can observe and think how it can make it the easiest box to open. When I imagine that I want to give my boss a gift, how does the boss open the box? What do you think the giftee wants to let the recipient notice? Starting from a specific purpose, we design and produce a box that meets our purpose. Without a clear purpose, it is impossible to produce a design plan.

Q: What should you pay attention to in the design process?

A: Even if the shape of the box is exactly the same, the design may be modified due to a change in material or thickness. This awareness should permeate throughout the box structure design. For example, although corrugated paper is thicker than paperboard, the inserted part is more likely to be flattened, resulting in thinning of the actual thickness. Therefore, the insert part cannot be set too large for the knife, otherwise it is very easy to cause the cover to fail. On the other hand, the paper jam is very hard and it is not easy to be flattened at the edges, so if the size of the knife is not enough, the lid cannot be inserted. At the same time, it should also have the knowledge of purchasing subsequent processing steps, and have a lot of knowledge about the automatic die-cutting machine and automatic stripping process. For example, consider the following points when considering at least the design plan.

Ø Try not to design thin sections less than 2.5mm.

Ø Do not design multiple round holes in a box shape.

Ø Consider novelty on the basis of ensuring certain flexibility, good sealing, and qualified protection.

Ø Avoid the appearance of a single-color printing surface at a 180-degree angle.

Of course, there are many other comprehensive considerations. In order to cultivate this comprehensive ability to consider issues, continuous design and observation of improvements may be the only shortcut to success.

Q: What problems will be encountered in the process of use? How can we prevent problems from the beginning of design?

A: From the two points mentioned above, you can learn about the actual production process. The actual observation of the use of the box has a very important role. From design to sample production, to folding and pasting, and finally to demolishing a sample. If you can feel the problems in use during this process, you can also recognize that these problems are caused by the lack of design solutions. Designers should be fully aware that errors may occur in each processing machine and process, causing problems with the box. For example, in the manual paste, there will be paste misplacement, peeling off the printed surface of the folded place. It is not difficult to imagine that the same phenomenon will occur in machines.

Q: In the design, how to improve the strength of the product, how to reduce costs, how to improve the overall effect, etc.?

A: First of all, this is a perfect pursuit. It is also the goal and dream that designers always pursue. For this reason, we instead give up the idea that everything is required from the initial stage of design. For example, first consider how to pack several items together, even if it is simply pasted with glue. The first thing is to wrap things up. Then consider step by step how to separate the individually glued parts into a box. Further consider how to strengthen the strength of the box, sealing and easy to open and other issues. Finally, on the basis of satisfying all functional requirements, consider how to eliminate the parts that can be saved, how to further reduce costs, and so on. We should not set the goal to increase both strength and cost, which is an unrealistic goal. Our ultimate goal is to meet the needs of our customers, that is, how to reduce costs as much as possible while meeting customer needs is our feasible goal. Increasing strength does not simply mean that we need to increase the amount of material used. We can use the gaps in the structure and the rebound of the paper ingeniously. Reducing costs does not mean that we must start with reducing the amount of materials we use. We can also reduce costs by reducing post-processing operations such as die-cutting, sizing and gluing. The boxes are fixed products. The simple imitation and the design of the other people's memories can never meet the changing needs of customers every day.

Q: How to avoid over packaging when designing and designing cushioning materials?

A: With respect to the design of cushioning materials, it is important not to focus solely on the space between the items and the box by simply relying on folding paper. You should make full use of the characteristics of the paper, use the grain lines of the paper, and not consider wrapping all the items but make the items float in the box space as much as possible by supporting the main supporting points of the items.

As for excessive packaging, we should focus our attention on how to ensure the advertisement space of products, the clean image, and the sense of quality. The packaging that can meet these goals is already a sufficient high-level packaging. For example, in order to emphasize the name of a product, a curve or other variant shape can be designed in the place of the product name, but it is not necessary to use a very expensive material.

Q: Design trends for display stands and micro-tile products?

A: The display rack is a new application attempt to transform from paper packaging to advertising media. There is already a very wide and widespread application in Japan. It can ensure that each new display effect is very easy to handle.

The micro-tank has the convenience of printing directly in addition to flexo printing. It can achieve almost the same effect as paper jam printing, and it can also reduce the process of paper jams and corrugations on creped paper. There are great advantages on the cost side. From this point of view, in the future, the small display stand will surely develop in the direction of miniature tiles. The medium-to-large display stands should move toward the use of AF and WF-based materials while simultaneously miniaturizing the corrugations. At the same time, it is also predictable that the most commonly used EF counterparts will be gradually replaced by miniature watts. Compared with other types of tiles, miniature corrugated iron has the characteristics of easy quality control in subsequent processing steps and will be widely used in the packaging of small electronic products such as mobile phones. However, compared with traditional corrugated production lines, micro-corrugated production equipment is still over-invested. How to promote these processing equipment will become a major issue for the popularization of miniature corrugated products.

Respondents said that the above are just some of his personal views and predictions, and hope that all of them will give advice and discuss together. The research and discussion on the methodology of box structure design seems to be a trend and direction now, but I personally think that we should concentrate more energy and wisdom on the purpose of packaging. Participate in and understand the production process, everything from the customer's packaging purpose, through continuous practice and failure, may be the only way to eventually design a good work.

Source: Global corrugated box industry