What is Packaging Production?
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What Is Packaging Production?
You have an approved design. Your brand team is excited. The printer is waiting. So why isn't it ready to print?
Because design and print speak two entirely different languages — and getting fluent in both is exactly what packaging production is.
The Gap Between Design and Print
When a packaging design gets approved, it looks finished. But from a production standpoint, it's only halfway there. The file that came out of a design studio — beautiful, precise, approved — is built to be seen on a screen. A printed package has to hold up at every size, on every substrate, through every press condition, at every stage of the supply chain.
Packaging production is the discipline that bridges that gap.
It's the process of taking an approved creative concept and transforming it into a complete, accurate, print-ready file that a printer can use with confidence — and a brand can stake its reputation on.
What Packaging Production Actually Involves
Depending on the scope of a project, packaging production can include any combination of the following:
Final Artwork and Mechanicals
This is the foundation. Final artwork means building or rebuilding a design file to production specifications — correct bleed, correct color profiles, correct fonts embedded, correct layers. A mechanical is the complete, annotated production document: the file a printer receives that tells them exactly how everything should look, where it should sit and what it should do on press.
Dieline Development
Every folded carton, label, flexible pouch or rigid container needs a dieline — the structural template that defines exactly how the package is cut, folded and formed. Dielines must be engineered to the printer's exact specifications before artwork can be placed.
Line Extensions
When a brand launches a new flavor, size or SKU, they don't redesign from scratch — they extend. A production team takes the master design and adapts it across every variant: same brand architecture, different copy, different colors, different UPC codes, zero drift from the original.
Prepress
Before a file goes to press, it goes through prepress — a technical review that checks for issues invisible to the naked eye. Color separation, trapping, ink density, overprints, knockouts, barcode verification — all of it gets checked, corrected and confirmed. Prepress is where problems get caught before they become expensive mistakes.
Color Management
Print color is not screen color. A brand's red might be a Pantone, a CMYK build, a spot varnish and a digital reference — and all four need to match as closely as possible. Color management in packaging production means building and maintaining accurate color profiles across every process and every substrate.
Retouching and Rendering
Product photography retouching for packaging requires a different eye than editorial retouching. On-pack imagery needs to be technically clean, substrate-accurate and press-ready. Renderings — photorealistic visualizations of a package before it goes to print — allow brand teams and retailers to approve the design without waiting for physical samples.
File Release
At the end of the process, production-ready files are released to the printer, co-manufacturer or brand archive. A proper file release includes organized, named and versioned files — along with all the documentation a printer needs to execute without ambiguity.
Who Needs Packaging Production?
Any brand that puts a physical product on a shelf needs packaging production — whether they know the term or not.
The need typically surfaces at one of three moments:
A brand is launching a new product and the design is approved, but nobody on the team knows how to hand it off to a printer. A brand is doing a redesign or line extension and needs existing packaging adapted across dozens of SKUs quickly and accurately. Or a brand is working with multiple printers across multiple markets and needs a single production partner to ensure consistency across all of them.
In each case, the underlying problem is the same: creative vision exists on one side, manufacturing reality exists on the other and something needs to connect them.
What Makes Packaging Production Different From Graphic Design
Packaging production is not graphic design — and the distinction matters.
A designer's job is to create something that communicates, resonates and performs in the market. A production artist's job is to ensure that vision survives contact with the physical world. The two roles require different training, different software skills and a different way of thinking about a file.
A great design can be ruined by poor production. Misregistered colors, incorrect bleed, a barcode that won't scan, a font that didn't embed — these are not aesthetic failures. They are technical failures, and they cost real money to fix once a job is on press.
Good packaging production is invisible. When it's done right, the design looks exactly as intended and nobody talks about the production. When it's done wrong, everyone notices.
The Packaging Production Process, Step by Step
While every project is different, the production process generally follows this arc:
Brief and file review — Incoming design files are reviewed for completeness and assessed against the printer's specifications
Dieline confirmation — The structural template is confirmed or built to spec
Mechanical artwork — Final artwork is built to full production standards
Prepress and preflight — Files are technically reviewed, color-separated and proofed
Client approval — Annotated proofs are submitted for sign-off
File release — Print-ready files are delivered to the printer with full documentation
At every step, the goal is the same: give the printer exactly what they need to produce the package exactly as the brand intended.
print-ability™: Where Creative Vision Meets the Press
We've been doing this work for brands across spirits, beauty, CPG and wine for years — and we've seen every version of the gap between design and print.
Some of our clients come to us with polished design files from world-class agencies. Some come to us with a concept and a deadline. Some come to us mid-crisis, with a job already on press that isn't looking right. Wherever a project starts, we know how to get it across the finish line.
We bridge the gap between creative vision and printed package — regardless of where that vision originates.
If you're looking at a design you love and wondering how it gets from here to a shelf, our packaging production services are a good place to start.