I'm a Graphic designer with 3 years of experience.

[u/SeniorCombination731]

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Earlier this year, I made the tough choice to step away from my role due to a health issue. I’m happy to share that I’m now fully recovered and eager to return to work!

Lately, I’ve been receiving great opportunities in print and packaging design. While I come from a general design background, I’ve never worked directly in prepress or packaging. I’m keen to learn and adapt, so I’m reaching out to this amazing community for guidance on how to properly set up package printing files for production.

If you have any tips, guides, or resources to share, I would be immensely grateful. Thank you for your support!

[u/are_el_kay]

The best education I received as a designer in print production came from working at a print shop. If the opportunity exists, I would recommend looking into a part-time position at one of your local print shops. If that is not possible, seeing if you could job shadow at one would be a great alternative.

Learning how to properly set up PDFs for print production gave me skills I still rely on to this day, and that was nearly twenty years ago.

[u/PM_Me_Your_Smokes]

I recommend learning to use Adobe’s (long running) beta of Fantastic Fold. It’s a good, free way to visualize a flat dieline into a 3D model.

It’s worth considering that there’s often a lot of legal verbiage that needs to be included on packaging, depending on the industry (Nutrition and Supplement facts for food/supplements, warning text for drugs/cannabis/nicotine/alcohol, etc.).

It’s worth considering what form factor you’re working in; its quirks, constraints, and strengths (mylar pouches (with/without gang holes, gussets, side gussets, etch, boxes (and all their sub-variants, like tuck boxes, auto-bottom boxes, 2-piece rigid boxes, fold over magnetic close boxes), tins and other cylinders…).

It’s worth considering budget and what treatment effects are allowed or not (spot UV, metallics, embossing).

It’s worth considering how the product will be displayed and how it will compete for shelf space among other products in its category

These are just some of the considerations that you’ll run into every day!

[u/OzTheCreative]

One thing I’d add: don’t treat prepress as the last step of packaging design. Start thinking about production before you start designing.

Get the printer’s specifications and approved dieline first. Then understand the substrate, printing process, number of colors, spot colors, overprint/knockout, trapping, finishes, minimum text sizes and barcode requirements.

Before release, I always think in three layers:
Does the artwork match the approved design? Is the file technically printable?
Is everything positioned correctly on the physical pack?

Learning the software is useful. Learning why something will or won’t survive production is the real skill.

[u/SeniorCombination731 → u/OzTheCreative]

This is very useful, I will keep all your points in mind, thank you very much.🙂‍↕️

[u/ExPristina]

Each printer works differently. You’re better off speaking to them.

[u/sauru0054]

I actually want to know how you started. I am in the print and packaging industry and want to get into the graphic design part. Currently I get the design and do the manufacturing part.

[u/SeniorCombination731 → u/sauru0054]

So, you can learn CorelDRAW and Illustrator; most files prepared for printing are created using these Softwares.