Printers, designers and digital

Stuart Kellock, MD of Label Apeel, on why digital printing has injected some fresh thinking into creative teams

For many people the jury is still out on digital printing. The cost and the quality of are laboriously compared to conventional printing. While what is so often overlooked is what it means to the creative teams behind all the packaging and labels.

At Label Apeel, we are huge advocators of digital. We’ve seen first-hand how both big and small brands benefit from its adaptable nature, and how it can have a massive impact on the sales of a brand and ignite excitement amongst designers.

Now small or emerging brands with big imaginations, and through smart collaboration with printers, can have as much shelf presence as their bigger rivals.

Although it is not cheaper than conventional per se, when used wisely digital printing guarantees more bang for your buck. It allows smaller budgets to achieve a great deal more.  Digital also offers advantages with tooling costs. So, choose your printer wisely, one preferably with the right finishing and decoration line.

Having recently won a HP Digital Award, we invested in a finishing and decoration line geared specifically to keeping tooling costs to the absolute minimum. Which means effects such as multi height and fluted die embossing, scratch and sniff, and hot foiling. Raised varnishes and scratch off panels are now readily available to our clients.

When teamed with clever creative thinking, a scratch and sniff label can have a massive effect on the profile of an emerging brand in a heavily saturated market. A quick scratch and a long sniff of a desirable or rather undesirable smell (whichever is appropriate) would surely do wonders for talkability.

Brands and products with larger budgets to play with can explore and trial a variety of different options through research and development. Working with their designers it’s now easier to run a limited marketing offer with the use of a scratch off panel. A great way of testing the market and while also collecting some much sought after personal data.

Digital printing can also be particularly useful for looking at brand extension ideas. Other advantages can come in terms of brands with a wide number of variables that require a high level of brand consistency. Label Apeel has recently worked with a coffee supplier who had a contract with a major retail outlet for 20 different lines.

The volumes were ideal for digital and the consistency of color across the range meant that digital was able to add a unique advantage.

Stuart Kellock, MD of Label Apeel