5 Reasons to Start Using Dieline Packaging

If your sell physical products, whether through physical retailers or by shipping them to your end-consumer, you know how important packaging is. When you’re products are on the shelf, the packaging is what sells them.

And if you ship them out to your consumer, their first is the box they arrive in. In either case, it’s imperative that you use the best packaging you can get your hands on. 

For brands that want beautiful, customized brand packaging, your best option is using dieline packaging. 

What is a dieline? Dielines are the templates used to ensure your packaging design will fit perfectly on your chosen box configurations. 

It takes specialized skills to create and proofread dielines, so they require an initial investment. But their many benefits are worth the expense.

Keep reading below to see why using a dieline makes for the best package experience. 

1. Dielines Are the Blueprints for Packaging

Before you can build a house, a store, or a skyscraper, you need a blueprint. A blueprint is a detailed map that describes how exactly a project is to be constructed.

It gives everyone the confidence they need to know that the building will be safe, functional, and aesthetically pleasing before a single brick is laid.

Dielines work in much the same way. Although the stakes are much lower, using dielines to design your product packing saves time and money in the long run. 

With a dieline, you’re going to know exactly what is going to fit on each side of the product packaging. You can see what size typeface you need. You’ll know where the cut lines will be, where the perforation is going to be, and where the folds are.

If you want to ensure your packaging is perfect before firing up the printer, you need a dieline. You can learn more on dieline packaging here. 

2. Ensure Packaging Achieves Goals

Every type of packaging exists to achieve a goal. And goals vary for different designs.

For retail products, like cereal boxes, your goal may be to attract attention to the package by using bright colors and bold designs. Or it might try to entice health-conscious eaters, by showcasing images of fruit in a clean setting.

For electronics, you might be trying to create a breath-taking unboxing experience, to comfort customers who just spent a large sum of money on your product.

Whatever your goal is, using a dieline helps you achieve it. Dielines will let you see which elements stand out on your packaging. You’ll get a good sense of how the final product will look and feel.

It’s much easier to make design changes now, rather than after you’ve printed a big batch of packaging materials. 

3. Use Dieline Packaging to Include Legal Information

Different types of products and packages will need to display information regarding ingredients, safety hazards, instructions, and so forth. 

If you design packaging for consumables, like food, drinks, or supplements, the FDA requires nutrition information, including a list of ingredients. Supplements, as well as household products, will have instructions on the label detailing safe usage. And cleaning products will display any warnings related to the chemicals it contains. 

This information isn’t fun to add to your packaging, as it takes up space without helping to sell your product. But it is required by law, and doing it wrong can get you in trouble.

By using a dieline, you can ensure this information is located in the best spot, so it doesn’t detract from the customer experience, yet is still legible. 

4. Dielines Invite Feedback

By creating a dieline, you’ll have a digital object that you can show to the rest of your team. While the file itself is somewhat complicated, it still makes sense to almost everyone else. 

This means that you can show the files to other team members outside of the design team to ask for feedback. By getting feedback during the dieline phase, designers can easily make adjustments before the packaging progresses any further down the production line. 

Not only do you want feedback from the minds of consumers, but you also want feedback from developers and printers to ensure your ideas for your packaging are structurally feasible, or if there are major flaws in the layout used. 

5. Dielines Extend Beyond Boxes

The most common use for dielines is packaging in the form of cardboard boxes. This might mean custom pizza boxes, cereal boxes, or packaging for laptop computers.

It can also mean specialized boxes for shipping. But dielines aren’t restricted to cardboard boxes.

You can use dielines to create virtually any type of custom material, from brochures to soft food packaging, beverage containers, and much more.

And this is extremely helpful because companies looking for a dieline for one product are typically going to need other customer products made to match it.

For example, you might offer a wide range of products are retail stores. Each product might require different materials, from cardboard boxes to labels on glass jars. In either case, you would use a dieline to ensure the final product of each one is coherent with the other. 

Or, if you ship out a laptop computer to a customer, you might use dielines for different elements of your packaging. For example, the main product box would need a custom design. Inside the box might be a smaller container safely holding the laptop, that also needs to be designed.

Then, there might be a separate container holding the computer charger, and another holding the instruction manual.

By creating dielines in the beginning, you can leverage your design work to ensure you aren’t starting from scratch every time you design a new piece of packaging or marketing materials 

Getting Your Packaging Right

So what are dielines? They are the digital templates that you’re designer or packaging company will use to verify your packaging design is accurate.

Dieline packaging makes for the most customized packaging experience, and is sure to wow your customers and create memorable first impressions. 

Looking to learn more about finding your unique business advantage? Then head over to our blog to find other helpful tips like this.