The importance of Branding As a packaging agency, we’re no stranger to the importance of branding. Logos and colours are often the first and most memorable aspects of a design we notice when we receive enquiries. As a supplier to a wide range of business types and sizes, we’re also aware that a budget won’t always allow for fancy prints and finishes. Enter the humble sticker! Stickers are a great way to enhance standard “off the shelf” packaging. They can also add a low-budget branding solution to a range of boxes to streamline them as a collection. Tips for adding stickers to your packaging C ..read more

Here at Pactivate we’re pretty passionate about cardboard. Why? It’s recyclable, biodegradable and incredibly versatile. All-in-all a fantastic packaging material. Today though we’re focusing on the application of cardboard sculptures for art, rather than packaging, as we’ve stumbled across some incredible artists we just had to share! Daniel Agdag: “Sets for a film I’ll never make” Daniel Agdag is an artist and filmmaker based in Melbourne. He openly favours cardboard as his primary medium due to its “utilitarian origins and monochromatic presentation”. He is principally recognised for h ..read more

Jargon in Packaging, is it helpful or a hindrance? While one company’s ATE is another’s OTE, and some people talk in GSM while others in Pounds, whether graycol or fogra, ecma or fefco, ultimately Jargon only helps to standardise when it’s used consistently. Previous Next But that’s the rub… having worked with and for a number of companies over the years, it always surprises me how often terms are misunderstood, and incorrectly used. And even more surprisingly; how often companies espouse a specific format or code of technical language when the only people who subscribe ..read more

A rise in consumer choice We’re living in a world with more Entrepreneurs than ever. In 2019, Forbes Magazine reported that Entrepreneurship was already on a sharp increase. This has been especially prominent in the UK with the rise of community office spaces and supportive “mentoring-type” networks. Though 2020 saw uncertain career prospects for many due the global Covid Pandemic, a great proportion of those made redundant also turned to starting up their own business. We (Pactivate) have already seen this increase from our own inbound enquiries. More Entrepreneurs means more product choice ..read more

We’re in lockdown again, hairdressers have closed and our grooming habits are back into sharp focus. I was thinking about colour matching while trying to cut my son’s hair and had an epiheny! [By the way, he’s nearly 3 but hates having his hair cut: This is a big challenge for us as untrained hairdressers – I won’t share pictures, but a recent specsavers sheep shearing advert comes into mind!!] I often get asked by designers how a certain spot colour will look using 4 colour process. This whole conversation becomes much more complicated when we take into account the colour of the material we’r ..read more

The countdown to Christmas well and truly under way, and what better time of year to get creative! [1] By now most of us are aware of just how wasteful Christmas time can be. According to Waste Management Company Biffa, An extra 30% of rubbish is produced and discarded throughout the festive period when compared with the rest of the year. Whilst still in the midst of a global pandemic, Christmas is all a bit different this year. More of us are ordering gifts online, which ultimately means an even higher usage of packaging. Many of us will also be seeing fewer friends and family this festive s ..read more

The Unboxing experience What is an unboxing experience? Unboxing refers to the act of unpacking a box or product packaging. The unboxing experience is the memorable interaction a customer has when first unboxing a product for the first time. Think of the feeling you get at Christmas or on your birthday and the emotions you feel when opening a beautifully wrapped package. This emotional connection is what a great unboxing experience taps into. Over recent years, the unboxing experience has been increasingly harnessed by brands as an extra marketing tool to their customers (helped by the rise ..read more

Packaging is all around us today, so most of us have witnessed “bad packaging” in some form or another. From questionable design choices to downright false advertising, we’ve put together a few of our favourite examples of truly awful packaging… Enjoy! Oops… Wrong Product! Peach Bolognese anyone? No? How about soup with a fork? “Say NO to Plastic”… Oh Wait The term “falling at the last hurdle” springs to mind. Questionable Placement Choice We sure hope no babies were harmed in the making of this packaging. Fake News! Ah! Two packaging fail classics: overpackaging and misleading ar ..read more

Multi-sensory packaging is far from a new concept but is still something that can really boost your product above its competitors on the shelf. Why? Because by engaging multiple senses of the consumer there’s more chance of creating a lasting impression. So let’s take a look at just how each sense can be captivated through clever packaging design… Sight: Visual connection is usually the first point of contact between product and consumer. Research has also shown that the shape, colour and then text on a package is viewed by a consumer in that order. The importance of look and size of packagin ..read more

Packaging is an industry which never sleeps, but many have had to re-adjust their strategy to make changes – Here’s our (light-hearted) step-by-step summary of our observations over the last few months… Step 1: Don’t Panic “Corona virus won’t affect us.” It’s easy to think (as we did) that everything will pass & that the media have over-sensationalised it all. Step 2: Panic “This will hit the UK?!” The scale of the issue starts to kick in and we are all taken by surprise. Step 3: Choose your outfit (strategy) “Time to react!” We start to look at our strategy options.. a.) Ab ..read more