Pouch Packaging Design & Inspiration

Pouch Packaging Design & Inspiration (w/ Free Printable Templates)

Think of a few of your favorite brands.

Is their product packaging bright and cheerful, minimalist and sophisticated, dark and elegant, or something else entirely?

Many of us simply “choose” a product on autopilot. We seldom stop to consider why we picked up that specific product off the shelf. This is the power of good branding!

The design of your pouch packaging is the first interaction you’ll have with a potential customer. 

What kind of impression do you want to make? How will your branding communicate the values of your business and the quality of your product?

These are important questions to ask yourself when thinking about design elements of your pouch packaging. Your packaging is more than just a way to seal your product. Compelling packaging is a visual canvas that can help to differentiate your product from competitors and allow you to stake a unique identity in the market. Through your design, you can communicate specific emotions, desires, and values to your customers. And thoughtful branding does this all at a subliminal level.

Eye-catching graphics, carefully chosen typography, and unified color schemes, can also significantly influence purchasing decisions and help your product stand off the shelf.

Compelling branding gives your product longevity; reeling in new customers with your design, and turning them into loyal, long-term brand advocates through your product quality and values.

But it’s not just as easy as slapping a logo and some colors together and calling it a day…

With an endless combination of colors, fonts, and design styles to choose from, creating a compelling and unified visual brand can feel intimidating. Not all of us have the time or energy to learn what feels like an entirely new language.

Keeping this in mind, we’ve highlighted some unique and varied brand identities below to help give you some inspiration and useful tips for your pouch packaging.

Better Coffee Co: Bold Coffee Branding

Better Coffee Co chose a playful and bold design that pays homage to the groovy typefaces of 60’s counterculture. The packaging gives their product both a casual and refined feel. A light airy pink and blue creates bold juxtaposition and contrast, and reflects their brand’s slogan “no weak beans, only big, bad, and bold”.

Their design also is influenced by the popular “Corporate Memphis’ ‘ branding style; which emphasizes bold and cheerful color palettes, exaggerated shapes, and a playful minimalism. It’s familiar yet also refreshing and new. This gives their packaging a sense of easiness and comfort, while retaining a distinct and original feel.

Roastworks: Elegant And Luxurious Coffee Packaging

In contrast, Roastworks Coffee Co chose an elegant luxury feel for their coffee packaging. The black bag, gold serif lettering, and a deep mahogany colored sleeve take inspiration from the timeless styles of other luxury brands, such as Tom Ford and classic British car manufacturer Bentley. This combination contributes to a sense of exclusivity and refinement; this is coffee for people who care about good coffee.

The subtle embossed details on the raised serif font logo and sleeve draws in the customer’s eyes and speaks to the importance of craftsmanship of their product. With the bright gold color helping the product to stand out on store shelves, Roastworks shows how classic elegance and attention to detail create a distinct first impression.

Portland Pet Food: Straightforward Pet Treat Branding

Portland Pet Food shows how an uncomplicated branding style can still stand out. 

Compared to the often chaotic and crowded packaging designs of large name brand pet treats, Portland Pet Food emphasizes simplicity. By using negative space and a large confident font styling and pairings, their dog treat branding gives an impression of homemade quality that speaks for itself. By including a plastic window, trust is also built with consumers who aren’t looking for highly processed and low-quality products.

This classic paper pouch design emphasizes a commitment to the natural products they use in their treats, and pairs well with their slogan, “Crafted by humans, loved by dogs.”

If you’re looking for a simple and cost effective branding style, consider taking inspiration from Portland Pet Treats

Sandro Desii: Classic and Refined Packaging

Taking inspiration from the symmetry and expertly crafted simplicity of their product, Sandro Desii chose an elegant and modern packaging design with geometric shapes inspired by their pasta. The circular patterns do more than provide texture to their packaging, it also frames and centers the eye on the product window and description.

A high contrast, dark typography integrates a simple sans-serif with classic and historically influenced italic serif font. Which gives their packaging a feeling of both old-world familiarity and modern elegance.

If you’re looking to showcase your product with a contemporary and clean design, this packaging from Sandro Desii can serve as a tasteful inspiration.

Macaroots: Simple Earthy Pouch Packaging

When you’re hungry for a snack, you often grab the first thing that catches your eye.

With this in mind, Macaroots created a fun and casual pouch packaging design that stands off the shelf.

The simple and warm palette connects the primary ingredient and flavor of each snack to the packaging color. And rather than go with bright and loud color tones, Macaroots chose an earthy and retro feel that speaks to their use of natural ingredients and health focused convenience.

The bold white typography also helps the product catch consumer attention, speaking to the unique aspect of the product itself. These aren’t chips, bars, or granola snacks; they’re bites and they have one primary ingredient.

By choosing a darker, complimentary shade for the product description copy, the consumer’s eyes are drawn immediately to the primary text. This gives the illusion of minimalism from afar, while still providing the detailed product descriptions that health conscious consumers want.

Haven’s Kitchen: Stylish Clear Pouch Packaging Design

With their clear packaging pouch design, Haven Kitchens takes you as close as they can to their sauces without putting it directly on your plate.

As a reflection of their detail to quality and freshness of ingredients in its sauces and herb blends, they opted for a unique and minimalist see through pouch packaging option. Approachable, distinct, and captivating to the senses, the rich colors of their sauces speak through the monochromatic black and white design. While other brands hide their sauces, Haven Kitchens puts them right in front of the consumer, letting their product speak for itself.

By proudly displaying the product, they also minimized the need for complex branding and lettering design. A simple three-tiered sans-serif primary typography moves the eyes down the packaging, where specific instructions are subtly placed between. The result is a contemporary design that speaks to the foodie who doesn’t feel like whipping up an extra sauce for dinner.

Overwhelmed with

all the options?

Proofing Pouch Designs

What is Proofing? 

Proofing is a preliminary version of a printed piece that shows the features and design of the final piece. It’s intended to be a confirmation of the print and bag specifications — think of proofing like a preview or sneak peek of your project. At CarePac, our printed pouches are made to order, so before we can make your pouches, we need to make sure all pouch specifications and printing are correct. 

Proofing is an essential part of the design process, as we don’t want to print pouches that don’t meet your exact expectations. We hold ourselves to a high standard, and creating the perfect bag does require some input from you. During the proofing stage, you’ll need to make sure that everything is exactly the way you want it, from the font and the logo placement to the colors and customization features. Don’t forget to check the spelling! 

Why is Proofing Important?

Proofing is a critical step to ensure that the bag that CarePac is being told to make is the one you want. The last thing we want is to send you a bag that you can’t use because the size or configurations are all wrong. We recommend having multiple people on your team take a look at the proof – you never know what someone else might catch that you may have missed.

Steps of the Proofing Process at CarePac

At CarePac, we’re all about transparency, so here is what you can expect from our proofing process: 

How are pouch designs proofed?

The industry standard is using digital art files to proof, which is why we’ll send you a digital proof. This type of proofing is quick and efficient and typically works perfectly well. The design schematic is a to-scale layout of the bag showing the art, color and placement of various elements on the bag, including features like zippers and tear notches. 

At CarePac, we use multiple-up dielines which show the different sides of the bag individually. This format makes proofing much easier to perform, as you can see all sides of the bag. Some competitors will show you a print layout which can be harder to proof because the back of the back will be shown upside down. 

In addition to text and imagery, finishes, their location and other elements will also be depicted on the design file to be reviewed. Most bag features will be depicted on the bag dieline along with relative positions. 

In the picture below, we have four features:

Side Seals are where the bag materialconnects together

1. Hang hole 

2. Zipper

3. Tear Notch

4. Side seals

Optional Additional Proofing Steps

Occasionally some projects require additional proofing steps due to their complexity or specific concerns. There are three main types of additional proofing: Draw Downs, Film Print Proofs, and Prototyping. You can learn more about each optional and additional proofing step below. 

Draw Downs

A draw down is where the color(s) used in a bag’s print design are placed by hand on the material to see how they appear on the film. Not all films can be used with draw downs because some films require additional treatment to get the ink to stick to the plastic. Draw downs are best accomplished with bags that incorporate a printed layer of paper in their makeup. 

If you want to see exactly how the colors will appear on the film material, a draw down is the best (and only) way to see this. Producing a draw down does add expense (and time) to a print project, and is typically reserved for very large runs or if the ink or material is a concern. In most cases, reviewing the digital proof is satisfactory. 

Optional Film print proof

This process does create some delay as we cannot schedule additional steps of the production process like laminating, curing, or bag making until the film has been approved. Please keep in mind that film print proofing can add 1-2 weeks to the production beyond normal lead-times. (This estimate assumes that you’ll review your proofs in a speedy manner.) If, after receiving the film print proof, you want to make changes, there will be some cost for the machine time, labor, and materials used to produce the film print proof. This varies by the type of printing being used, and the complexity of the printing. 

With film print proofs, after the design file is approved, we perform the actual printing of the material but then stop and send a cut-off of that film to you for review. 

With a film print proof, you can see the actual print on the material that will be used to make your bags. Once you approve the film, then we will continue on with the production of the bags. 

Optional Prototyping 

For the ultimate in proofing, we offer CarePac Express. With CarePac Express, we offer very small quantities, as few as 100 bags, which can be made to your specifications and are fully completed bags. 

Digital Proofing

is Included!

Although draw downs, film print proofs, and CarePac Express all incur an additional cost, standard digital proofing is included in our pricing models. If you need help understanding a digital proof or have any questions whatsoever about our proofing options, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your representative. For an instant online quote for your project, please click here. 

Digital Printing On Plastic Film

Digital Printing on Plastic Film- What You Need to Know About How We Print on Plastics, Films, and Sheets

With our innovative digital printing technology, CarePac can print short run printed pouch projects and high color count images with minimal setup and no plate costs. Not only does this improve efficiency but it benefits our customers in the form of quicker project turnaround and greater personalization. It’s the 21st century — your business has grown and changed, so isn’t it time your screen printing solutions evolve, too? 

Inkjet Printing vs Traditional Plate Printing

The easiest way to understand the differences between digital printing and traditional printing is to think about the size of the machines themselves. Modern day inkjet printers are highly sophisticated pieces of machinery, and are small enough to fit on the top of your desk. Although our digital printers are much larger than an inkjet printer, they are much smaller than traditional plate printers, which often take up an entire room and require a ladder (!!!) to use. 

Put simply, digital printers are more compact. They’re easier to set up and run. With digital printing, our team simply has to turn it on and run material and supplies through it. Plate printing, on the other hand, is more involved and can be difficult to calibrate and set up. This is one of the reasons that smaller printer runs, and projects involving alot of different designs can lend themselves to digital printing. 

These differences probably mean very little to you (you’re not the one doing the printing, after all!). But when you think about the trickle down effects of these material and time savings, it’s a no-brainer that digital printing is great for many projects.  Quicker turnaround? Check. Looking for more customization capabilities? Check. It’s a win across the board! Read on to learn more. 

Evolve with CarePac’s digital printing

Our digital printing solutions mean that more power is in your hands. You can choose from a wider range of high-quality materials, from paper and plastic sheet to plastic film and compostables, all of which have excellent durability and stand up or lay-flat characteristics. Our professional materials, combined with our digital printing technology, mean your bags will have better ink adhesion, UV resistant properties, scratch resistance, and fewer defects overall. Getting your toes wet in fully custom printed bags can be easier with digital printing, than it is with plate printing. Because you’ll spend less time worrying about your bag printing project and more time focusing on what really matters: running your business and selling your product.

Digital Printing

Digital printing is the process of printing digital-based images directly onto your package. Artwork is separated into four ink colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK+W) This type of printing is best for small runs, or where you have a lot of different designs. Some advanced coatings, and techniques (Spot UV, Spot Matte) are not possible with digital printing. 

Pros:

• No setup costs.
• Shortest lead-times. 
• Great for start-ups and seasonal SKUS.
• Great at printing raster images and photos.
• Perfect for short runs, some as low as 200 pouches. 
• Physical proof available.
• Can be used with most material.

Cons:

• Higher costs.
• Not advised for higher quantities.
• Limited finish options and printing effects. 
• Unable to exact color match PMS colors and some other ink limitations.

Plate Printing

Plate printing is commercial printing where the design of your bag is separated into multiple color plates. Plate printing yields the lowest per unit costs available. Brands you see in Walmart, Target, and so forth generally use plate printing. Most jobs can be completed with three to six plates. Use of metallic color may require additional plates. Use up to 10 colors.

Pros:

• Lower per-unit cost than digital printing.
• It is the most economical choice when scaling your business.
• All Finish options are available.
• Works with almost any material.
• Metalized colors available
• Full range of print effects, metalized, holographic, etc.
• True PMS ink colors can be used.
• Exceptional print durability and better ink opaqueness.  

Cons:

• Minimum order quantity 5,000 pouches. 
• One-Time Plate costs (typically $150 each)
• Exceptional print durability and better ink opaqueness.  

Consideration	Digitally Printed	Plate Printed
Spot Gloss / Spott Matte	No	Yes
Gloss Lamination	Yes	Yes
Matte Lamination	Yes	Yes
Color Options	CMYK	CMYK, Spot, Pantone
Spot Varnish	No	Available
Reverse Trap	Yes	Yes
Good for Short Runs	Yes	No
Per Unit costs	Higher	Lowest
Durability of Ink	Moderate	High

Advantages and Applications of Digital Printing

There are some unique advantages of digital printing that uses a plastic sheet. There are zero setup costs with printing on plastic, and it can be used with any material, including plastic inkjet sheets. Since we can print as few as 1,000 bags or less on thin plastic films, it’s ideal for short runs (think: seasonal, slow-selling products, trial runs, industries with frequent regulatory changes that can make certain bag designs obsolete.) Additionally, plates aren’t used in this process, so you won’t be charged a plate fee. Our digital printing solutions are great for prototyping and start-ups with high color counts. Since the price per unit tends to be higher, many of our customers are those with smaller projects. With digital printing, you’ll get the fastest turnaround (about three weeks!). 

Disadvantages of Digital Printing

The advantages of digital printing should be obvious by now, so what are the disadvantages? We’d be lying to you if we said printing on smooth plastic sheets was the perfect printing option for everyone. As with everything, there are some unique disadvantages to digital printing. The primary disadvantage is the cost — the quick turnaround, low MOQs, and greater flexibility does come with a slightly higher price tag. Ultimately, this isn’t the best option for very large orders.

The other disadvantage of digital printing is the color variance between batches. While there is rarely much variance within a single order, your next order may look slightly different. This has to do with the level of color calibration at the time of printing. This color variation is more apparent with lighter colors, so if your project mostly uses primarily dark colors you probably won’t even be able to notice the difference! Also the whites ink used with digital printing will be less opaque than other print processes.

Shrink materials and plastic films for digital printing

For our digital printing projects, we don’t actually print individual bags. Instead, we print rolls of material that’s laminated and converted separately into bags. Although any base material can be digitally custom printed, here are some of the most common materials and plastic film sheets we use for our digital printing projects: 

Care Silver

This is our line of metalized PET films, and is an economical and effective option for pouches. Care Silver is free from toxins, including BPA, TSE and sulfur, and Phthalates. 

Care Clear

Clear barrier films are the backbone of barrier packaging. Our clear base barriers are affordable and provide protection against moisture and oxygen. 

Care Foil

Like clear barrier films, foil barrier packaging materials offer an incredible barrier to oxygen and water. Our CareFoil material gives you the barrier of aluminum with the added strength of mylar. 

Looking for a material that isn’t on this list?

 

Browse all our materials, or reach out to us for more information. Our helpful customer support team is ready to answer any and all of your questions.

Digital printed bag features, services, and configurations

At CarePac, we love customization and ensuring that the bag you design has all the features you want. The below customization options aren’t limited to our digitally printed bags, either. Whether you custom order digital printed bags or go with one of our in-stock bags printed with plates, below are just some of the features you can include on your bag. Have something else in mind? Get in touch! We’re flexible!

Popular configurations

Our bags will protect your products from coming into contact with moisture, oxygen, and other contaminants and can be purchased in a variety of configurations, including stand up pouches, 2-seal pouches, tamper evident pouches, child resistant pouches (great for the cannabis industry!), and side gusseted bags, among others. View all our bag configurations here. 

Popular features 

We’re proud to offer a wide variety of fully customizable features that can help you market and sell your product. Some of those features include zippers, hang holes, tear notes, degassing valves (a must if you’re in the coffee industry!), and pull tab zippers. For a full list of all our features, check out all our configuration options here.

Experience the CarePac difference…today

CarePac specializes in custom digital printing projects for a variety of industries, from cannabis wholesalers to food and beverage distributors. We have exceptional customer service reps who are committed to making sure your order is completed to absolute perfection.

 With our CareDesign® process  you can rest assured that your digital print project will be done right, no matter what. 

From nailing down the right colors to making sure the logo is in the right place, we understand you put a lot of time into perfecting the look and feel of your product packaging. With vivid colors, quick printing, and a variety of materials to choose from, we have the tools, the technology, and the expertise to make your project a reality. Ready to experience the CarePac difference? Get a quote today!