The pack has one job on a crowded shelf.

Food packaging is unforgiving in a way commercial print is not. It goes onto a fixture beside a competitor, under lighting nobody chose, and it either looks like the rest of the range or it does not. There is no reprint that fixes a pack already on a shelf in forty stores.

That is why colour is the discipline here rather than an afterthought. A range launched in March and extended in September has to match, on board that may have come from a different mill, on a press run months apart. We measure rather than judge, so a shade is specified once and held.

The other half of the job is structural. A carton that nests better on a pallet, or drops a fraction of a millimetre of board without losing strength, pays for itself across a run. A window in the wrong place weakens a corner. A varnish that stops at the wrong fold looks like a fault. Those decisions are cheap to change while the pack is still a drawing and expensive afterwards.

We work at both ends of the market. Premium own-brand ranges for the multiples, and small producers on their first print run who need a pack that looks like it came from a much bigger company. The second group is the more enjoyable half of the job.