Grant talks to IWSR about print trends

Inno­va­tion Review

Grant con­tributed to an arti­cle on pack­ag­ing trends ref­er­enc­ing our work for Brighton Gin using inno­v­a­tive tech­niques and dig­i­tal print­ing. A lit­tle snip­pet of that arti­cle is avail­able below.

Improv­ing dig­i­tal print­ing tech­nol­o­gy is open­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties, accord­ing to design­ers and pack­ag­ing com­pa­nies. Grant Willis, co-founder and cre­ative direc­tor of Lon­don-based Our Design Agency, says dig­i­tal print­ing was crit­i­cal to the eye-catch­ing design of Brighton gin. ​“Dig­i­tal print­ing was once con­sid­ered the poor rela­tion, but now it’s offer­ing much bet­ter-qual­i­ty print at an afford­able price,” he notes. ​“It allowed us to be able to colour match the authen­tic 1950s Brighton Seafront Blue colour sup­plied to us by the local bor­ough. It offers a wealth of oppor­tu­ni­ties for small-batch craft spir­its brands, as well as big­ger brands because it offers high-qual­i­ty short runs, per­son­al­i­sa­tion and super-fast turnaround.

“We’re going to see increas­ing per­son­al­i­sa­tion and exper­i­men­ta­tion in one-offs in spir­its pack­ag­ing as design­ers real­ly get to grips with the tech­nol­o­gy that dig­i­tal offers,” he adds. ​“Our work for Brighton gin with dig­i­tal means they can be spon­ta­neous with lim­it­ed edi­tions for [the Gay] Pride [Fes­ti­val] and real­ly feel part of the event. By using dig­i­tal print­ing, we were able to low­er the cost of pro­duc­ing the label by a con­sid­er­able amount. This then allowed us to use oth­er tech­niques like foil­ing and emboss­ing to ele­vate the pack­ag­ing and feel more luxurious.”

Orig­i­nal­ly fea­tured in IWSR Magazine.

27 March 2018