Ping!

You were going on a coffee break but you received an email from the designer or the creative agency.

The new artwork design is here.  

After all the teams have reviewed the design, you send along comments or the changes required. You receive yet another email after the agency has revised the design.

In most cases with brands, artwork proofing in this style of communication go on for a long time. And you have forgotten all thoughts of a coffee-break.  

In a rare case, even if you approve the artwork immediately, you still need to send the artwork file to different departments for approval. They will begin their own artwork proofing process.

For a product’s artwork design, many teams closely work together.  They include designers, brand managers, marketing, legal and packaging as well. They ensure that a product’s packaging artwork follows the brand’s style guide. The packaging should also be according to the brand's marketing strategy. For the product's release, legal teams take care of all the guidelines and regulations.  With so many teams involved in different stages of approvals, there is a high possibility of miscommunication. Often brands delay product release due to errors in final artwork designs.      

Proofing artwork designs depends on many parameters and a complex communication cycle. There has to be some method to this madness.

To be on top of the game, here’s how to fool-proof them with these online artwork proofing tools.

1. Compare Them Right

With artwork being one of the initial stages when getting a product to the market, the time spent on viewing artwork designs is a long drawn process. Designers, brand managers, production team and printers spend a lot of time reviewing changes.

Often, this leads to confusion on what changes have been made. Even in large agencies and brands, managers and designers take printouts of the designs and manually review them. They do this every time a design has to be approved to compare it with the previous versions of the artwork. These energy-consuming practices can delay the time-to-market of your product.

A simple comparison tool is a powerful artwork proofing tool. It can make it easier to proof artwork files in a jiffy.  

All you have to do is upload different versions of the artwork files and choose a mode to view the differences between pdf files. The online pdf compare tool lets you view both the files on screen, with the changes highlighted for easy comparisons.

2. Measure It Properly

Most design elements on a product’s packaging are subject to various compliances, regulations and brand guidelines.

If principal display panel is smaller than given guidelines or if the size of the veg/non-veg symbol is not appropriate or if brand logo size is not as per brand guidelines then it may lead to legal compliance issues.

Due to this, brands and companies have dedicated individuals or legal teams who look after these pertinent details while proofing artwork files. But the manual intervention cannot always give accurate results. Measuring every element in the artwork design takes time and doesn’t consider the traceability of errors.

A free virtual ruler such as Measurement Scale lets you measure dimensions in a matter of seconds. By using this proofing tool, you can measure the dimensions of various design elements.

3. Fonts Make An Impression

Have you sometimes noticed slight variations in the fonts in design files?

This happens for lots of reasons, most commonly the files are viewed in software that doesn’t support the font or is not properly embedded into the files. Typefaces, logos, and fonts form an integral part of artwork designs and branding. It’s essential to validate the fonts used in the artwork designs before approving it for print.

Even if professionals are proofing artwork, they might be working on multiple artwork designs. To have an error-proof process, they need a font finder tool to identify fonts used in artwork designs.

4. Role Of Colors

There is a psychology to using colors in artworks and product packaging. Brands create recall in a customer’s mind through specific brand colors. Designers usually work with colors formats such as CMYK or Pantone to get the brand colors right.

The use of colors in artwork designs also depends on what material it will be printed on. Prepress proofing usually helps to know whether the colors used in the artwork are accurate.

A color extractor tool helps designers and printers to verify the colors in the artwork file before printing and add certainty to the process.

Conclusion

For every brand, it is important to get the packaging right before the product’s release. Sometimes, even minor infractions can cause huge losses and damage the brand’s reputation in the market.

Artwork proofing tools can help brand and packaging teams quickly approve packaging artworks and expedite product’s time-to-market. The next time you have to proof an artwork, it’ll really take as long as a coffee break with these handy online artwork proofing tools.

If you are looking for a complete Packaging Artwork Management software, then look no further than Artwork Flow, our FREE cloud-based artwork management platform that will recast how your team manages & approve artwork files.