The process that occurs between final design creation and final printing, marrying your creative vision with the technical needs of the printer to ensure your product looks just the way you envisioned.

If it gets printed, it requires production design! Examples of common projects are:

• Package layout and adherence to supplied compliance guidelines
• Apply your assets/artwork to a printer-supplied dieline
• Apply existing designs to new SKUs/sizes
• Prepress optimization: bleeds, distortions, scores & perforations, color separations and optimization for printing method (flexographic, offset, lithographic, gravure, etc.)
• Make printer-requested revisions (typefaces, knockout and overprint minimums, raster image management)
• Marketing materials (sales sheets, catalogs, shelf-talkers, merchandise)

They can. However, graphic designers’ skills are best leveraged on creative projects. Time spent on the technical production design process means other creative projects get pushed out.

As long as your subscription is active you can add as many design requests to your queue as you like. Each project will be delivered one-by-one - we cannot move on to the next project until the current one is completed or put on hold.

It depends on the complexity of the design project but most projects are delivered within 3-4 working days. More complex projects or projects with multiple layers of deliverables may be broken into multiple projects.

We have a team of highly-vetted production designers. Every design deliverable is reviewed and approved by our co-founder (and seasoned production design expert) before you receive your final designs.

We are two long-time colleagues that have spent years leading product development, packaging and printing in some of the most highly-regulated and fastest-growing CPG industries.

In order to join our team, a production designer must pass a rigorous test that includes a challenging, real-life production design scenarios.

Our designers are fluent in the Adobe Creative Suite - Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, etc. Most jobs will be completed within Adobe Illustrator, however some designs will require managing assets in a variety of filetypes.

Some printers have in-house production designers. Many do not. Some printers even leverage our team to do production design for them on behalf of their clients. We typically find that the printers that do have in-house production designers focus on ease of printing rather than customizing your design to be the best it can be.

You will submit your request in your Trello board.

Assets and information we’ll need will include (but may not be limited to):

• Dielines
• Artwork
• Brand guidelines
• Copy and rough placement
• Design and project brief(s) if applicable
• Type of printing (digital, offset, flexographic etc…)
• Printer artwork submission guidelines
• Requested # of versions (if we are generating layout)
• Loom video or other video overview if needed

You can specify your required deliverables and file types! Every thing will be housed in your Trello board and Dropbox folder(s).

Don’t worry! We’ll complete as many revisions as necessary until you’re happy.

There are no refunds but we will complete as many revisions as necessary in order to provide a result you are 100% satisfied with.

• Layout & fitting of your designs into dielines, including required safe zone and bleed spaces
• Consulting on printability/issues that may require redesign (prepress review)
• Color management: Color space translations (RGB → CMYK and assets with competing color spaces), Pantone color assignments, Color separations
• Three-dimensional print continuity (e.g. design flows across multiple panels of a box)
• Layer and separation organization (simplify, organize and clearly label sections to printer/ manufacturer specs and for ease of editing and printing)
• Misunderstanding of printer specs/requirements

No problem. You can pause your subscription when the project is completed and resume when you have more project requests.

Sorry, proration isn’t available - you will be charged for a full month.

• .ai file with live type (not outlined)
• .ai file with outlined type
• All relevant fonts in .otf or .ttf format
• Any source images or design files in a folder labeled “Links”, including source images that have been edited
• If an InDesign file, the file will be packaged with fonts, links and PDF

No way! This is a collaborative process and designs will always be provided to you in a format that your design team can quickly edit as needed/desired.

Definitely! If it’s difficult to get the gist of what you need across in an email, we’re more than happy to schedule a call with you. Simply check the “needs intro call” box when you are submitting your job and you will be routed to our calendar for scheduling. Note: This may add a day or two to the delivery timeline.