How Artwork and Label Management Tools Can Protect Your Brand Identity

The professionals that supply packaging and artwork development are under pressure to deliver an increasing number of projects in limited time. In such an environment of reduced spending, increased costs, and increased sustainability interests, companies are changing their ability to efficiently manage the packaging and artwork management process complexities.

When companies innovate, the package itself often changes. And such a change engages almost every functional discipline inside the company while simultaneously engaging a large network of external partners. This is why companies opt for Packaging and Label Artwork Management solutions to bring about innovative changes.

Retailers and, in some cases, consumers have become highly demanding for products and packing that meet their expectations for quality, cost, and social responsibility. The revenue earned and margin cost may quickly evaporate as new buying patterns emerge and mature more quickly than before. Therefore, packing and artwork management has become a high-stakes game.

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Barriers to attain effective packaging and artwork management

Companies need the right solution to manage their packaging and artwork development processes to achieve their goals. They face critical barriers to achieve effective packaging and artwork management which defines their brand identity, including:

• Insufficient management and control over brand assets and deployment over products, their variants, and markets.
• Inconsistent or incomplete briefing data.
• Delays due to dependency on physical prototyping
• Inability of teams to work collaboratively to deliver brand value.
• Lack of uncertainty about the appearance of the entire finished product until the end of the project.

To remove these barriers, many leading companies have turned towards making the most of label and artwork management tools.

5 Ways label and artwork management tools help protect your brand identity

1. Digital asset management

As label competition grows,  brand managers are challenged to consistently innovate their products and packaging while meeting health, safety, and environmental regulations in the dynamic market.

For every new project, managers must ensure that their suppliers work with current branding guidelines, labeling, and product information.

Brand leaders can control the brand identity by establishing a centrally managed repository of all brand, labeling, and packaging information. Label and artwork management tools give business leaders the capability to bring more visibility to their entire portfolio along with greater control over its execution.

2. Digital briefing process

Brands today aim for the first-time-right implementation of packaging and artwork. And for such an execution, the briefing process plays a fundamental role. This process demands that each team involved in the packaging and artwork development needs to manage its own process independently. And that can include emails, faxes, phone calls, or even files containing varying versions of critical information.

With label and artwork management tools, companies can optimize the briefing process and connect their creative and technical strengths. They can streamline the briefing process through automated wizards that ensure all components of artwork, label, and package design are considered. The captured knowledge can then be re-used to create new packaging components, thereby keeping the brand identity intact.

Label and artwork management tools can definitely help in creating a single product brief that includes all creative and other delivery aspects that dynamically links to other components involved in maintaining the brand identity.

3. Virtual package design

Package design is another important component in product innovation. It is also quite challenging to manage all the elements required to come together in a package that will be effective on the shelf and maintain the brand identity.

Most packaging design projects try to meet deadlines and frequently go over and beyond their budgets. The process gets more complex with compliance with local regulations while addressing customer preferences. This means that there would be multiple iterations required to arrive at the final package design.

Label and artwork management tools help companies to manage the development process efficiently. The tools make it possible for everyone involved to collaborate and share information in real-time. Designers can then access comprehensive product briefs linked to the correct brand assets, regulatory and legal notices, product formulations, etc.

Digital prototypes can be sent across for comment and approval that dramatically reduce the design cycle time and cost by excluding the need for physical prototypes. The artwork management tools give project managers the transparency they need to eliminate bottlenecks and manage the process that leads to a successful launch.

4. Collaborative artwork management

For many companies, artwork development, review and approval is quite a lengthy process. The hard-copy drafts and proofs are circulated to internal and external agencies for review and comment, making it a long process. What’s worse is that this cycle may repeat itself many times before the final approval is achieved.

One of the primary reasons for product recalls is defects and errors in pack copy, which can be caused by such a lengthy process.

However, companies can effectively manage the growing complexities of artwork by establishing a label and artwork management tool which gives them workflow capabilities. The tool electronically links all artwork and labeling to the product brief, which is dynamically associated with all brand assets, product information, and production constraints, etc.

An artwork or label management tool can play a major role in tracking the review process with so many stakeholders. Once your team develops the proposal to streamline the process, the graphics group can then work directly with the vendors to make all the new system changes. Your artwork or label management solution can then fit into your new process.

And the approved artwork can be stored in a digital asset management system and other packaging elements and specifications wherein they can be accessed for re-use, thereby maintaining consistency in brand identity.

5. On-demand visualization

Label and artwork management tools enable an on-demand visualization. All the players involved in the packaging and artwork management process can access a 3D view of the current project. This showcases all the artwork elements that fit together to form a complete offering for the retailer, regardless of the stage that the project is currently in.

When the creative teams and the technical teams are required to collaborate on fast-moving packaging and artwork management projects, there are bound to be errors and defects. An on-demand visualization that is linked to the virtual package design process will definitely prevent errors.

With such a label and artwork management tool in place, other uncontrollable factors like time zones and functional lines become less of a barrier when everyone can look at the same picture simultaneously and view the markup or provide suggestions in real-time.

Conclusion

Many companies face barriers to effective packaging and artwork management performance which eventually affect their brand identity.

Solving brand identity problems with label and artwork management tools can better enable companies to drive brand value in the market. Label and artwork management tools also enable better alignment of people, processes, and brand assets that also help companies scale to meet the demands and increasing complexity while maintaining consistent brand identity across products.