06.28.07
Many of us in the label converting industry find ourselves performing the role of packaging consultant to our clients. Our role is often far more than just printing a label, so we need to keep up to date with a broad range of information about the packaging industry. Here are some blogs that will help you not only broaden your knowledge of packaging, but they will also help you by providing new ideas that you can share with your clients.
JoAnn Hines, the author of this blog, calls herself the Packaging Diva. She is a packaging consultant, speaker and author whose goal is "integrating packaging with consumers' wants and needs." She is the owner of many web sites (the list is on the blog) and she has been writing this blog since August 2005.
As you can probably tell by its name, the focus of this blog is on practical ideas. Here are the titles of some recent posts: "Packaging Your Products for Moms", "Packaging Snafus and Problems" and "Packaging Greenwash - Saving the Environment". She provides the Diva's Picks of the Week where she provides links to what she considers to be the most important news in packaging. She is not a prolific blog author - she usually posts about twice a month - but when she writes a post it is typically a thorough analysis of one topic.
This is more of a packaging design blog; in fact, the tagline is "the ultimate package design blog". In some ways The Dieline is a celebration of well designed packaging with photos and a commentary of innovative and interesting packaging. The blog was created by Andrew Gibbs, a senior packaging and product designer for a leading gift company in Southern California. He looked around online for a web site or blog that displayed the latest design styles and trends. He couldn't find anything, so he created his own.
If you or your clients need some inspiration for some unique packaging ideas then you should subscribe to this blog. There are new posts pretty much every day, and every post contains pictures and commentary on some kind of innovative packaging. The only negative I see are the prominence of the Google ads - they detract from the visual appeal of a blog that celebrates good design. But this is obviously just a sideline business, so I don't begrudge them trying to make a little money out of it.
The Packaging Blog is a UK blog that is part of a large blog network in France called The Social Media Group. Its reason for being is to "feature news, ideas and opinions, as well as facilitate information exchange between users and producers of packaging." It is relatively new, having started in February, and its authors write two or three posts a month.
The blog deals with a variety of relevant topics. Recent posts discussed the packaging industry and media relations and how the media sets out to give the packaging industry a bad name, and what can be done about it. Several posts have addressed sustainable packaging, and other topics covered include nanotechnology, RFID and packaging materials.
Usually in this column I just review blogs, but if you are using an RSS reader (see The Blogsmith column from March 2007) there are several useful packaging web sites that offer RSS feeds to which you can subscribe. Here is a brief list of some of these resources:
www.webpackaging.com: featuring innovative consumer goods packaging and news from the packaging industry.
www.packagingessentials.com: an online-only resource for professionals in the packaging, graphical, converting, related equipment, and supply chain industries.
www.packagingnetwork.com: the digital marketplace for the packaging industry and an excellent source of news.
If you go to these web sites, look for the little orange symbol that indicates there is an RSS Feed. Then you can subscribe to them and your RSS reader will let you know when there is new content. All blogs have RSS feeds, but now many regular web sites are including them as well.
Packaging News You Can Use (packagingnewsyoucanuse.blogspot.com/)
JoAnn Hines, the author of this blog, calls herself the Packaging Diva. She is a packaging consultant, speaker and author whose goal is "integrating packaging with consumers' wants and needs." She is the owner of many web sites (the list is on the blog) and she has been writing this blog since August 2005.
As you can probably tell by its name, the focus of this blog is on practical ideas. Here are the titles of some recent posts: "Packaging Your Products for Moms", "Packaging Snafus and Problems" and "Packaging Greenwash - Saving the Environment". She provides the Diva's Picks of the Week where she provides links to what she considers to be the most important news in packaging. She is not a prolific blog author - she usually posts about twice a month - but when she writes a post it is typically a thorough analysis of one topic.
The Dieline (www.thedieline.com/)
This is more of a packaging design blog; in fact, the tagline is "the ultimate package design blog". In some ways The Dieline is a celebration of well designed packaging with photos and a commentary of innovative and interesting packaging. The blog was created by Andrew Gibbs, a senior packaging and product designer for a leading gift company in Southern California. He looked around online for a web site or blog that displayed the latest design styles and trends. He couldn't find anything, so he created his own.
If you or your clients need some inspiration for some unique packaging ideas then you should subscribe to this blog. There are new posts pretty much every day, and every post contains pictures and commentary on some kind of innovative packaging. The only negative I see are the prominence of the Google ads - they detract from the visual appeal of a blog that celebrates good design. But this is obviously just a sideline business, so I don't begrudge them trying to make a little money out of it.
The Packaging Blog (www.thepackagingblog.com/)
The Packaging Blog is a UK blog that is part of a large blog network in France called The Social Media Group. Its reason for being is to "feature news, ideas and opinions, as well as facilitate information exchange between users and producers of packaging." It is relatively new, having started in February, and its authors write two or three posts a month.
The blog deals with a variety of relevant topics. Recent posts discussed the packaging industry and media relations and how the media sets out to give the packaging industry a bad name, and what can be done about it. Several posts have addressed sustainable packaging, and other topics covered include nanotechnology, RFID and packaging materials.
RSS Feeds for Packaging
Usually in this column I just review blogs, but if you are using an RSS reader (see The Blogsmith column from March 2007) there are several useful packaging web sites that offer RSS feeds to which you can subscribe. Here is a brief list of some of these resources:
www.webpackaging.com: featuring innovative consumer goods packaging and news from the packaging industry.
www.packagingessentials.com: an online-only resource for professionals in the packaging, graphical, converting, related equipment, and supply chain industries.
www.packagingnetwork.com: the digital marketplace for the packaging industry and an excellent source of news.
If you go to these web sites, look for the little orange symbol that indicates there is an RSS Feed. Then you can subscribe to them and your RSS reader will let you know when there is new content. All blogs have RSS feeds, but now many regular web sites are including them as well.