It's hard to walk down a grocery aisle without being bombarded by wholesale cereal boxes. The colorful, enticing images on the front of the box beckon you to come closer - and then they yell at you from store shelves with their catchy slogans. How does a person decide which one to buy?
The cereal packaging can influence that decision. The most important aspect of the front of a cereal box is the picture. It is often a photograph of sugary goodness spilling out the top, surrounded by cartoon characters.
It doesn't matter if it's empty cereal boxes or small cereal boxes. The printing process is the same. Assemble the parts of the box, create artwork for it, have it printed, and send it to a company that can put it all together.
Satisfy your sweet tooth with good old-fashioned cereal! Wholesale cereal boxes are often manufactured by big companies who specialize in printing these kinds of food packaging. They are then shipped off to store shelves, where they wait patiently to be purchased. One day ago
The front part of a wholesale breakfast cereal box has a picture associated with the kind of cereal inside; this is what we'll refer to as "the photo." It's important for this image to be appealing and help convince consumers that they
All this is possible with the help of printing techniques. Custom printed cereal boxes are no different from other printed products in that they are created by layering ink or toner on a sheet of paper. Like most printers, cereal box printers have access to five standard printing processes: offset lithography, digital printing, flexography, gravure, and screen printing.
Each process has its advantages and disadvantages, so let's look at them all before deciding how your custom printed cereal boxes will be made.
Offset lithography is the most common form of commercial printing, used for 90 percent of mass-produced items like cereal boxes. It works by using greased metal plates to transfer an image onto paper. The main advantage of offset lithography is that it's fast - it only takes about 30 seconds to print what could otherwise take hours with flexography.
The downside of offset lithography is that it's wasteful; 84 to 88 percent of its original wood and plastic can't be reused. With such high rates of waste, the difference in price between offset lithography and flexography isn't always worth it.
The other four printing processes work by directly transferring ink from a press head to paper rather than via plates. It's important to note that while these printers look like printing presses - complete with huge rolls and fancy machines - they aren't quite the same thing: flexography and gravure are actually considered rotogravure (flexo for short), while screen printing is an inkjet process. While each of these has its own advantages over offset lithography, each also has disadvantages:
While both flexographic and gravure printing allows for a high degree of customization, the screens used in screen printing offer an even greater level of personalization. Compared to offset lithography, though, these printers aren't as fast or as efficient. The cost difference between flexo and offset lithography isn't as great as you might think; quality issues like typeface legibility and color matching can influence cereal box printing processes much more than speed.
For larger runs (500 units or more), digital printing is one of the most common ways to print cereal boxes - but it's also one of the least desirable options, thanks to its tendency to fade over time and poor resistance to water and grease.
Now that you know about the different printing techniques let's cover the CMYK and PMS color models. If you do a little research about cereal box printing, you might come across these terms.
What are CMYK colors?
The term "C" refers to Cyan - or, more specifically, the amount of cyan in your design. The color black is achieved when CMYK completely covers the page.
M's refer to Magenta colors; Y's refer to Yellow, and K's refer to the amount of blacK in your design. Lighter shades are created by adding white ink to each color, while darker colors are achieved by superimposing one ink.
The PMS model is similar, but its colors are assigned to numbers. This makes it easier for manufacturing to keep track of the shade and ensure quality control.
After you've decided on a printing process and color model, there's only one thing left: communication between you and your printer. That means making sure that everyone is on the same page regarding your requirements, from product dimensions to typeface preferences to filing information - if not, all that hard work will go down the drain!
With a little preparation and communication, though, you can start with a bang by creating custom printed cereal boxes as unique as what they contain.
And remember: choose wisely before choosing flexography over offset lithography or gravure - those printers aren't quite the same thing.
