You may see your day-to-day job, in its most elemental form, as taking jobs from customers and doing your best—with the tools and people you have—to make them print effectively. If so, there are a number of experts at this month's PRINT® 05/Converting 05 and CPP Expo shows who would like to help you do that job better, and at the same time broaden your perspective a bit.

Specifically, have you given any thought to becoming a more integral part of the design process of the packaging that you print? Several seminar sessions at the Chicago and Las Vegas events are aimed at getting package printers to see themselves as problem-solvers for their consumer-product company customers, and get involved upstream in a way that will provide added value for the final printed product.

"Obviously the print business is changing, and it's going to be difficult to survive selling printing alone," says Howie Fenton, senior technical consultant for NAPL, and a presenter for no less than five technical sessions at PRINT® 05. "The growth in the business is not going to necessarily come from more 'ink on paper.' It's going to come from selling convenience and speed, which are the two things print buyers really want.

"For some, convenience and speed means one-stop shopping for their print needs. For some, it means online ordering. And for others, it means utilizing design services and expertise within the walls of their print vendor." Three of Fenton's PRINT® 05 sessions, in particular, have relevance to the package printer/converter's adoption of new upstream technology and becoming more of a problem-solving partner in workflow and graphic design:

Session 14: The Digital Designer, CSR and Sales Person

Session 55: Building Practical Workflows

Session 68: New Technologies Changing Your Business

The ways changing packaging design will affect package printing also are touched on in Session 70: A Fresh Perspective on Package Printing, presented by John P. Windle and Dave Costa of State Street Consultants, Inc.

At the inaugural CPP Expo in Las Vegas later this month (see "CPP Expo 2005 Debuts," p. 26), one of the major themes is integrating the entire process of making a successful package, from the design concept, through printing and converting, to package filling, to the shelf. One seminar at CPP Expo ("Great Package Design Meets the Real World," Monday, September 26, 10:30 am–12:30 pm) will concern itself with package design that integrates the entire supply chain in the planning process.

One participant in the presentation and panel discussion will be designer Dean Lindsay, principal of Dean Lindsay Design (www.deanlindsaydesign.com), and award-winning package designer for some of the nation's largest CPCs, who works with his client's printers, converters, and label suppliers to come up with packages that are innovative both graphically and structurally.

"Ninety-five percent of the time my client knows which converters, printers, etc. they will be working with for a new package, along with the materials, closures, etc. so it's a matter of working within those parameters and coming up with a fresh combination.

"But every two years or so, the customer wants something really innovative and has no preconceived ideas yet even as to labels, converters, suppliers.

"Converters have come up with some innovations in my experience with package design. For instance, when I was involved with the design of Ice Breakers gum packaging for the Life Savers div. of Nabisco (now Hershey), it was the converter who understood how holographic foil could be used to best advantage for the package," Lindsay says. "Holograms are now ubiquitous, but in the mid-90s the concept was new and I had no idea how this technology could be used on a gum package."

For more information and descriptions of CPP Expo 2005 seminars, peruse the show's web site at www.cppexpo.com.

This depiction of the concept-to-print process, rendered by our own in-house illustrator Curt Spannraft, progresses from initial drawing, to 3D computer image, to plate layout, to roll of, in this particular case, flexible film for Mama Carlini's sauce pouches. Don't you want to be part of the whole design process?