Packaging Design Ireland

Éire Graphic Design is a packaging design studio in Dublin, designing labels, boxes and pouches for food, drink, health and retail products sold across Ireland. A pack has about three seconds on a shelf to tell somebody what the product is, why it is different and whether it is for them. Our job is to make those three seconds count, and then to hand you artwork your converter can run without sending it back.

The studio takes packaging work from start ups bringing a first product to market, from established food and drink producers adding to a range, and from brands that have outgrown packaging somebody put together in a hurry. You deal directly with the designer doing the work from the first conversation to the final files.

Packaging design for Irish food, drink and retail products

Products sold in Irish supermarkets, farm shops, pharmacies and online stores each ask something different of a pack. A pack in a supermarket chiller has to be read from two metres away by somebody pushing a trolley. A pack sold online has to work as a small square photo on a phone, and then still look right when it arrives in somebody’s hands.

So every packaging design starts with where the product will actually be seen. We look at the shelf it will sit on and the products beside it, then decide what has to be read first, what second, and what can wait until somebody picks it up. Only then does it become a question of colour, type and illustration.

Built to your converter’s dieline

Packaging that looks good on screen and fails in production is common, and it is always expensive. Every box, carton, pouch and label is made to a dieline: the flat template your converter supplies, showing the cuts, folds, glue areas and the parts of the pack that will not be seen.

We design to that dieline from the start, rather than designing a nice front panel and trying to wrap it around a shape afterwards. Text stays clear of folds and seals, barcodes sit where scanners can read them, and the artwork carries the bleed and colour setup your supplier asks for. What you receive is finished artwork that goes straight into production.

Food packaging and the information that has to be on it

Food and drink packaging in Ireland carries a lot of mandatory information: the name of the food, the ingredients with allergens emphasised, net quantity, a best before or use by date, storage instructions, the business name and address, and usually a nutrition table. On a small pack, fitting all of that in while keeping the front clean is a real design problem.

We plan the back and side panels as carefully as the front, so the required information is legible and in the right place rather than squeezed into whatever space is left. You supply the wording, and we recommend having it checked against FSAI guidance before sign off. We make sure it is laid out properly and reads clearly at the size it will actually appear.

Packaging that belongs to the brand

A pack is often the first place somebody meets your brand, so the packaging design and the brand identity need to come from the same thinking. When we design both, the colours, type and illustration on the pack are part of the brand system rather than an approximation of it. If you already have a brand, we work from your guidelines. If you do not have a logo yet, we can design one first through our logo design service, or as part of a food business logo project.

The Mind and Body Epsom salt pouch shown on this page is a good example of a small brand carried onto a pack: a black stand up pouch with a gold wordmark built around a balance symbol, three simple icons for what the product does, and a short line of text along the bottom. Nothing on the front competes with the name.

Labels, cartons, pouches and ranges

We design labels for jars, bottles, tins and tubs, folding cartons and sleeves, stand up pouches, bags and outer cases. Many packaging projects are ranges rather than single products. Keeping six or twelve variants recognisably related while still telling them apart at a glance is a system problem before it is a decorative one, so we design the first pack with fixed positions for everything that repeats and one clear element that changes.

If you also need material around the launch, we design product brochures and sell sheets, roller banners and trade stand graphics and social media graphics from the same artwork, and our product photo editing service gets your pack shots ready for your online shop.

Choosing a packaging design agency in Ireland

If you are comparing packaging design agencies in Ireland, look at whether they have designed for products like yours, ask whether they design to a converter’s dieline or leave that to somebody else, and ask who will be doing the work. We compared the best packaging designers in Ireland if you want a starting list, and the best packaging designers in Dublin if you would rather work with a studio in the city.

Send us a photo of the product, the pack format you have in mind and roughly when it needs to be on the shelf, and we will come back with a fixed price and a timeline.