It’s time to print your packaging before continuing on to tweak the type on screen. Print your artwork on standard paper, at 100 per cent size, and cut it loosely to the size of a label or front panel. Your product name that you feel looks confident in front of a big screen might feel very small. Your short descriptive text might look too readable on your big monitor. This way, typography is turned from something in front of your eyes enlarged in a digital design. It becomes something closer to what your customer will pick up.
Packaging puts constraints on type. A small label might need a brand mark, a product name, variant, net quantity, and supporting information within centimeters. On a carton, type must also avoid fold lines, cut lines, curves, and narrow panel edges. It’s common for new designers to deal with the scarcity of space by using smaller text. The information will fit, but it won’t be clear. Decide which information needs to be the first one noticed. Give it enough size, enough contrast, and enough surrounding space to act as that important piece of information.
Instead of making all three text fields the same size, try varying between the product name, brand, and product variant. The product name may look best as the dominant type size, the brand may look smaller, and a variant could be differentiated by a more limited colour variation. Test this by printing three separate instances of your front panel where the size relationship of the type is changed. Put all three printouts on a single sheet of paper and read at arm’s length. Most of the time, the most effective type treatment is not the one that has every text field in it enlarged. It’s the one which leads your eye through the information without the panel feeling too loud.
Text size isn’t the only fix for small supporting text such as ingredients, description, instructions, or information panel text. Sometimes supporting text will be difficult to read because of the thin weight, tight leading, low contrast, or over-long line-length. Instead, sometimes choosing an easier typeface, shorter line-length, slightly more leading, or darker text may solve this without having more space available for your layout. When you are checking your printed sample for this, don’t look at it holding it directly beneath a light but at it under general office or house light. Packaging will never be perfectly positioned under a lamp.
Sometimes you’ll be looking at typography in a mockup which will look far more convincing than it might otherwise appear in reality. The lighting effects, shadows, perspective, and the polished background create appeal that can distract attention from bad type decisions. Always look at a mockup as one of the views to check type treatment. For a flat view of type, check alignment, legibility, and safe area. For printed type, check text size, type treatment, and legibility. For mockups, look at type where it is adjacent to corners, curves, and panel breaks. Each of the three views you must look at can find something the previous views didn’t.
Keep your earlier print-outs and don’t throw them out. When you make changes, mark where the product name might have appeared too small, where lines might have appeared to be cut in awkward places, or where decorative type appeared too difficult to read. Print-out the front panel again, at the same scale as before, next to the earlier print-out. When looking at it, see if the important information is easier to find, if the smaller text is easier to read, and if the panel still has room to breathe.