Packaging design

We take your packaging from concept through to shelf-ready artwork. That covers the visual identity on pack, the structural format if it’s not already locked in, the copywriting on every panel, and the production-ready files your printer can work from. We work mostly with food, drink and wellness brands, where we already know the category and the kind of retail environment the work has to compete in. We can pick up at any stage: From an empty brief, or from an existing brand system that needs new SKUs. What we don’t do is run presses ourselves. The goal is packaging that performs commercially, not something that just looks good in a presentation deck.

We’re based in Studio 116, The Pill Box, on Coventry Road in east London. The studio sits in a converted pharmaceutical building shared with a mix of independent creative businesses, which suits how we work. Most of our team lives in or around London, and we work in person from the studio rather than fully remote, because creative work involves physical samples and printed proofs that don’t translate properly over a screen. That said, our clients are scattered across the UK and internationally. London is where we make the work, but it’s not a constraint on who we work with.

Food, drink and wellness. Within those categories we’ve worked across craft drinks (Heaven Soda, True Story Brewing Co), better-for-you snacks (Gr8nola), Asian condiments and noodles (Lee Kum Kee), functional health (Phizz), and food (White Rabbit & Jamie Oliver). That focus means we already understand how UK retail category teams think about new listings, what makes a brand work in a chiller versus an ambient aisle, and where design decisions actually affect sell-through on shelf. We’re not learning your industry on your time. We will always have an honest conversation with you about whether we’re the right team.

Yes. Food packaging design is the category we work in most, and it’s a genuinely different brief from other packaging work. The category has its own retail buyer dynamics — what works in a Tesco listing won’t always work in a Whole Foods or an M&S Food Hall. Food also asks more of the photography and styling: the product has to look appetising on a small panel, in a style that holds up from the printed pack all the way to a customer’s phone screen. Pricing tier and sub-category cues shape what works on pack and what doesn’t. Recent food-specific work includes Lee Kum Kee on Asian condiments and noodles, Gr8nola on better-for-you snacks, and White Rabbit across their range. If you’re a UK food brand thinking about packaging, that’s our wheelhouse.

Yes. Launch packaging is a different brief from a relaunch and we treat it that way. With a relaunch, we’ve got existing sales data, customer feedback, and shelf history to work from; what’s pulling its weight, what’s not, where the brand has earned the right to push further. With a launch, we’re making those calls before any of that exists, so the work leans more on category research, founder vision, and what the brand intends to stand for over the next three to five years. We can work within your existing brand system if you’ve already built one or develop the identity alongside the packaging if you haven’t. Heaven Soda is a recent example of the second pattern — brand strategy, identity, and packaging built together from a blank page, ready for shelf launch.

A single SKU typically takes 8 to 12 weeks from brief to final artwork. A full range redesign is closer to 3 to 4 months, depending on scope and how many decision-makers are involved in approvals. What stretches a timeline more than anything else is unclear ownership — when sign-off has to bounce through marketing, legal, sales, and the founder before it lands, weeks evaporate. The fastest projects we’ve run had a single named decision-maker on the client side. We give you a realistic timeline at the start.

We produce artwork to your printer’s specifications and can liaise with print suppliers directly on your behalf if you want us to. That includes preparing dielines, setting up bleeds and trapping, specifying special finishes like foiling, embossing or spot UV, and pre-flighting files before they leave us. For food and drink packaging in particular, where you’re often running multiple SKUs through a single print run, getting colour management right across the range matters more than most people realise. We don’t run presses ourselves, but we know enough about how they work to spot the things that go wrong on press: misregistered metallics, ink limits being blown on heavy coverage, weak adhesion on certain substrates. That experience is part of why our files tend to print right the first time, which is where the real money is saved.

You work directly with the people making the work. No account director translating your brief to a creative director who then briefs a designer you’ve never met. When you’ve got feedback at week three, you’re talking to the person whose hand was on the file. That cuts weeks out of the process and tends to produce better work, because nothing gets diluted as it moves through layers. For most food, drink and wellness brands at the stage of building a real consumer product, smaller is sharper — all of the ideas, none of the big agency fluff.