The Issue
Before Esko, the company used PDF forms as briefs to kick off a project. From there, internal employees managed the design and artwork processes via email. According to the representative, there was no central location to store information or assets, and no consistent naming conventions. With many global SKUs, some of which shared elements of packaging, visibility became a challenge. If one element was changed for one SKU, there was no place to capture that information. This created the risk of corresponding SKUs not receiving the same updates.
The Solution
The company started using Esko WebCenter in 2018. Following that, it implemented Studio as well. Now, the company’s Senior Graphic Designer uses WebCenter to manage all packaging changes globally. The new process starts by creating a brief in WebCenter, reviewing it, updating artwork for existing SKUs or generating new artwork, and then sending it to the regulatory and marketing teams for review.
The company has its own manufacturing sites and third-party packers that work with printers. The project management team handles updates to existing SKUs and the creation of new ones. Soon, WebCenter will be implemented company-wide and serve as a one- stop-shop for packaging assets.
The Benefits of WebCenter and Studio
According to graphic design personnel, the team makes full use of WebCenter’s features, resulting in time and cost efficiencies. The Senior Graphic Designer stated, “Version control was a really big feature for us. Previously we managed via email, and it made projects longer and more confusing. Search filters allow us to find specific projects which makes it a lot easier for me as a designer to see the status of each one. That is a huge advantage and time saver. It also leads to more accuracy because you aren’t dealing with decentralized notes from multiple sources.”
The search functionality with the project attributes was a game changer because people could easily find what they wanted, when they wanted it.
One of the company’s favorite aspects of WebCenter is the user interface. The designer commented, “Most people find it easy to use. It’s clean and more visual than other systems. The search functionality with the project attributes was a game changer because people could easily find what they wanted, when they wanted it.” Additionally, the team remarked, “Having project attributes and being able to search them is more intuitive.”
The graphic design team also uses Studio. The company’s representative explained, “One of the biggest benefits is that we can generate renders of packaging as we develop new designs. We can work in Adobe Illustrator and simultaneously see how it will look in final production.” This provides a more realistic, sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective way of creating and updating packaging artwork.
Preparing for the Future
The global dairy company is excited to grow symbiotically with WebCenter and Studio in the future. The team described the company’s ongoing goal of ensuring translations and languages on product packaging are correct and updated with increased efficiency. Without a management system in place, this was a daunting task for the marketing team and reviewers. To meet this challenge, they created a checklist to be applied to all artwork in the system, which would be completed before regulatory reviews of a project. This is helpful because personnel can view every version of every SKU. “[WebCenter] is useful because it brings all the information into one place in a visual and easily digestible way.”
