- ". . . Packages, inside of packages, inside of packages . . ."
- - verse from American folk song
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- We take packaging for granted. More paper is used for packages than for any other product. The price of food and retail items sometimes doubles because of packaging. But consider the nineteenth century alternative of buying food from bulk in barrels, buckets, and boxes. Besides convenience, and efficiency packaging introduced sanitation to shopping.
- Today, commercial and publication printing have competition from the electronic and digital media. Catalogs and directories are increasingly being distributed on CD or via the internet. The paradigm of "print and deliver" has been replaced with "deliver" (the information) and "print" (on site). Package printing continues to grow as an industry. You can't wrap a hot dog in a CD!
- Early packaging attempts included pottery and the proverbial Biblical wineskins. Glass containers go back to 400 B.C. in Egypt. Perhaps the first "printed" package was a Roman ointment jar with the manufacture's name engraved on the led cover. Ancient Egyptian merchants regularly used paper to wrap their wares. Since the beginnings of the English newspaper industry, English fishmongers have used newspapers to wrap fish.
- Package printing was modest, at best, in the period of one-on-one sales. The customer had all her questions answered by the salesperson. There was a slight requirement for description and brand, but little need for advertisement and merchandising. In modern stores, the consumer makes a choice largely based the information and attractiveness of the packaging. Emphasis is now placed on layout, color, and style. Even the kind and level of lighting at the point of purchase is considered when a package is designed.
- Paper was the original covering material for most packages. Metal foils were used to a lesser extent. These packaging materials were opaque and didn't allow a skeptical consumer to view the merchandise. What was needed was a clear packaging material.
- In the early 1900's, Dr. Jacques Branderberger, a Swiss chemist, attempted to make a cloth that was impervious to liquid and dirt. His early attempts were successful, but the cloth was brittle and inflexible. Like so many inventions, the original use was abandoned and new and better uses were found. The clear film originally designed to bond to cloth to make it waterproof would have other uses under the name of "cellophane."
- Dr. Brandenberger's original machine produced an expensive clear film that could only be used to wrap expensive luxury goods and it was not entirely moisture proof. The French manufacturer was La Cellophane Societe Anonyme who, in 1924, sold American rights to Dupont. Dupont chemists successfully made the film moisture proof in 1927.
- The new plastic-like material still had some problems. First was the wrapping. Paper packaging machines could not wrap and seal the material. Its use demanded, at first, individual packaging by hand. The other problem was that there was no satisfactory way to print on the material. Early cellophane packages almost always had to be incorporated with a printed paper label.
- The first attempts at printing on cellophane were done with converted web letterpress equipment using rubber plates. The cellophane had to be fed from rolls with a slip-sheet roll of paper to prevent offsetting the wet inks. The printed material had to be racked until the ink could be air-dried. After printing and cutting the paper and film had to be hand separated.
- The first "true" flexographic press was invented in France in 1905. Rubber plates applied less pressure to the substrate than the letterpress metal plates. There was also the advantage of being able to use non-paste inks, which didn't require as many rollers. The rubber plates could also be used to print dye stuffs dissolved in spirits to print on the new substrates.
- The Milwaukee Printing Company was a pioneer in early flexographic printing. Their successor was Milprint, Inc. and their early name for flexographic printing was "Lustro" printing. The cylinders of these early flexographic presses were made of wood and the rubber plates were attached with ordinary carpet tacks.
- In the early days of flexographic printing, there was not an infrastructure of industry suppliers and technical support. Most printing was done by the "seat of the pants" method. Inks were a big problem. Bleeding, blocking, and opacity were constant concerns. The general perception was that it was the fault of the process and not in the materials that the process used. It would take years for this perception to die.
- Other early packaging materials included glaceen and pasteboard. Both of these materials were better suited to conventional printing processes. Paper bags for shopping were invented in 1852 by Francis Wolle of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Folding cartons were made from pasteboard in the early 1800's. Robert Gair, a New York printer, noticed his printing form had cut through a press sheet and this gave him the idea for die cutting and creasing on his press in 1879.
- Package printing is the rising star of the printing industry. High in demand and with little competition, it brings convenience and safety to the consumer. The next time you unwrap that product and casually cast aside the packaging, stop and consider the importance of package printing.
Copyright © 1998 by Frank Granger
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