Do you want to work with the person who sold you the work or the person actually doing it?
That’s the question nobody in the packaging design industry wants you to ask out loud. So I will.
Packaging Design Agency vs Studio: The Honest Version
You hired the agency.
Great call with someone senior. Charming. Knew their stuff. Asked all the right questions. You thought, finally, someone who gets it.
Then you got handed to Tyler.
Tyler is lovely. Tyler has a design degree and a really good eye for Instagram aesthetics. Tyler has never held a physical product in his life. Tyler has never called a printer. Tyler does not call anyone. Tyler will send seventeen follow up emails before he considers picking up the phone and by then your print deadline has passed and your pantone colour is now whatever the printer felt like that day.
Congratulations on your beige.
Tyler opened your file in Illustrator. Tyler has never heard of Corel Draw. Tyler sent you three concepts in 48 hours because Tyler has six other clients this week and a stand up show on Friday. Tyler’s concepts look incredible on screen. On a matte pouch they look like a completely different brand because Tyler has never stood in a print room and held a proof up to the light at the angle your customer will see it from.
You paid agency prices for Tyler. The senior person you fell in love with on the call has not looked at your project since the proposal was signed.
This is not Tyler’s fault. Tyler will be excellent in five years. Tyler is just not there yet.
What You’re Actually Paying For When You Hire a Packaging Design Agency
When you hire a mid to large packaging design agency you are paying for overhead. The office. The account managers. The project coordinators. The senior creative director whose name is on the door and whose face was on the pitch deck.
None of those people are doing your packaging.
The person doing your packaging is talented, probably underpaid, definitely juggling four other briefs, and has never had to chase a printer on the phone at 4pm on a Friday because the run starts Monday and something is wrong.
That phone call. That specific uncomfortable urgent phone call. That is where packaging experience actually lives. Not in a mood board. Not in a brand deck. In the moments where something is about to go wrong and someone has to catch it before it does.
Junior designers do not make that call. They email. The printer does not respond to emails on a Friday afternoon. You find out Monday when it is too late.
What Actually Happens to Your Brief at a Packaging Design Agency
Here is the typical agency process for a CPG packaging design project.
You brief the senior team. The senior team briefs the mid team. The mid team briefs Tyler. Tyler interprets the brief through the lens of what he learned at university and what performed well on his last three projects. Tyler presents three concepts in 48 hours. The mid team reviews. The senior team approves. The account manager sends it to you with a cover email that says they are really excited about the direction.
By the time the brief gets to the person doing the work it has been translated three times. Like a game of telephone but the prize is your brand identity and you are paying $15,000 for it.
The best packaging designers I know, the ones who have been doing this for ten, fifteen, twenty years, are not sitting in agencies anymore. They got tired of watching their work get diluted through layers of approval and left to do it properly on their own.
Packaging Design Agency vs One Person Studio: The Real Difference
When you work with a one person packaging design studio the person who asks the hard questions on the call is the same person who wakes up at 3am wondering if your yellow will print correctly on a matte pouch.
The same person who calls the printer directly. Not emails. Calls. Because printers respond to calls and ignore emails and anyone who has worked in print long enough knows that.
The same person who has held enough bad print runs in their hands to know exactly what questions to ask before the run starts.
No handoffs. No account manager translating your brief into something unrecognisable by the time it reaches the person actually doing the work. No Tyler.
Does Location Matter When Hiring a Packaging Designer?
This is the objection that comes up every single time and it stopped being valid in 2020.
My clients are in California, London and Melbourne. I am in Croatia. Nobody has asked me to fly over yet. Turns out you do not need to be in the same room to do great work. Covid taught us that. You are welcome.
What you need is someone who communicates clearly, delivers on time, handles the printer so you do not have to, and tells you the truth about your packaging even when it is not what you want to hear.
None of those things require a postcode.
How to Choose a Packaging Designer: The Questions to Ask
Before you sign anything with a packaging design agency or a studio, ask these questions.
Who will actually be doing the work on my project. Not who is on the pitch. Who is doing the work.
Have you worked with physical products in my format before. Pouches, tins, sachets, glass, cartons all behave differently in print. Ask for examples.
How do you handle print proofing. If they cannot give you a clear answer about pantone matching, substrate testing and physical proofs before sign off, walk away.
What happens if something goes wrong at print. Who makes the call. Who talks to the printer. Who catches it before it becomes your problem.
Can I talk to a previous client. Not read a testimonial. Actually talk to someone.
The answers to those questions will tell you everything you need to know about whether you are hiring the person who does the work or the person who sold you the work.
The Honest Cons of Working With a One Person Packaging Design Studio
I will tell you things you did not ask to know about your own brand. I will push back on your price point. I will ask uncomfortable questions about your customer that your previous designer never bothered with. I will not tell you your packaging is fine when it is not.
And I will never, not once, hand you to someone else.
15 years. One studio. One person. Every project.
If that sounds like what you actually need, book a discovery call and we will figure out whether your packaging is working for you or quietly working against you.
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