Folding Carton Design
The basic folding carton format has long been the go-to for packaging that gets noticed, but that doesn’t mean it’s been a blank canvas for creativity. In fact, it’s an excellent vehicle for expressing your brand’s values and capturing the attention of consumers.
One way to do that is with innovative Folding Cartons – the kind that can stand out in a sea of other packaging options. With digital printing, you can make your ideas come to life.
There are many ways to approach a folding carton design, but each one has a different purpose and requires a unique approach. For example, an informational packaging piece may have a completely different structure and use than a product package for retail or a promotional piece. The key is to find the right folding technique that suits your needs and brand’s values.
The Art and Science of Folding Carton Design
Origami, or Japanese paper folding, is a traditional art that involves creating 3-D structures out of flat sheets of paper. Origami can be used to create a variety of shapes, including animals and flowers. Origami is also an important part of some of the world’s most cutting-edge research.
Researchers at MIT are using origami to create new forms of polymer material that self-fold into interesting shapes. This is an area of science that could lead to medical devices and other products that are easier to assemble than they are today.
Rather than using glue, this team uses light to help the polymer fold itself. They print a series of lines on the material, which then form hinges that are triggered by light.
They then use an array of different colors of light to relight the polymer and assemble it into its final shape. This technique, which they published last year in a paper in Science Advances, is not quite ready for consumer production yet but could eventually make it possible to build items that are easy to ship and unfold when necessary.
Another team of scientists, this time at the University of California, Berkeley, is experimenting with an even more revolutionary idea: making a material that folds itself. This material could help to solve a lot of problems, like the scarcity of natural resources and limited space, by providing a means for people to fold themselves into a different shape when they need it.
The science behind this technique is complex and multi-step, but it’s an exciting prospect. And it’s one that could make a lot of things possible in the future, from better car airbags to more efficient packing for space shuttle missions.
Physicist Randall Kamien is a member of the PennDesign faculty and has been exploring kirigami since 2013. He and artist-in-residence Mike Tanis use kirigami to explore the connections between mathematics and physics and to better understand the nature of defects in materials.