We currently have a box on our bench that nobody ordered.
It’s built to look like it’s made of chunky, interlocking cardboard bricks; the kind you played with as a kid. We made it to push the limits of our new printer and find out what it could really do.
Now we can’t stop showing people!
We call it BOXO. It started out as a play on words, and has now turned into the best sales tool we have made in a long time, all because it answers a question we get asked constantly: "can you actually do that in-house, or do you outsource it from somewhere else?"
A box built for no one, on purpose
The majority of the things we make start with a client’s problem that needs solving, but BOXO was the complete opposite.
We had a brand new digital printer that we knew could do things our old setup wasn’t capable of, and we were itching to test it out. The fastest way to learn a machine is to give it something silly and difficult to chew on, so that’s exactly what we did.
We designed a box that looked like it was made out of building blocks, raised studs and all, and used it as a test rig for two new functions we weren’t able to offer ourselves before.
"We did it to showcase and have fun with what the printer can do. It was solely for us, a way to play around with what we can do with the machine."
– Roisin Donnellan, Boxes To Go
That all sounds like a bit of fun, and it was at first, but the reason it’s earned its place here is that everything BOXO shows off is now available to our customers.
Two things this printer does that used to need a second factory
The first is white ink. Many digital printers are unable to lay down white. Instead, they put coloured inks over the natural brown of the cardboard, which means any design with white in it, or bright colours that require a white base to really pop, either gets left off or must be sent away for printing somewhere else.
Our new digital printer is a Handtop, which prints white straight onto the board. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for designs on kraft and coloured stock that simply weren’t available before.
The second is raised varnish. The Handtop printer builds up a texture you can feel with your fingers by layering varnish for a three-dimensional finish. This is what makes the building-block studs stand out on the surface of BOXO, and can make a logo catch the light or a pattern pop out from the box without the flat sameness of a standard print.
This means we can now build a look that’s usually associated with embossing or foil in varnish.
What matters for clients is not the effect itself; it’s that both are done in a single pass through one machine.
Why "one pass" is the whole point
This is the part most people don’t realise about embellished packaging.
"Especially in Melbourne, most companies don't do embellishment in-house. It gets sent off to a foiling factory. Being able to make a colour pop, or a logo look more prominent, all in one pass through the machine, that's really beneficial."
– Roisin Donnellan, Boxes To Go
When something has to be outsourced in order to be foiled or embossed, it collects a second lead time, a second setup cost and a second minimum order. This is why those finishes have always been reserved for big runs. If you are dealing with an overseas supplier, foil often isn’t available unless you are ordering in excess of 500 units.
Our finish is built-in varnish by our own machine, which changes the equation. If someone wants to order twenty boxes with a high-raised varnish so it looks embossed, we can do it ourselves.
Effects that used to require a big commitment and a specialist are now available to small brands for short runs.
What it actually unlocks for a brand
The practical upshot is that we can now say yes to briefs that used to sit just outside what we were able to offer, such as:
- A colour pop or a standout logo on a box, without shipping the job out to a foiling house, which adds a step and makes things more expensive.
- A tactile, raised finish that reads as premium, on runs far shorter than a traditional foil or emboss minimum order.
- White and bright colour on kraft or coloured board, not just on white stock.
- A blank box brought to life after the fact. If a brand arrives with a plain box, we can talk about embellishing it rather than starting from scratch.
Since we got the new printer, we find ourselves pitching things we wouldn’t have even considered before. The honest answer to "can you do this" has changed, and it has moved in the client's favour.
When embellishment earns its place, and when it is too much
Now, this doesn’t mean that every box needs to be varnished to within an inch of its life. Part of getting a good result is knowing that less is often more.
A common pitfall when gaining access to a new capability is using all of it at once. Too much raised varnish or an overly busy design will make a box look cluttered rather than considered. Finishes work best when they are doing one clear job, like lifting the logo, giving a single pattern some texture or making one colour sing.
That is a conversation worth having before the artwork is locked in, and it’s the sort of thing we would always prefer to talk through in detail instead of letting a client find out the hard way.
We are also still learning about our new machine ourselves. It is new; we are growing into it, and the quirkier the project, the more we discover about what it can do.
BOXO was the first of our experiments, but it won’t be the last.
How to think about it for your own packaging
If you are trying to decide whether to go for an embellished box, there are a few things worth considering:
- Decide what the finish is for. One clear focal point beats a box covered in effects. Pick the thing you want the eye to be drawn to.
- Ask whether it can be done in one pass. A finish that can be done in-house avoids the extra lead time, setup and minimum order that come with sending a job out to be foiled.
- Do not rule it out on a short run. The old assumption that raised or foil-look finishes need to be ordered in bulk is no longer true when the effect is built in varnish on demand.
- Bring the box, or the idea, and talk it through. The best results come from a conversation about how far to push a design, not from making a guess during the brief.
BOXO came about from us answering a question for ourselves. It turns out it also answers one for a lot of brands as well. The fancy finish you thought you couldn’t afford, or wouldn’t be available at your volume, is probably a lot more accessible than you think.
Got a box that deserves to be more than ink on brown board?
We love this kind of brief. Whether it is a colour that needs to pop, a logo that should catch the light or a raised finish that reads as premium on a short run, we can now do a lot of it in one pass through our very own machine, with no foiling factory required!
Bring us the design, or even just the idea, and we will tell you honestly how far we can take it.
For a short run or full production made here in Melbourne, Boxes to Go is the way forward.