When it comes to figuring out your custom product boxes, almost anything goes as far as your graphic design. However, there’s one common design trend that doesn’t play nicely with printing your product packaging—and that’s borders. Borders are commonly used in packaging designs to create a particular look or frame important elements, but having borders of any kind on your custom product boxes carries major hidden risks.

Here’s the issue: During printing, the paper might shift around slightly within the machinery, which is considered 100% normal and expected within the printing industry. Therefore, sometimes your design might print slightly off-center (which is why image bleed—having your design extend beyond the box template outlines in case the paper shifts—is so important). Once your custom product boxes are cut out, folded, and glued, whatever borders you placed on your design would end up misaligned with the folded edges of your product box as a result. If you’re using a pattern, a gradient, or similar design elements, customers usually would not realize your custom packaging looks a little different than what you originally intended. However, with borders, this phenomenon would be immediately noticeable and the entire batch of packaging potentially unusable, depending on your circumstances and tolerance for visually misaligned results. Although we typically leave the nuts and bolts of the graphic design up to our clients, borders would be the one thing we’d advise against for your custom product boxes for this reason!

Got a question about designing printer-friendly product boxes? Give us a shout at sales@businessimageprint.com!