Studio Toolkit for Shrink Sleeves

EskoArtwork’s (Booth 435) Studio Toolkit for Shrink Sleeves, a 2011 InterTech Technology Award recipient, creates artwork for shrink sleeves (labels placed around a package and shrunk during production). Users can quickly create, test, analyze, communicate and produce designs with 3D visuals, without conducting physical test runs.

Designing and printing shrink sleeves is complex and labor intensive, involving a number of trial and error steps to get the design right, resulting in long lead times.

Studio Toolkit for Shrink Sleeves accommodates asymmetrical shapes, multipacks and many substrates, completely working in 3D. Starting in a virtual shrink tunnel, the container shape is imported, substrate material characteristics entered, and the sleeve is digitally shrunk around the container. Studio Designer places artwork directly on the digital shrink sleeve model. In 3D, the artwork shrinks and distorts the same way it would in the shrink tunnel — shared as 3D PDFs, or movies. Designers aren’t working blind in 2D, or with manual test films. The 3D images demonstrating the end-result provides faster design approvals than making and shipping mock-ups.

Studio toolkit for Shrink Sleeves saves hours of operator time and weeks of design time, getting the brand to market earlier, and saving the trade shop thousands in costs.