The Challenges of Packaging Design Before Computers
Before computers, creating art used for print production was referred to as the “mechanical paste-up process” and it was not only arduous, it was dangerous.
For designers, the most complicated part of creating packaging was the type. There were books made with basic type that designers could purchase to be used in their designs. Each letter or word was accurately cut with an X-Acto knife and pasted correctly using rubber cement that had been thinned with a highly flammable chemical solvent that was potentially hazardous if not handled properly. The only alternative to glue was using an adhesive wax coating machine. The letters or words had to be run through a machine that applied a thin layer of hot wax on the back of the sheet that the designer needed to place on the layout. Everyone I’ve met who has used a wax machine has the scars to prove it. This process didn’t leave much room for error when laying type. If a designer had an idea of the style and size of type they wanted to use, they could send an order to a typesetter who would design and print each style and size and snail mail them back to the designer, a process that could take a few days. The designer would then follow the same process of hand-cutting, aligning and gluing. There weren’t many options as compared to today with the ability to download millions of different fonts and manipulate size in a matter of seconds. Can you imagine having to type set long-form text such as drug fact panels or ingredient statements?
Creating graphic elements that were not considered standard were mostly done by hand. If a photo of the product was needed, it took a skilled designer to hand-cut photos and other images as needed. The designer would then follow the same process of aligning and gluing. There had to be a lot of preplanning in order to make sure all of the elements fit into place and made sense in the overall design.