Retail
Counter-level point of purchase print for Aveda
A rolling programme of small-format point of purchase for Aveda: header cards, a lightbox, easels, price cards, insert posters and tent cards. Items in this family live at arm's length on a beauty counter, which sets a much higher bar for cut quality, crease accuracy and colour agreement than anything read from across a room.
What the job demanded
Counter point of purchase is inspected from about thirty centimetres away, by a customer who is already holding the product. At that distance a rough cut edge, a cracked crease or a colour that misses the packaging by a shade is obvious. The work also arrives as a family rather than a single item, so a header card, a price card and a lightbox face all have to agree with one another despite being printed on board, on paper and on backlit film, each with a different white point and surface. Beauty programmes tend to run short quantities across many doors, kitted per location, which means the make-ready has to be efficient and every kit has to be identical.
How it was produced
The set was produced as flat print first, with a single colour build approved across the whole family so board, paper and the illuminated face are matched to one another rather than each matched separately to a reference. Rigid and folding items were finished on a flatbed cutting table, which uses a vacuum bed and interchangeable tools: a knife for the cut line, a crease wheel for fold lines, and a kiss-cut blade where a face needs to lift off a liner. Creasing rather than simply folding matters on coated stock, because a crease compresses the fibre along a controlled line and stops the coating cracking. Easels were built and scored so they stand square on a glass shelf, and tent cards were creased to close and sit flat without bowing.
