Notes

Packaging artwork is the process of taking many approved digital assets and combining them into a technically accurate digital file that is specially prepared for pre-press production or on-screen use, or both.

Written: 22.08.2024

As far as I am aware there is no formal training for being an artworker, but we exist so how do we get experienced and trained to do the job?

I cannot speak for others but when I started in design as a graphic designer with a shiny BA(hons) under my belt there were no computers in the design studios, in fact there were no computers in the design colleges, it was not part of the curriculum. We did everything by hand, everything! Imagine hand rendering typography on a layout pad for your brochure design, getting the detail of the font accurate, working late into the night only to realise you had a spelling mistake or your tutor, boss, client wanted to change the size of a column, heading or "could we try a sans serif font?".

Actually I did experience a computer at college, I was at Middlesex and we had the only Quantel Paintbox in education in the country, it was amazing and I loved it but the output was a film print and quite low resolutuion, image based and not suitable for print. Also a tutor actually brought in an Apple Macintosh SE and we had a go with MacPaint and MacDraw, fun but not for production at that time, around 1985.

We did have photosetting machines in the college and when I worked in design studios in late 1980's that is how we created galleys of set text. It was quite scary, you had to mark up your text with column sizes, point sizes, leading, font, weight, style etc. . It often came back wrong. Then you had to cut it out and position it on an artboard and layout the pages. Then the client would change the text!

I helped the design company I was at transition to Apple Macintosh technology, at the time I was working on an Aesthedes Workstation as a designer (these machines were about £250,000 each) and it seemed they would be superceded by these smaller and much cheaper machines, but nobody trusted they could be as good as type setting machines. So for a crazy few months the finished artists - as the artworkers were called at the time - set the copy and I duplicated it on a Mac in Adobe illustrator or Quark Xpress, just to check the quality. Of course it was good enough - better - and we had so much more flexibility to layout the whole page at once rather than pasting the output onto an art board.

Once the confidence of using Macs to generate artwork for print had been established the transition to fill the production department of design agencies with Apple computers had begun. Slowly at first the agencies "invested" in computers, they were very expensive and hard to justify. All the typesetting houses had added Macs to their production departments but designers wanted more control - not something you hear about a designer normally?!! - so the move to get a Mac, and an "operator" or what we would become an "artworker" began.

As someone who had experience of proving Macs could help the designers have better control and creativity of the final print, I was relatively unique at the time and I also came from a design education background, rather than printer trained. So I was head-hunted to set up a department for a London Design agency. They were 15 designers and no artwork department, all artwork was sent out to specialist agencies.

My first day - I had specified the computer I wanted / needed, with a large screen and a colour laser printer, it cost a lot of money and it was the only design computer in the office. Annoyingly my first task was to set up the computer and software in front of all the designers, who of course mocked me terribly and thought it was great fun to laugh at the size of the screen and one commented, "They must think the sun shines out of his F***ing arse!"

Second day my brief was to create packagng artwork for a designer who had re-designed the Quaker Oats carton - do you remeber the oval shaped packaging? - the pack was visually tricky to set type around and the brand logo had a large Q to separate the brand top from the back of pack text. My production Director said, "Good luck with this one as the designer has used and rejected 4 ouside artwork agencies already". Also the designer was the one who had commented on my set up the day before.

Happily I impressed the designer and my Production Director and I got to do all the pack variations, in fact the designer and I became good friends and he would use me long after he had left the design agency for many personal projects.

So you see, I feel the job, or art, of an artworker is someone who has a good understanding of the processes, appreciates the detail and the amount of time the designer has invested in crafting the design, so that the most important part of the job is to have the trust of the designer in putting all the elements together as designed and as best you can to get the optimum solution for everybody, client, designer, production director, boss, consumer.

But what are the experiences of the creative artworkers today? There are no courses or qualifications, perhaps just experience over time? Who do you trust? I would like to know.