In the fall of 2023, I had the pleasure of working as a packaging design intern in ProAmpac’s Design and Sample Lab (DASL).

ProAmpac provides flexible, environmentally friendly, and sustainable packaging solutions for the global marketplace.

As an intern, I used ProAmpac’s four-step process, Ideate, Illustrate, Render, and Prototype, to take conceptual pouch designs through sizing, branding, print, and production, and generate commercial-quality prototypes.

I learned a lot during my time, and I’d love to share if asked!

While I am unable to show the work I completed during my internship, I am allowed to share a personal project, displayed below, using the skills I gained through the experience.

Problem

There are over 1.46 million lists on Etsy for keychains.

Process

Visual Direction

Prototyping

ProAmpac’s Design and Sample Lab, DASL, focuses on creating environmentally friendly packaging solutions by stepping away from plastic and creating recyclable and compostable flexible films.

Each film has a different level of flexibility, thickness, and transparency.

To create a new pouch, specifics, including material, size, and type of pouch are recorded.

The material is cut to size, and placed on a Kongsberg cutting table and cut using a file created in Adobe Illustrator. The sides of the pouch are heat sealed together. A zipper is added if requested.

Following traditional pouch silhouettes, ideation produced four options.

I was encouraged to create a brand to represent how the fully customizable graphics would look for a real shop.

Final

Creators need a sustainable and customizable packaging option to hold the products during shipping.

Brand

Font Direction

2 inch wide
“envelope”

The most common size for acrylic keychains is 2 inches by 2 inches.

I continued with the 3 inch wide zipper without the gusset as my final.

Graphic Direction