Structural Packaging

Introduction

Over the past two decades or so, a steady flow of packaging source books has published many hundreds of ready-to-use templates (called ‘nets’) for a broad range of cartons, boxes and trays. These excellent books can be extremely useful to a reader seeking an off-the-peg solution to a design problem, but they don’t describe how bespoke packaging can be created, implying that innovation is something best left to the specialist packaging engineer.

I disagree!

In the 1980s I developed a simple system – a formula, even – for creating the strongest possible one-piece net that will enclose any volumetric form which has flat faces and straight sides. In its most practical application, it is a system for creating structural packaging.

This ...