Mumbai-based Mudra Digital Graphics has become one of India’s first packaging solution providers to give its designers full creative freedom with the Esko Studio software.

According to the company, Esko Studio enables operators to quickly and easily work directly in Adobe Illustrator, creating and designing 3D drink cans, flexible pouches, cartons, boxes, and shrink sleeves, and share the designs with customers in full 3D.

“Today, there is a big need in the market for virtual product photographs,” said Sunil Chavan, design director at Mudra Digital Graphics. “Brand owners need samples of their products before launch. Esko Studio software eliminates the need to manually create prototypes by helping us deliver realistic packaging designs directly in 3D.”

Using Esko Studio, designers at Mudra Digital now provide customers with digitally rendered, superimposed and stacked images with customised backgrounds. It can also include specialised effects such as pre-distortion in the artwork, and even 360-degree pack shot animations. Creative 3D visuals can be produced from the customer’s flat artworks, and Mudra Digital can send back the pack shots with the appropriate lighting and angle to best convey the benefits of the chosen substrate.

“Today’s customer is both smart and smartphone savvy,” said Chavan, who has more than two decades of experience in pre-press, e-publishing, retail design, digital signage, and design automation. “A large number of packaging shapes and sizes have been developed across the retail space. Many of these require packaging solutions where the flat artwork has to be distorted in a way to appear logical and correct when it surrounds the contours of the container. The flat presentation of an image cannot always anticipate its correct visual appearance on a specially shaped container or meet the needs of the customer’s design.”

With Esko Studio software, according to the firm, designers can produce prototypes that deliver authentic representation closer to the pack’s final look and feel.

“We can provide matt, gloss, semi-gloss, and many other types of finishes to the virtual photographs with the software,” said Chavan. “All this is done very quickly using Esko Studio. Also, Esko has a library of basic shapes of all kinds of standardised products, a resource used as a base in this software. Together with other advantages including ease of operation, precision, and the level of automation it offers, it makes our work much faster.”

Chavan said the reputation and experience of Esko made the decision to install Esko Studio an easy one. “There are other alternatives to Esko Studio, but for us, they did not make the cut,” he said. “The fact that worked in favour of Esko was its rich experience in working with the packaging industry, which other software providers do not have. This is a big advantage.”

He added that with Esko Studio software in its arsenal, Mudra Digital is now confident of servicing customers in India and overseas. The company is eyeing brand owners in the top and middle tier segments as potential customers, as well as packaging design studios.

“There are many opportunities in foreign markets for a company like Mudra Digital because of the cost advantages we offer,” said Chavan. “At the same time, we can offer the best quality service in a quick time. So, we are confident that we can acquire customers both in India and abroad.”

Mudra Digital Graphics is a 3D packaging design and pre-press, packaging artwork and colour management solutions provider for retail packaging environments. It is a division of Numex Blocks, a pre-press and flexo plate making trade shop for both wide-web CI flexo and narrow web label presses.