Packaging Design in Qatar

Noor Digital covers the graphic side of packaging: artwork, the label system, typography and the way a range hangs together, all applied to the dieline your converter supplies. Structural engineering belongs to the converter, so Noor Digital works to their template rather than inventing a shape they then have to make.

• Primary pack artwork: bottles, jars, cartons, pouches, tubs, sleeves
• Labels, including the regulatory panel and ingredient or specification block
• Outer cartons and shipping marks, usually forgotten until the final week
• A range rule written while pack one is drawn, for later variants
• Supplier file pack with colours, varnishes and cut lines specified

Noor Digital designs the label around what the pack must carry, and that list comes from your category, importer and retailer. Arabic labelling is expected on retail products sold in Qatar and needs designed space, not a sticker applied later. Confirm the required content in writing before artwork starts.

• Food and drink: Ministry of Public Health food control, against the GSO standard
• Cosmetics and consumer goods: Ministry of Commerce and Industry
• Name and description in Arabic and English, ingredients, net weight, origin
• Production and expiry dates, coding area left clear, importer details
• A barcode fails when shrunk, curved or dropped on busy artwork

Noor Digital supplies a file pack built to the converter’s specification: artwork on their dieline with cut, crease and bleed layers separated, colours named as spot or process, white ink and varnish on their own layers, and text outlined. A rejected file goes back behind everything else in the queue.

• Substrate changes colour more than the file does - specify per substrate
• Ask the converter for a printed draw-down where colour matters
• Shrink sleeves need pre-distortion using the converter’s own profile
• Without it the logo comes back squeezed and nobody knows why
• A Ramadan pack clears approval, production, shipping and shelf plan first

Noor Digital tests at real size before anything is printed at volume. A design reviewed at 200 per cent on a monitor is not the design a customer meets from two metres down an aisle, and most legibility problems become obvious the moment the pack is held at its true size.

• Print at actual size, tape to the pack shape, hold at arm’s length
• View against the competitor packs it will physically sit beside
• Check under aisle lighting, which is rarely daylight
• Have the Arabic proofed on paper by somebody who reads it
• Mock-ups for an Al Meera, Lulu, Carrefour or West Bay hotel buyer

Noor Digital will say when a redesign is not what the product needs. If the pack is recognised and the real problem is distribution, shelf position or price, new artwork changes nothing except your costs, and it can reset recognition you have already paid to build. A partial change is often enough.

• Redesign when the pack does not say what it is in two seconds
• Redesign when the label cannot carry the Arabic a new market requires
• Redesign when variants have grown and no longer look related
• Partial fix: front-panel hierarchy, logo lockup, artwork rebuilt on a clean dieline
• Printed stock in the Industrial Area has value - phase it down