Custom Packaging

How do you make a soap box?

I'm referring to the packaging box that contains soap (as in when you buy soap from a store). I need a practical way to make one. As in hands on!

Public Comments

1. If you are doing it for a a living in a large company that makes many of them it is a team effort. First someone in marketing needs to figure out how many boxes might be sold, which size box would be best, what material would withstand the product, how its decoration will be applied, and what design should go on it. Then someone in engineering needs to look at what existing equipment the company or its preferred vendors have for making boxes and what volume and costs would result from using that capability. They also have toparticipate in seeing how a new box style would wrork with the filling equipment that is available for that new soap and how that fits with volume estimates. In fact maybe if it is a new high volume product they need to consider a new production facility. When those questions have tentative answers an industrial designer will think up a solution considering all those issues, including how to make the box out of a minimum amount of material from a large sheet of material. THe design would include how the box is to be put togther, how it is to be opened up for soap filling, how it is to be closed up after the soap is in, and how likely it is to be able to run through the production line undamaged at maximum speed. Typically they make the box in finished form by hand from rough materials and have it hand decorated to resemble the final package and also in its flat form so they can demonstrate how it is picked up, cut to size, opened for filling, and then closed up as well as how the consumer will easily open it. This may take many iterations until everyone has approved it. It may also take a lot of consumer surveys to get outside opinions After that the fine details of wording, branding, legal notices, colors, type faces, and other cosmetic issues need to be finalized. While the details are being handled a preliminary order of boxes will be ordered or if it is to be made inhouse an order of raw material is ordered. The ability to do a production run of box making and filling in an automated fashion will be checked early and then rechecked as other details are settled. Finally a large scale pilot run will be done and observed carefully as the boxes are prepared and filled while the line's efficiency, yield, and wastage are documented. After more tweaking a factory run will be done and then the optimized box will be released to full production. All this is why the box usually costs more than whatever soap goes into it.
2. Take apart a soapbox that you like carefully, by splitting open the glued seams. Lay it out flat. This will give you a template for your own design, and an idea of how it was made. Then use shirt cardboard to make your own.