OH HEY THERE new Luna pattern, you pretty thang!

You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m rather enamored with our new Luna print pattern packaging, so let me give you a little tour of our new pattern design…

Product design is an interesting topic to me, and since we spent so much time reconfiguring our print package when we re-launched Luna last fall, I thought I’d talk a little bit about what decisions go into creating a product like this. The choices almost always involve weighing features versus cost; with attractive design and better functionality always more expensive, a tension I find fascinating. FUN!

When it comes to work on a project like this, Elli creates the actual design layouts, with direction and input from both Jess and me. It’s a team effort, but Elli does most of the actual work, since Jess and I have already done the work of designing, grading, writing, testing, sewing and photographing the pattern by the time the PDF launches.

When we started printing patterns back in 2012 (Washi was our first print pattern), I prioritized the pattern piece sheets over the outside packaging, choosing to print on paper sheets rather than tissue, even though it costed more and would mean occasionally having to tape two sheets together, because I felt that the higher quality sheets would last longer (personally I have always found tissue pattern sheets to be an absolute nightmare to work with). I also chose a plastic bag for the outer packaging, as I had also once heard a horror story about a bulk pattern shipment getting destroyed by water. The bag helped cut cost — a custom-cut box or envelope would have been more expensive — with a folded piece of cardstock that fit inside the bag functioning as the pattern cover, and the folded pattern piece and instruction sheets inside of that.

Here are some of the other patterns (including previous cover designs) to show you what that looks like.

A few years ago, we started to realize that our current packaging was reaching a limit (when we printed Beatrix and then even more so with the Geranium Expansion Pack, which has an abnormally thick instruction booklet), literally: we were starting to reach the limit of just how much paper could be squeezed into that little plastic bag.

As a stop-gap, I decided to print the pattern sheets for Beatrix on both sides (necessitating tracing paper, as one couldn’t cut directly into the pattern sheets) not only because it was cheaper, but because multiple folded large pattern sheets couldn’t comfortably fit into the plastic bag. The introduction of additional sizes with all new patterns after 2016 has also increased the dimensions of the pattern pieces, so we knew we would eventually need to look for a different option. Again, tissue pattern sheets would have solved that problem, but I haven’t really ever considered that a good option.

Instead we decided to focus on a new hybrid box/envelope design for the packaging that would allow us to get rid of the plastic bag, move to 100% recyclable material, and make more room for more or larger pattern sheets. The downside of this decision is pretty obvious: it costs significantly more, and so unfortunately our profit margins are much lower with this new package design than they were before. This may necessitate a future price increase on the print patterns, but for now we are absorbing the cost difference and hoping for the best.

At any rate, we now have a beautiful coated box design (which is more durable than a paper envelope, yet still fully recyclable) that can expand to fit more pattern sheets.

I love that we were able to incorporate the yellow color into the side gussets and flap of the package, and I’m excited to use red and aqua on future packages…so fun!! Elli did a fantastic job creating a design that fully incorporated our new branding elements (font, logo, colors) into a chic and modern looking print package. Yay, Elli!

We also added a stapled instruction booklet for Luna rather than the fold-out pattern instructions we currently have for Washi, Geranium, Ruby, and Beatrix. We do also currently have a stapled booklet in the Cleo and GXP print patterns; it’s attached inside the cardstock cover for those two.

While it’s understandably impossible to create the perfect product — color pattern sheets or instructions would be fantastic, but cost is always and will always be the limiting factor when it comes to those decisions — I’m really happy with this design. Of course I hope to eventually use it for future print patterns as well. I’m sure it will take a while before we can roll out this new design for the older patterns, but we have a great template that will work moving forward.

Well there you have it! I hope you enjoyed seeing these peeks at the new Luna design and hearing about some of the decision-making behind the scenes.

You can purchase Luna in print from these Luna stockists, and in PDF (and sometimes in print) direct from my shop.