I’ve been building a list of practical solutions on Unwana.com to solve the problems that I’ve seen many encounter with design, printing, or packaging production often.
The tools are now grouped and arranged in five levels, from pricing a print job to checking product compliance and creating packaging dielines.
Yes, all 16 tools are free and no sign up is required.
Tier 1: Pricing and Quoting
This is where I’d start if you regularly deal with clients.
The Print Pricing Calculator will allow you to choose materials, quantities, paper quality, finishing and design costs and calculate the production cost and selling price.
The Brand Colour Palette Generator builds a 3 colour palette along with the HEX, RGB and CMYK values, as well as font pairing ideas.
Print File Checklist provides you with 31 checks ranging from document set-up to colour, resolution, typography and export. This is because it’s a problem that can be avoided if the file is sent to a printer incomplete.
The Design Project Quotation Calculator guides you through a quick wizard and provides you with a project estimate, timeline and suggested deposit.
Tier 2: Reference and Business
I know you will keep coming back for this very one
The Standard Print Sizes Reference provides dimensions, bleed, safe zone and common paper weights.
The Font Pairing Tool allows you to see how your text pairs with the professionally matched with links to Google Fonts for free downloads.
The Packaging Cost Estimator is designed to assist you to understand packaging type, material, finishing, quantity and compliance costs.
The Designer Income Calculator is designed to help you refer to your current project pricing along with your current load and compare with your income target.
Tier 3: Production and Strategy
After a client has agreed to a job, a number of questions arise.
With the CMYK, HEX and RGB Converter, transitioning colours between digital and print becomes much quicker.
The Paper Weight and Stock Selector suggests appropriate GSM and paper stocks for your products.
The Brand Identity Audit Quiz measures your brand on four areas in the logo, voice, consistency and digital presence and decides which area to tackle first.
The Production Timeline Calculator is a useful tool to create a realistic production timeline, based on a job type and quantity, complexity and urgency.
The Social Media Content Planner provides you with a base plan of content mix per platform and goal.
The Project Profitability Calculator verifies if that project is worth the time and cost.
This is Tier 4: Product Compliance Toolkit
This one is one of the larger additions. You will need this before your print any product packaging.
Use the Product Compliance Toolkit to ensure that your product has what it takes before it is manufactured, imported, exported or sold.
You choose the country and product type, and then follow the country and product type compliance information. I also included the option to copy some helpful compliance data to use when creating product labels and packaging.
This is designed with product manufacturers and packaging designers in mind, as compliance should always be considered before artwork goes to the printer, not after.
Tier 5: Packaging Dieline Generator
This is the highest level. It addresses common packaging design issues and complications.
You simply enter the size of your box and the tool will create a printable dieline, including fold lines, glue areas and cut lines.
That gives you a proper starting point before taking the structure into your design software or sending specifications to a printer. It gives you SVG dieline download to work with in any design tool of your choice.
Try the Tools
These are tools that I have created based on the tasks I encounter in design and print production. They are not there for just to fill out a “Tools” page.
If you are a designer, printer, manufacturer, packaging creator or a small creative business, try out the free tools at unwana.com and find out which ones work for you.
I’ll keep improving them as I find more tasks worth simplifying.