How to Design Game & Toy Packaging w/ Matt Nuccio | Ep 76

If you can just give me like a quick rundown of who you are and a little bit about design edge, that that'd be a great way to kick this 

off. Sure. Well, I guess I can't talk about myself without talking about this on edge, almost one in the same. At this point, before I even exist, my father started in the toy industry in 1969 while working with ideal toys and Aurora toys.

And then around the time of. He got picked up to go to a company called HG toilers. He was there for a few months. Then they found that they were kind of going out of business. Then he just took the bull by the horns and sort of turned them around. And by 1980, 4 85 big gone from, you know, almost going out of business in the seventies to being, uh, like one of the top 20 toy companies in the world.

But then you fast forward a few years later, when I'm about 13, 14 years old, they had made a whole bunch of bad investments. Nevin got themselves in trouble and were getting bought out by a company in Chicago called superior. My father was like, did not want to move from New York to Chicago and started design edge out of the garage with my mother who was an illustrator and an artist.

Wow. And, uh, as I'm often joke and I was drafted from day one foreign born and raised the toy industry. In fact, when my father worked for HTT. These do use me as a model for packaging. So you can find lots of old toys of like neon Dukes of Hazzard sets. I think a phone, a phone lineman, like, I don't know what kid was buying that tip, you know, a bunch of old things catalog covers, you know, I was cheap labor and definitely taken advantage of.

Yeah. I mean, that's the way to do it, right? That's that's why you 

have kids. It's exactly why I don't have enough. I should, I should get a full on labor force. Ladies, call me if you're interested. 

I was watching some of the videos on the design edge website. You know, you're the orange county choppers, the toys you're having a good time, not just designing toys, but the packaging and everything goes, 

yeah, we definitely are.

You know, the, the, the quick, oh actually I, my other stock joke, but it's true. It's like, we, we call ourselves the, the other Italian family business. Right. So, yeah. So yeah, by work, grew up working with my parents and my cousins and my, my sister was here for a long time too, before she went off. Sort of doing her own things.

Um, but you know, we do it through and through. We are the backend to dozens of toy companies and packaging is a huge part of that. In fact, my degree is actually in packaging. I studied packaging at the fashion Institute of technology. 

I just had a Aaron Bashir who, a instructor at fit and packaging. So yeah, I mean, there's a lot of great designers coming out at fit was the idea to go to school for packaging to come back into the family.

No, I was sort of the prodigal son, right? So I, I left when I was about 18, 17, about 1819. I'd went to actually initially the art students league in Manhattan, which you're not familiar is it's all out fine art school, like Georgia O'Keeffe went there, that's an institution. And I was doing fine art for a little while and I was doing gallery shows or around the New York city in that the outer areas and was fortunate enough when I was.

Yep. My first one man show the New York times did a two page review, which was great. And I thought that was going to be my career path. But as time was progressing, all of a sudden I realized like I wasn't really making that much money doing that. And I was working more and more on the side with my parents.

And then I decided to go to fit and study, study advertise advertising, and then that parlayed into packaging. Wow. So you started 

the packaging side and then. When do you transition to the toy side? 

Well, toys was always there. And the crazy thing is even when I was going to fit, you know, they're, they're, they're churning out students to, to, to work for the likes of live L'Oreal and Estee Lauder.

And I'm the only kid in that class. He was like, I want to, to toys and the, like, they also, like toys was like a low brow art, but I'm like, I'm low brow. This is perfect. You know, and all my stuff always had like a whimsical sense of humor to it. And I, I hated doing perfume, packaging, you know, but they made us do a lot of it, but then I got to school and then packaging was, it's a huge part of toys.

So for every product that's designed, you know, this thing could be 10, 15 different versions of that package that it turned out and packagings use for sales meetings and whatnot. So, you know, sometimes the constant part doesn't even exist. We're just doing fake packaging for it. So packaging is huge in the time sheet.

It's the frontline of. At retail and to both to the consumer and to the buyer retail, 

I'm just thinking, you know, Christmas just went by, right. Holidays went by. So like, as you're walking down the aisle at target, you've got the game on. And each game is a gigantic billboard for whatever the product is in there.

Right. It's trying to create some sort of like emotional pull to the game. Like if you're looking at like risk, right. It's like this battle happening on the cover. And then you've got like the silly games, like the, where you draw with your nose on the board, you know, those types of. And then those are kind of goofy and you've got all these different artistic styles on the pack.

So with your experience, like what needs to be on the front of a board game, for example, like what are the critical things that have to be on there? Right. 

Well, I, I can answer this one. Well, so the, the game wall and he got was actually at target and Walmart, it's not even just an aisle, it's a whole wall.

It's the back wall. This games games is blown up exponentially, particularly during COVID of course, but they have been ramping up for the past 20 years when it comes to game packaging. Particularly I, the comparison I always use is like game packaging is like a person you meet in a bar that you have.

The courage to talk to you just yet, the front of that package is how attractive that person is and what pulls you in. And the back of that package is how intelligent they are, right? So you have to be able to engage. You have to be able to draw them in with imagery that really, that really attracts them on the front.

But it also has to be able to tell somewhat of the story, but not, it can be a little sexier than your average toy package. So, you know, books can be more, I mean, they can be more in the vein of a book, Jackson. Then they are in, in say like an action figure, which has to tell, you know, points of articulation and whatever the licenses.

So yeah, that, that's the main pole. Um, things that I wary of in game packaging is it is a huge wall. I mean, it isn't the whole back of that. So you really need to go and study and see what's out there because you need to make sure that you're going to stand out and. Common mistakes. I see all packaged designers doing that aisle is cause monochromatic packaging, which is a terrible idea because it just becomes a giant piece of camouflage.

It may work for the likes of Estee Lauder or L'Oreal, but not, not the tutorial. Yeah. You talked 

about highbrow lowbrow. You've got that same thing happening on in the game aisle. You've got like the kids' games. There's one. I don't know, like you step in poop or something like that. I'm sure. 

Do you guys have a hand in that we work with spin masters that produced that this bad.

So, 

yeah, so there's, you know, there's a game where you don't step in poop and then there's the higher brow, more established games and they all kind of share that same space, but we all play games. So how do you appeal to different people? But at the same time, it's like, oh, the same person. Cause I would buy the poop one to goof around with my kids, but I would play risk with my older kids.

Like how do you know, how is that a, is that an issue or do you just come up with the idea and you're just running with it? Like how does that apply to packaging? 

Well, at this point, a lot of it's become a Nate, right? So it's hard for me to figure out what the psychology behind it behind it is, but games.

Aura for all ages. And they always sort of have been, but they more so now than ever. Uh, and, and toys are becoming that way too, as you noticed behind me, action figures, you know, there's a lot of guys collect action figures and you know, what was odd is when I was a kid, I can remember hearing about, you know, adult Japanese reading comic books and collecting toys.

And I thought that was so bizarre. Now that's commonplace here, right? I remember, I used to think animate was like, adults are watching anime movies and that was changed. Now, animated movies are adults go to you. Shouldn't be fooled into thinking that the toy market is just for children, you know, but it needs to appeal to all.

And a good sense of humor is probably your, your, your best weapon in your arsenal. 

The idea of having a sense of your fruit for packaging when it comes to games, right? I mean, you're, you're buying a game to have a good time who doesn't want to have. 

Yeah. And I think to digress to what I was saying before, when my teachers were like toy packaging.

Huh. But it's the same way. You know, people would frown upon comedy years ago. Right. That was just like a low brow art. But over time, like people discovered there's a lot of intelligence behind comedy and you have, it's not just, you know, poop jokes, deputy. It is essentially a poop joke, but it's a great one.

Yeah. That's awesome, man. So you mentioned that you worked with spin master. You said you're the back end to a lot of. So, are you, do you only work with established toy companies or are people like knocking on the back door going, Hey, I got an idea for a game. You know, how do we make this happen? 

Both. Um, so we worked very long service, like you mentioned monopoly, right?

So we did a new couple of new versions of monopoly and sorry, included this year for Mattel, but tell us the largest toy company in the world. And we've also helped startups launch their own. They have one game. And they want to break into the market. And it's not just a matter of me helping them with their packaging and their design.

But we also, as I said, we're the back end. So we will manufacture for them. We dictate pricing so we know what the pricing structure needs to be. And when we line them up with distribution so that it's not just like, make it, put it in your garage and sell it to your friends and then give the rest away for the next 45.

Yeah, I just, I just saw like over the holidays, I just saw, um, target has a monopoly. Yeah. Uh, there's so 

many verses of monopoly, you know, actually for the, for the first time in a long time. So we did the, this, the, the spider verse monopoly for as a Walmart exclusive. It's out that right now. It was, my kids were totally astatic.

I'm like, we've made so many cool things and this is the thing that they love. They love monopoly, you know? And the crazy thing is growing up. I didn't like monopoly mostly because my sisters would cheat and I would just get frustrated. But, uh, what I've learned, I've learned now that they really like it.

And, uh, it was, it was really cool during the, the Spider-Man version because, you know, normally you get like a style. And they say, you have to use this artwork. And that's aside from the Spiderman logo and the monopoly logo, they gave us carte blanche and they made us, they added actually had his real illustrate all everything from because Disney who owns Marvel wanted it to be completely fresh and original.

So that was an honor. I never thought I'd see the day when they weren't insisting that we had to use. In-house Marvel and Disney illustrators working with 

Mattel, they typically would give you a style guide. Here's you know, here's the colors, here's the imagery. But in this case it was like, it's monopoly go crazy.

You guys are the expert. 

Yeah. Yeah. And that's becoming more and more the norm. I don't know if it's because of where our reputation is or just in general, people in marketing at these large companies are just realizing that style guides fall flat and they really just, they can really trap, especially in the toy industry.

You know, I think years ago there was like this great, you know, we'll own a whole section. We'll have three feet all at the same, but that's also what the. All your product is now lost in this, this, this wall of, of the style guide that you can't tell, you know, one item from the other, unless you pick them all up to stare at them.

There there's a good move away from the classic style guide into, you know, ancillary packaging and obviously logos maintain, you know, you don't want to lose it, lose that, but everything else, no longer logo has to be. You know, 5% of top corner and, you know, thought these to be 12 point in bottom corner, you know, that's, that seems to be 

gone.

So talking about like specifications like that, when you're doing toy packaging and game packaging, what's the regulatory like on that, because you talked about Loreal, I've done cosmetics and there's regulatory on that is a nightmare sometimes where it's like, Hey, all of a sudden. We've got five languages and, you know, your entire design gets screwed up.

How's that work for, for toys and games? What kind of regulatory or you're dealing with 

that? We deal with that on a constant level. I mean, there's, you know, toys are heavily regulated, you know, there, there are warnings that have to go on it like a choking warning or whatnot, and that there's scale to a certain size.

And there are, you know, certain things are dictated, like, you know, ages and, you know, uh, Set set includes lists and what not all have to be on there. Um, as far as multiple language packaging, we do that heavily for Europe, of course, and Canada, the Canada, I find to be a nightmare for packaging because not only does it have to, you know, do we need to have French and English, but they have to be the same scale.

Right. Right. 

So how does that work on, uh, on the front, on the front of pack? Cause I, you know, I've done that on, on cosmetics where you've got small, small texts, so you just kind of bounce, you can bounce it off. Without, without apply to like operation or 

yeah. Plus everything. That's just Canadian law, you know?

Um, so in effect, Canada has some of the ugliest packaging, but I, you know, it's cooled back needs to be able to buy things to 

that's. Right. It's a big market. Cool man. So when, when, uh, so talking about like Mattel working with those guys and, you know, they give you carte blanche on the spider. Is there any, is there like a strategy discussion that happens?

Like here's where we want to go? Like, what does a strategy discussion look like for 

there's a lot of back and forth, you know, they, they, you know, there's a product manager, the product manager that comes in and, you know, they'll liaison between Disney and us. And we're, it's just, there's a lot of. Ideation and a project like that, and it goes into this feedback and then the things are compiled and then rethought out, you know, it can, it can, it's a longer process than it probably should be, but it's, you're also dealing with a brand that's they, they know that they're going to sell a ridiculous amount right out the gate.

So they're willing, they want to get it. Sure perfect. Doesn't necessarily mean the most hysterically pleasing or the best billboarding package. It also has to fit Spider-Man world properly. You know, there's a, there's a lot, there's a lot going on is, 

and then, so having been in the toy industry in packaging for as long as you have been, you know, as a family business as well, uh, I see that you're also, you're also part of this group of inventors, toys and games.

You're, you're inventing these things. Should designers consider themselves invented. 

You know that that's a, that's a tricky one because I am an inventor and we've been fortunate. Design edge is, is, has done quite a lot of inventing over the years. And we, we, we, we have an, we make a nice chunk of change just on, you know, coming up with ideas and licensing them to large and small toy companies.

Not all designers are inventors. Um, it, it's just, it's a different type of mindset. I mean, yes, they can cross over a bit. But designers sometimes will get too caught up in the details while inventing at least the initial brushstrokes needed to be broad. Yeah. So, but it's tricky because there's also inventing in packaging.

Right. Right. So I, you know, outside of we do things outside of toys, so we apply a lot of those coffee boxes that you buy at at, at, um, you know, at delis, you know, large retail stores, you know, the ones with the bags in them, one of our clients has the patent. And we design and we w we'll, you know, we'll tweak that every, every couple of months and do it for everybody, you know, from, from Panera bread, uh, to the Doug and to whomever.

Um, and that's, that's a packaging innovation that is an invention, right. As is the sleeve that goes on a cup of coffee, right? That's a packaging innovation, that's an intervention and people overlook those. And oddly enough, the guided the slave and the guide to the coffee box know each other. And it's just crazy.

You also talked about inventors rights, right? So let's say for packaging, for a packaging innovation. What are some of these inventor rights and what should people be looking for? 

That's a trigger. So it's all industry specific, so it can get, it can get tricky, but yeah, there are, you need the, you need to really watch yourself and to know what you're dealing with in the, if your.

If you're an invented within a certain industry and you know how that is, you weren't sure you could, you might be fine, but if you're not within an issue, you might want to find yourself a broker who understands that area because there's a million ways for, for inventors to get screwed. And so I do sit on the board of directors of the United adventures association of America, which is the world's largest inventor, advocacy and education group.

They're a great resource. So if you're interested in, you know, learning more about venting, I recommend that you go there. Yeah. If you're into toys, particularly you can, you can join the people of play. And that will also give you some great education. Awesome. Those are the main resources I would point you to, but every industry is a little different and their royalty structures are different and you know, what's required, you know, some industries demand a patent, so others don't should toys.

You don't particularly need a patent. In fact, I find toy patenting for toys is, could be a complete waste of money. Toys or fashion based. So by the time you apply and get the patent, your concept could go to market, be huge, then come down and then never be seen again. And then, then your patent comes in.

Wow. So yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't work in terms of timing. Yeah. Cause I, you know, I see a lot of, uh, packaging designers, like develop packaging structures, like that's their focus and. You know, they'll come up with concepts and they'll share those freely to their, their clients. They're, they've invented a new structure.

They've invented a new way to interact with packaging, but they don't realize that, you know, maybe they can do something a little bit more, you know, own that design, if it is technical enough or, you know, 

if there's a proper utility to that package, there may be some great avenues for them to, to explore it and may go beyond the industry, to which they are.

They're designed it for, you can be putting a lot on the table and then it screwed things up. It's it's, it's crazy. I am too. My father was one of the first guys to do, um, single pizza slice boxes as far as, uh, just a borrows like many, many years ago. And I wish it done that because to my knowledge and from what I've researched that box did that.

Until he did that box pretty darn 

well, the triangular folding. Yeah. 

Yeah. You know, we've done some interesting packaging, uh, or. For companies like, like Hooters, which is like, what, what am I big jokes is that our clients range from Hasbro to Hooters. Cause it's true. Uh, but just using different types of laminates and codings to, you know, allow for, you know, wings to go in there and not soak through, uh, a corrugated clamshell.

Yeah. So then getting, you know, going to like the toy packaging. With a lot of toy packaging, you know, you're like what you got behind you. There's, there's the clamshell, there's the backer board. And then, you know, there's a million different print processes that can happen, right? There's, there's foils, there's UVS all these different treatments that can happen on the packaging.

How important is sustainability in toy and game packaging today and is sustainability kind of a hindrance to a toy packaging and what needs to happen? 

Well, it's a, it's a necessary hindrance, right. You know what, that's just where the world's going. And we all have to be more conscious of, of, of, of our, of our footprint.

I would hope that the bigger innovations as we were just talking about an attending would actually be in breakthroughs and materials. Hmm, right. How can we make more manufacturing, more sustainable packaging, opposed to necessarily, you know, lowering the overall footprint of the package all the time. The point where it has no marketability, um, But we've been very conscious to like remove plastic tie strips and we're using less and less blisters and, and, you know, just different types of processes.

We're just, we're just not there different types of materials that, you know, you know, using pet over, you know, PVC and, uh, It feels like it's not moving fast enough, but I'm sure in hindsight, I look back and be like, wow, what a huge difference. I'm sure if I look at what we were doing five years ago and look what we're doing today, I would see like a major difference, but, you know, I'm, I'm so close to, it's literally against my nose.

Um, five years ago to today, what are the trends that you've seen kind of develop over that period? 

Well, mostly, you know, reducing, reducing the overall footprint. So when I started in this industry, you couldn't make the box big enough. Right. They, you know, the whole idea was that the kids wanted this giant, you know, this giant piece, you know, and that was part of the excitement.

I'm sure when we were kids, if I'm sure. Pictures of Christmas morning, the toys are all gigantic. Um, you know, now it's, you know, make it as small and concise as you possibly can. And again, removing windows and, and, and twist ties. And those things really add up over time. You know, if you're, you know, a mammoth toy company and you've got, you know, five wire ties and every single package you sell and you're selling, you know, billions of toys a year.

That's a lot of plastic 

or those wire ties still manually applied. 

Well, then manually applied and they're coded because they've got to be, or their zip ties again, all the types of plastic, but now we're using paper ties. 

I never thought back to, as a kid, having packaging be bigger, you know? Cause it was better.

It didn't matter if it was like, you know, half it was air. You just wanted this, you opened for the biggest. Yeah. And today we're reducing the size, which makes sense. But with toy packaging, And, uh, size reduction. Are you, are you having to develop more of a unboxing experience? Like kind of layering things in there to, to make it a memorable?

I would feel like that whole unboxing experience really, to my knowledge, maybe it's just because it's the world I live in really came out of the. Business. Right. Well, those initial unboxing videos are all YouTube stars and tick doc and, uh, you know, just opening up up toys. Yes. The unboxing experience is, is very, is very important.

Um, that that experience is. Is is now cemented in people's cause we'll film it. Right. And those people, but on box stuff, it's crazy, but it's cool. You know, it gives more attention to the. And also we've seen tremendously successful toys birthed out of simply packaging. You know, LOL surprise is a great example, you know, of a, of a, of a very successful toy.

That's packaging based it's the packaging is primary and the toy is almost ancillary. 

Have you guys produced some that. 

I have not, you know, is a prime example of something that is often cited when people come to us. Uh, but like toys, you know, it's fashion based. So as soon as someone has a hit with something, it was knocking your door to have, you know, the, the, the very similar, but not quite the same 

a hundred percent.

Yeah. 

I know marketing. Yes. 

Yeah, no, I it's funny. Cause I just, I just spent. Like 10 minutes, videotaping, videotaping, you know, recording a, uh, some LOL surprise boxes. And I, I ran across at target and they'd done this like bellows construction. It was really complex. And I mean, it had to have been all manual labor to assemble this thing.

Um, so. When you're talking about toy packaging and creating this unboxing experience, know you guys design it, you mentioned you manufacture it. Do you own the manufacturing? How does that, how does that work? 

The majority of our manufacturing in China than we do some tiger countries, as well as, you know, domestic here in the states, I don't own any factories.

You know, we, we sort of broke our agents. But that too many, I don't know any Americans who own a factory in China, Chinese don't in factories, China, China, but I have very long lasting relationship. So I have been going back and forth to China since 1996. I lived in Hong Kong for a little while we have two satellite offices in China and you know, it's back and forth every single day.

In fact, they called me this morning at 5:00 AM, which I was like, geez. Uh, but, um, yeah, but we're heavily involved in manufacturing. 

Awesome. And then you mentioned that you do a prototype sometimes. Are you building those prototypes in house? Yes, 

we, so here in New York I have a 5,000 square foot facility with a, you know, obviously a big design lab, as well as it sounds studio as well as a, uh, full on.

Machine shop. And then we do light. We don't do any manufacturing, but it's all prototyping. So it's, it's everything from sculpting action figures to, to packaging samples and cops and construction studies love my construction studies. That that's a great place to start 

off. So when you're still like your design process, You know, somebody knocks on the back door and they're like, Hey, I got an idea for this product.

Um, what do you guys do? Like, does it, is it a sketch? Do you guys start sketching and then go to prototypes? Like how does that work and what do you guys 

do there? Yeah, usually starts off with. Uh, or it usually is, it usually starts with me being obnoxious to my own client and telling throughout other old preconceived notions.

I want to start from scratch. And usually that works. Um, but yeah, we go literally right to the door. Uh, I, I just keep stacks of Sharpie markers, and just in like a, a ream of eight and a half by 11, I just, you know, and just keep, just banging things out until we've got some sort of very rough idea of what we wanted to do.

And then we, then we start just building, you know, rough prototypes and then they get refined and they get refunded. They get refined until we're actually at the point, if we're talking packaging. It turns into dye lines. If you're talking about, you know, product design and then we're starting to get into cats and different sorts of schematics and whatever whatever's required to get admitted.

Yeah. 

Yeah. So is your team made up of packaging designers or industrial designers, or do you have like a mix of both? How does that sort of a mix of both 

until they, then they work here and they become. All of it. You know, it's a unique, it's a very unique business and toys in general are just a crazy business cause, um, in your work with certain industries and they only know these, these, these five materials.

And then you know how to produce them. And then that's that while in toys is this toys made a word, this one's made a metal, this one needs to be injection molded. This one's roto cast. Can we make this at a vac form? I just want you to be all paper. Is it the flute has beef flute, you know, some sort of other stock, you know, so it's anything and everything goes into it.

So it sounds to me like if you're, if you're graduating, you know, industrial designer, packaging designer, maybe toys is like a great place to start because you're going to, you're going to touch every print process, every material. 

Yeah, I would, I would, I would think so. Well, depends on your, your. Your your, your capacity to learn and your, and your ability not to get frustrated, cause it's going to be a lot thrown at you quickly and it gets trickier and trickier because that much manufacturing is done here in the states.

Unfortunately, and I was fortunate to grow up at a time when a lot of it was. So I got at a very early education. But I go and I speak at schools all over the, all over the place and no one really knows manufacturing any more. In fact, they'll, they'll bring me in to talk to the students about manufacturing processes and how to design for them.

Does your team then design for manufacturing or did they take it to a certain point and then hand it over 

where you, we designed for manufacturing. In fact, even factories, even hire us to fix things. 

Wow. I'm teaching a class here at ASU and a big part of the packaging program is I don't want to just see your portfolio.

I want to see how you set up your file, right? Because if you know, are you the guy that's showing up with, you know, a hundred layers that are RGB and non names, or, you know, you've got deadlines, you know, foil, you know, you got everything organized, cause it makes a big. Oh, am I going to 

hire you? The RGB reference is fantastic because I love when I see that, you know, when I work with some company, that's just hired some kid out of art school.

And now that person's creative director at their small. And then they sent me their files and I'm like, their files are mess. There's not even a proper dieline on things or the colors are all over the place and yeah. And then, oh, they're trying to figure out like, why didn't print so well, why is all the orange brown, like, cause you did it in an RGB, like just going to have color, even though the fifth color is.

No exactly. That's the thing that it's a big part of what's missing in design education, right? It's like, am I putting an opaque? White? Am I printing a white under print? Am I printing this? Flexo like, how do I set the file for these different things? Because if you don't know how to set it up, what you're doing is you're really, you're creating an idea of what you want.

Then you're handing it off to somebody else to just do whatever they want in order to get it across our machines. 

Well, especially if. Overseas manufacturing. They're not going to fix your files. They're going to take what you gave them and reproduce it. And then I've heard so many times, oh, you know, China screwed that up.

I'm like, no, you screwed that up. I think he didn't know what you were doing. Uh, and, uh, but nobody wants to hear that it's easier to play. The big red monster on the other side of the world. Right? 

What makes packaging in games and toys collectible? Like what's the one thing. If somebody is designing a game today, what's going to make that collectible.

Oh, Ooh. That is a good question. What's going to make a game, the package and collect. Well, contrary to popular belief. It's not hot stamping or glossing. It's. Okay. Just making sure that it communicates properly and that it's got an aesthetic that people are going to want to display. I would say that's, what's going to make something collectible also helps.