Guides
Packaging Guides for People Who Have to Specify It
Practical notes on measuring, board choice, printing and ordering, including the trade-offs that suppliers usually leave out.
Choosing a Cone Sleeve Supplier in the UK
A short list of questions that separates a supplier who will quote properly from one who will quote quickly.
BrandingHow Branded Cone Sleeves Support Takeaway Presentation
Printed packaging is often sold on claims nobody can verify. Here is what it reliably does and how to measure it.
BeverageA Guide to Printed Coffee Cup Sleeves
For most independent cafés a printed sleeve does more branding per pound than a printed cup. Here is how to specify one.
EventsPrinted Cone Sleeves for Events and Catering
Event packaging is a scheduling problem before it is a design problem. Work backwards from the date, not forwards from today.
SustainabilityWays to Reduce Packaging Waste in Dessert Businesses
Most of the biggest reductions have nothing to do with which board you buy. Here they are in order of impact.
FinishingComparing Matt and Gloss Finishes for Cone Sleeves
Finish is the decision most often made on a screen and judged in a customer's hand. Those are different tests.
Food safetyFood-Safe Considerations for Cone Sleeve Packaging
Food-contact suitability is a specification, not an assumption. Here is what to ask for and what to keep on file.
PrintingHow Cone Sleeve Printing Works
The print method is chosen by your run length, and it decides your colour accuracy, your setup cost and how many designs you can have.
MaterialsPaperboard Options for Printed Cone Sleeves
Board choice decides how a sleeve prints, how it feels, how long it lasts and what you can honestly say about recycling it.
ArtworkPreparing Artwork for Custom Cone Sleeves
A cone sleeve flattens into a curved fan, not a rectangle. Almost every artwork problem starts by forgetting that.
SizingHow to Choose the Right Cone Sleeve Size
Two measurements decide whether a sleeve grips or slides. Neither of them is the cone's stated size.
- Sector guide
Cone Sleeves for Ice Cream Shops and Dessert Brands
What a first cone sleeve order should cover, how to estimate quantity, and the three mistakes almost everyone makes.
Questions We Are Asked
Who are these articles written for?
People buying printed packaging for a food business, usually for the first or second time. They assume no print knowledge and set out to answer the questions that come up before a quote request rather than after one.
Which article should we read first?
If you have never ordered a sleeve, start with sizing, because an incorrect size cannot be fixed by anything downstream. If you already know the size, artwork preparation saves the most time and the most reprints.
Do the articles quote prices?
No, and that is deliberate. Unit cost moves with quantity, board, colour count and finish, so a figure written into an article would be wrong for almost everyone reading it. Pricing comes from a quotation against your specification.
Are lead times covered?
Not as published figures. Turnaround depends on the print method, the finish and how busy the season is, so it is confirmed on the quotation for your job rather than promised in advance on a page.
How often is new writing added?
When there is something worth adding rather than on a schedule. An article that repeats what three others already say makes the set harder to use, so the count moves slowly and on purpose.
Can we suggest a topic?
Please do. Questions that arrive by email are where most of these came from in the first place, and a question asked twice by different buyers is usually worth a page of its own.
Is there a feed we can subscribe to?
Yes, there is an RSS feed at /rss.xml which any reader application will accept. It carries the article titles, summaries and links rather than the full text.
Do the articles apply outside cone sleeves?
Most of them do. Sizing from the product, preparing artwork, choosing a board and planning for a seasonal peak work the same way whether the item is a sleeve, a tray, a cup or a bag.
Are these written by the people who quote the jobs?
They come from the same specifications and the same recurring email exchanges, which is why several of them spend more time on what goes wrong than on what to buy. That is the part buyers ask about.
Can we reproduce an article?
Ask first and the answer is usually yes for a short quotation with a link back. Wholesale republication is not something we agree to, because a duplicated page helps neither site in search.