<p>Designers: how do you get from a pretty mockup to a file the print shop can actually use?</p>

I’m a packaging designer working with a print shop, and the same thing keeps happening: the mockup wins the client, then the file has to be rebuilt on a real dieline before it can go to press. Wrong bleed, RGB, foil on the wrong layer…

I ended up building a tool for myself (Drint) where you design on the dieline and the 3D is that die folded, so the mockup and the print file are the same thing.

Curious how others handle this:

• Do you design on the die from the start, or mockup first?

• What breaks most often when your file reaches the printer?