Packaging Design in Dubai and the UAE

It decides how a product looks, opens and reads before anything is printed: the structure of the pack, the layout of every panel, the Arabic and English text, and the files a printer needs.

At Clayit the brand and the pack come from the same studio, so the box looks like the company that made it.

Each project opens with its pictures on the Work page.

One idea that repeats. The Al Wafaa lattice names the brand before the logo is read. On Brew Bloom, our own concept, the pattern that comes off the illustrations runs across cartons, multipacks and bottles, so a shelf of the range reads as one object instead of four competing ones.

Food labels in the UAE must be in Arabic, or in Arabic and English, according to the US Commercial Service guide to UAE labelling. The same guide lists the product name, ingredients and country of origin among the minimum details, and says production and expiry dates must be printed on the original label.

We set both languages as equals and leave room for those panels from the first sketch. Your importer or regulatory adviser should confirm the final label before it goes to print.

1. Brief. A call and a written brief: the product, where it sells and who prints it. We agree scope, price and dates before anything is drawn.
2. Direction. Two or three routes, shown on the pack itself rather than a logo floating on white.
3. Artwork. You pick a route. We build every panel in English and Arabic, to the pack’s real size.
4. Handover. Print-ready files, and files you own outright, in editable format, not just flattened exports.

• The product, its sizes and how many versions there are.
• Where it sells: shelf, online, as a gift, or for export.
• The languages on the pack and any text it must carry.
• Who prints it, if you already know, and the print run.
• The date it has to be on sale.

We do not publish a price for packaging on its own, because one pouch and a ten-product range are different jobs. Packaging is part of our Brand System package, AED 25,000 to 60,000 and up. For a pack or a range without a rebrand, we quote from the brief and agree the figure in writing before work starts.

Clayit is a small studio run by its founders, Ziyad Urabi and Farah Khatib, from Dubai and Amman. Every file is handled by the founders, and a named designer stays on your project from brief to handover.