I did mine all on my own. No template book or even instructions.
The job fell to me when I worked at a large format printing company. One of our clients wanted a free standing POP display. My supervisor figured I'd be the one who could do it.
The way I did them was to design in Illustrator figuring out the needed flaps and folds. Then I printed them on an old Encad printer using
paper. I'd lay that
paper over a sheet of cardboard and make all the cuts and scores by hand. Then I would attempt to put the display together. If there were issues I'd go back to Illustrator and tweak it. Then repeat the print and hand-cut process until it folded and assembled successfully. Usually the third time was a charm if not the second.
At that point I had my die template as an .eps file which I sent to the die maker. They were very helpful in guiding me with specifics that were needed to be considered in such a piece.
Then the artwork would be overlaid on the die template in Illustrator and sent to make film separations for screen printing.
Once they were printed I usually accompanied them to the die cutter to oversee the operation and gain as much insight and knowledge as I could. Plus, once they had a couple of them cut I would assemble one to be sure they worked. These were shipped to over 450 stores and the clerks there would be responsible to assemble them. They needed to work or they were all printed for naught.
It was a ton of stress for me as this is something I'd never done before yet became responsible for each project.
In the end I never had a failure. Some displays were assembled with up to three pieces. A couple of them had shelves of a thick PVC material for shoes at FootAction stores.
The deadlines were always too tight for a guy like me who was learning as he goes with no one but the die cutting company to help with advice here and there.
I'll dig deeper to find that CD but I'm not very confident it will show up. I looked pretty hard for it the last time. I'll hate if I lost that. It's really no good to me other than to re-live that exciting time.
