How Moose Toys used Substance 3D Stager to transform their packaging design

Happiness is at the heart of everything Moose Toys does. Known for brands like MrBeast Lab, Bluey, and Little Live Pets, the Australian-based toy company wants kids to jump for joy when they experience its toys and games.

The key to making a big impact is creativity. Moose Toys encourages a culture of innovation. The company invites designers, artists, and engineers to create their own workflows, experiment with technology, and work with advanced tools to push their ideas further. It’s why employees like Yolanda Collins, art director for Packaging and Branding, and graphic designer Susan McCoey love working there.

“Working at Moose Toys is fun. It’s a fast-paced industry and we’re all challenged to create something special for kids, but everyone’s willing to help each other and learn from each other,” Collins said.

Moose Toys designers, particularly those on the packaging team, are embracing innovation by incorporating Adobe Substance 3D Stager, part of the Adobe Substance 3D Collection, into their design workflow. By taking designs out of the 2D realm and into 3D, designers say they find new ways to think about toys and their packaging — which improves overall efficiency and speed of completion.

Fast designs and reviews from anywhere

The packaging team typically built physical mockups to share for reviews and approvals with product designers, structural packaging designers, and marketing. Working with Substance 3D Stager, packaging designers can now create digital mockups by themselves (previously, they had to rely on 3D art specialists). Moose Toys designers note that unlike many 3D creative solutions, the staging software is extremely easy to use, even for designers without much experience in 3D. The controls feel similar to Adobe Creative Cloud apps so designers need little training to start combining 3D models into realistic-looking packaging models.

Changes to digital versions of the packaging take very little time. That’s important because toys are typically still in development when the packaging is designed and last-minute changes to the toy can affect the look or shape of the packaging. Packaging designers can use Substance 3D Stager to adjust a package’s size to the exact millimeter, even using the CAD file from the product team to make sure that the toy fits snugly inside the box, while meeting retailers’ requirements for shelf size.

“Before I might come up with an idea and, for one reason or another, it didn’t work out when we built the physical sample. Now I can check early and often that the toy fits perfectly, solving minor errors before they become big problems,” Collins said.

Product fit test and layout in Adobe Substance 3D Stager.

After completing the packaging model, designers can load and apply an Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop file to create a perfect 3D mockup. Fantastic Fold from Adobe is especially helpful as it allows packaging designers to apply imagery to dielines and export a folded 3D model to view and render in Substance 3D Stager.

Packaging mockups in Adobe Substance 3D Stager.

Designers provide downloadable views of the model or simply share their screen during video calls, allowing people anywhere to review a mockup from all angles. Compared to sketches or 2D mockups, photorealistic models give teams a better understanding of what the final packaging will look like, giving people more confidence in their decisions. There are fewer misunderstandings, and less time spent redoing work, which leads to much faster reviews and approvals.

“The ability to update designs fast and share them with someone online has made us a lot more productive,” McCoey said.

Innovation in toy packaging

Moose Toys’ packaging design team continues to embrace 3D as part of their design process. According to Collins, it helps the team connect with colleagues working around the world while reducing the load on the mockup and 3D artists so that everyone can keep up with the growing business.

Most importantly, working in 3D encourages packaging designers to innovate and explore creative new solutions to challenges. “We can get packaging mockups done in a quarter of the time with Substance 3D Stager,” Collins said. “That’s a lot more time that we can spend refining ideas and fine-tuning design.”

Moose Toys’ graphic designers also use 3D models for creative visualization. McCoey designs imagery used on packaging, which often involves characters placed in beautiful fantasy worlds. Substance 3D Stager serves as a place to experiment with ideas. She rearranges shapes and materials from the Substance 3D Asset library until she finds a scene that captures a toy’s magic.

“Working in 3D allows designers to take more creative risks because you can push ideas further but still keep it grounded in reality,” Collins said. “We’d be lost without Substance 3D Stager.”

Learn more about Substance 3D here.