Trends, Challenges and Opportunities in Corrugated Print and Display

Alex Garcia, Structural Designer and Product Specialist at Northern Design and speaker at the FESPA Conference shares how innovation in corrugated solutions is shaping the future of visual communications. 

As brands seek more sustainable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions for retail and promotional environments, corrugated materials are increasingly being considered as a key alternative for displays, signage, and experiential marketing. This brings new opportunities for creativity and efficiency – but also challenges around perception, performance, and material understanding.

High-Impact Campaigns with Minimal Environmental Impact

To create engaging and memorable content while remaining environmentally responsible, it is essential to clearly define the purpose of the project, its expected lifespan, and the context in which it will be installed.

Choosing the right material is key. Technical boards – such as swedboard, abiplex, and honeycomb structures – make it possible to create lightweight, functional designs with strong visual impact and low environmental impact. Taking a full lifecycle approach is essential, considering everything from production and transport to assembly, reuse, and eventual reintegration into the circular economy.

Creativity, durability and recyclability

Corrugated cardboard and technical boards are now being used beyond their traditional role in packaging. They are highly effective materials for displays, signage, window dressing, and promotional campaigns.

For the visual communication sector, they offer a powerful combination of creative versatility, structural strength, lightness, and ease of transport and assembly – and also have environmental benefits, such as being recyclable in many cases.

These materials make it possible to create robust, large-format solutions with strong visual impact, while optimising resources, logistics and environmental benefits.

Brands also are becoming increasingly attuned to consumers’ expectations and the need to communicate their values through the materials they use. As a result, more brands are discovering that across a wide range of applications, corrugated cardboard and technical boards project a modern, environmentally responsible image, and deliver on efficiency and logistics compared with traditional materials.

A common misconception

The full scope of benefits of corrugated cardboard are sometimes overlooked.

Its technical capabilities are often underestimated, and the importance of choosing the right board isn’t considered. Cardboard is sometimes still – incorrectly – associated with fragility, despite the existence of high-performance options, from water and fire-resistant boards, to structures with outstanding compression strength.

With solutions ranging from corrugated cardboard to advanced technical boards, the possibilities are far more diverse than many assume. Unlocking that potential starts with truly understanding the material.

Real-world application

Last year, Northern Design created furniture for a tourism trade fair in Madrid. Through a well-resolved design and the careful selection of appropriate technical board, the client was able to dismantle the pieces with ease, transport them efficiently and reuse them across multiple international events. The same furniture was later deployed in Madrid, Frankfurt, Las Vegas and London.

This project demonstrates that when design, material engineering, and lifecycle thinking are aligned, cardboard serves as a solution that is not only visually engaging and highly functional, but significantly more efficient from an environmental perspective too.

As a material, corrugated board delivers on circularity, durability and visual impact – all at the same time. Going forward, advances in design, cutting, printing and converting technologies will enable stronger, more efficient and lower-impact corrugated solutions to be used in visual communications and three-dimensional display.