Spring 3.5 Generative AI Model Report

Spring V3.5, Sourceful’s latest packaging image model, represents a significant advancement in image generation specifically for packaging design. Effective packaging design involves understanding packaging structure for both form and utility, artwork options for branding, compliance and messaging and what makes a holistically effective packaging within the context of a product range and market.

Spring V3.5 enables Spring’s intuitive interface which lets designers choose from a range of optimised packaging types - everything from drawstring bags to cosmetic glass jars - and get a model trained for appropriate artwork, labelling, printing, sizing, finishes across hundreds of possible FMCG categories.

This model report covers our progress with Spring V3.5 at improving on the state of the art (SOTA) model releases from leading large companies when applied to packaging design. We tested our Pro model (V3.5 Pro) and our faster Turbo model (V3.5 Turbo) which is up to 3x faster.
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The SOTA models

To compare Spring V3.5, we used the leading SOTA models in March 2025 that were available to use with complex, long prompts, which is required for handling structural and artwork complexity.

• Midjourney’s MJ V6.1 (July 31, 2024)
• Black Forest Lab’s Flux Pro 1.1 Ultra (October 2, 2024)
• Google’s Imagen 3.0 (December 3, 2024)
• Visual Electric’s VE2 (August 1, 2024)
• xAI’s Grok 3 (February 17, 2025)

As of 20th March 2025, Imagen 3.0 and Flux Pro 1.1 were the highest ranked models in the well known text-to-image leaderboard for Pre-generated prompts (lmarena.ai)

None of these models are focused specifically on packaging design, but in the absence of a SOTA packaging design generator, are the best models to compare against and are strong general purpose image generators.

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The dataset

To track our progress as we developed Spring V3.5, we collaborated with creations from our large Spring community and sampled a representative set of prompts across the Spring March 2025 packaging range.

We then generated two evaluation datasets, dataset A and dataset B.

In dataset A, we generated 1 Image from each of the models. All images were generated in 1024x1024 resolution for consistency.

In dataset B, we generated an additional 3 images and made a 2x2 grid. The purpose was to compare not just the single pass quality but the depth of the model. During concept design, you want to see multiple options for inspiration and ideation purposes and having consistently high quality images is important.

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The results

We are pleased to report that Spring V3.5 Pro achieves SOTA performance using the ELO comparison metric. We conducted a voting competition between pairs of images from the models similarly to LMSYS’s arena approach but with fixed prompts and additional customisations for packaging which included Product Rules when evaluating products.

There were over 1800 individual and group comparisons made over the span over a week.

All judges were external to Sourceful and did not know which model generated the image they were looking at. The judges were all graphic designers where packaging was a significant part of their portfolio of work, and some were full-time packaging design specialists.

Judges were sourced from around the world including Europe, Asia, Americas and Africa.

Spring 3.5 Turbo is a much faster and lighter model than Flux Pro 1.1 Ultra, delivering similar performance but at lower cost enabling greater amounts of ideation in parallel.

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Get started today

1. Explore spring.sourceful.com
2. Try our AI-powered tools in your next project
3. Discover detailed tutorials in our help centre

Our team is ready to help you unlock Spring's full potential.

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Future work

We plan to greatly expand the current product range of 24 packaging types to serve an even larger set of use cases across additional image generation conditions including aspect ratios, zoom levels, backgrounds, texture and material control and many more.

If you are interested in collaborating on Spring, whether it is in the core image generation model or in our fast expanding set of tools across Edits, Mockups, Variations and Automations, please get in touch with us.

Thanks

Wing

CEO of Sourceful

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