From hand-stamped craft beer labels to marketing material featuring augmented reality technology, label design ideas have come a long way from the (now highly collectible) vintage stickers of yesteryear.
Whether you’re head up a corporate marketing team or you’re an enthusiastic mompreneur, clear, concise, and attractive package design and labels are a must for your products. They let your customers know who you are and what you do in a glance.
Read on for five first-rate ideas on how to design product labels that get noticed.
1. Order Your Information
Unless you’re selling BBQs or bicycles, custom labels are typically pretty small. You don’t have much space to squeeze on a whole lot of details about your brand. You need to think about your information hierarchy.
Create a list of all that you need on your label, including:
- Your brand story
- What makes you stand out from competitors
- Purchasing decision information
- Information required by regulation
Sort all of these points in order of most necessary to least necessary. Once you’ve condensed down your list, consult with your designer about what they can fit into the label design.
And if you sell food products, remember to make sure your package labeling meets FDA labeling requirements!
2. Go Handmade
Do you sell homemade jams? Maybe you run a pottery business from your home studio. Or perhaps you refurbished vintage furniture.
One way to emphasize the handcrafted aspect of your products is to adorn them with homespun labels. Draw each label by hand, print from a hand-carved linocut stencil, or shop for custom stamps–you’re only limited by your creativity when it comes to DIY marketing materials.
3. Keep It on Trend
The world moves fast in this social media-influenced world. Trends come and go in a flash, and if you’re not on top of them, your brand will quickly get buried.
Make sure you are researching the latest trends to incorporate into your label custom designs. This might be creating unique product promotion labels related to the newest movie releases, trending hashtags, or popular sporting events.
If you don’t think you can keep up with your market’s contemporary culture, it’s worth hiring someone who is more social-savvy to add to your design team.
4. Make It Accessible
A product label isn’t all about marketing. They also provide consumers with valuable information about ingredients, potential allergens, where a product is made, whether it’s cruelty-free, and so much more. This information keeps people safe and helps them make purchase decisions. Check out solvent and chemical resistant labels
Making labels accessible for sight-impaired people ensures they have access to this essential information, too. Companies should go the extra mile to add braille to labels, print labels in large-format text, or make audio labels using a QR code. Show you care.
Label Design Ideas That Work
When brainstorming label design ideas for your product, take a look at what’s happening around you. What are other companies in your niche doing? If you know what the marketing landscape looks like, it will be easy to create labels that stand out on a virtual or in-store shelf.
Did you find this article on label design useful? If you answered yes, be sure to browse the other business articles on our website.