Simple But Important Tips for Designing Your Own Business Labels

Designing your own business labels is important for shipping as well as for product packaging. Personalized, custom labels can create brand awareness with potential customers even when a package is in transit. Existing customers may also quickly identify your product on a store shelf by the design of the label before they even see your company name! Since labels are so important for any product being sold, note a few important tips if you're going to design those labels yourself.

Color

The main color of a label should be related to the product; for example, purple and red are good for wine bottles, but green or blue may not be associated with wine at all. On the other hand, green is a good color for organic cosmetics or anything that is meant to be natural and "earthy." Blue is often associated with the ocean and summer sky, so it's a good color for any outdoor product or items you might associate with vacation and leisure, including barbecue supplies, beer, or suntan oil. 

While you want a color for your label that will easily identify your product, remember that the label itself needs to be seen against its background. A purple label against a dark red bottle of wine may become invisible, so opt for a white label with strong purple lettering instead. Consider also how a label will appear on your packaging when mailing a product; brown might be a good color for a natural, "earthy" item, but a brown label may become invisible on a brown shipping box. Choose a neutral label background and then add color with lettering if needed.

Typestyle

It's important to consider the typestyle of the wording you'll use for your business labels. A fancy font can be good for items like elegant wedding products, but scrolling, detailed fonts can be very difficult to read on a small label especially. This is also vital to remember if you'll be creating labels for different sizes of product. As an example, if you make jams and jellies, you may sell a variety of bottle sizes, some being very small. A plainer, block font can be a better option once you reduce the size of the lettering to fit all the label sizes you'll need. That plain block font is also easier for persons to read on shipping packages in transit, so be sure the typestyle you choose isn't too fancy so as to be unreadable.