What Makes a Great Label? Label Design Ideas to Make Your Product Stand Out

After you’ve finalized the process of creating a great product, more likely than not, you’re enthusiastic to put it on the market as soon as possible. While your product may be great and innovative, making it stand out on the shelf against your competitors is a tough task to accomplish. With the exponential growth of small businesses hitting the market, having a great label design is becoming more crucial than ever before. 

This is why complimenting your new product with a unique and innovative label design is extremely important. Your label design helps tell the story of your brand and your finished product to potential customers, which ultimately brings in sales.

However, creating a product label from scratch can be a difficult task. Not only do you have to make sure to include any necessary information for products such as candles, but you also have to decide what you want your label to communicate to consumers. You may be wondering where to start or how to incorporate modern design trends into your vision. Luckily, we have created a list of product-label design ideas to help inspire you and get you started.

Reflecting Your Brand

Choosing a design that communicates the messaging of your brand will ultimately help you achieve a unique look. Telling a story through your chosen colors and fonts is a great way to stand out to consumers.

Colors

First, you'll want to choose your color palette for your labels. Are you going to use fewer neutral colors to accomplish a minimalist design? Or are you going to use multiple bright colors to make your design pop? 

Choosing the right colors to reflect your brand is a crucial part of the product label design process. If you’re looking to achieve a minimalist look, using fewer neutral colors will be the way to go. However, if your branding is more vibrant, it is important to choose a fun color palette to complement your product and tell the story to the consumer. 

Fonts

Whether you are looking to achieve a more simple or bold look, using the right fonts can help you reflect your message to the consumer. If you're wanting to accomplish a minimalist design, choosing a simple font for your label can help complete the overall look. However, if your branding is bold and fun, using a similar style font will be able to communicate this feel on the shelf. 

Graphic Design

Incorporating artwork into your product label has been a big trend for 2022. Using graphic design is a great way to communicate your branding to consumers. The artwork also helps your product label look more unique and ultimately stands out to consumers on the shelf. 

Additionally, if you are a small business looking to support your surrounding community, working with a local artist on your design is a great idea. This allows your product to achieve a unique look while also showcasing the art of a local designer or artist. 

Die Cuts

Using a design with die cuts has been a very popular trend throughout 2022. This label design idea allows for your product to be showcased in an interesting way. Using die cuts allows consumers to see what your product actually looks like through the packaging, which can be a great influence on the shelf. 

This idea has been particularly successful with consumable products. Brands often use this method to showcase their snack product to stand out from other competitors in the grocery aisle. 

The Next Step

While having a great design for your product label is crucial, ensuring that it is applied to your product correctly every time is just as important. 

Packaging

First, you will need to decide on the packaging of your product. Choosing high-quality packaging is key to your label being applied smoothly without any errors. Investing in great materials will help your product feel luxurious to consumers. 

Label Application

After choosing your desired packaging, it is time to think about how your labels are going to be applied. The two main methods of label application are hand labeling and using a labeling machine. 

If you’re just launching your business and are not making as many sales, hand labeling is often the route that most people begin with. However, after your product launches and begins to take off, hand labeling quickly becomes time-consuming and inefficient. Hand labeling is inconsistent, simply because humans aren't perfect. 

Ensuring a perfectly applied label with this method is extremely difficult and can often lead to causing you more money due to wasted products. Ultimately, hand labeling can actually end up costing you more money in the long run.

Why Labeling Machines?

Making the investment in a labeling machine is a great way to ensure that your labels come out great every time. Labeling machines are accurate, precise, efficient, and are overall a great way to help your labels look their best on the shelves. 

However, choosing the right labels for your product can be a difficult task to complete on your own. This is why we created our Practical Guide to Choosing Labeling Equipment. This free guide helps you understand everything you need to know about choosing the right labeling partner for your product. If you feel like you are ready to make to switch to using labeling machines, download it today!