So you’ve got a product that you’re eager to get out onto the shelves. Before you get there though, you need a professional label. A well designed label will attract customers, help you to stand out from the competition and increase the public awareness of your brand. So, how do you design a winning label; one that will propel your business forward? Well, there are a few pointers we’d like to share with you.
A good manufacturer
Firstly, find yourself a good label manufacturer. After all, it’s impossible to have a good label without a good team behind it. A good manufacturer will have a great eye for design, a knowledge of the industry, up to date equipment and resources and most importantly of all, understand your brand.
Communication is key during the design process, so it’s vital that you get along. Once you’ve found one that works for you, then you can really get to work.
Do lots of research
It’s really important to do a little market research. Find out who your main competitors will be and study their labels carefully. What does and doesn’t work and how can that then be applied to your own design.
Look at some really successful brands and take some inspiration (not copying!) from them; and then do the same with less successful brands, this time identifying their mistakes so that they can be avoided in your design process.
Great design
Good design is a hard thing to define. Think of huge brands like Nike and Apple, and you’ll notice that they favour simple designs over anything too complicated.
These kind of clean, efficiently designed logos are easily worked into labels and also lend their selves well to different colour variations. This is important to think about if you want to launch a range of different products under one brand name; e.g. wines and chocolates.
Understanding your customers
You need to understand your target audience for your label to be truly effective. High-end products aimed at adults can afford to be more avant-garde in their label design; utilising things like foil effects and embossing to tap into that luxury market.
If you’re designing a label for a children’s product though, you’ll need to go in completely the opposite direction; focusing on bright colours and easy to understand fonts to grab the attention of kids. Being able to align your product with a particular demographic means that you’ll be able to design a label that they’re going to find attractive.
Never underestimate a label’s importance
Most importantly of all, you can’t design a great label if you underestimate the importance of one. In today’s fast paced world, customers are judging products with their eyes more than ever, so you need to have a label that’s going to jump out at them.
Do it well, and you’ll be seeing your product fly off of the shelves. Do it badly, and you’ll be left with a warehouse full of stock that’s just not shifting. Which one of those sounds better to you?
Tammy Wilthshire is the Marketing Manager for a label design and manufacturing business based in Essex. Tammy is proud to work for Labelnet, one of the UK’s leading manufucaters.