How to Create Labels that Stand Out
You’ve spent months, maybe even years formulating the perfect product and you know it inside and out better than you know yourself. Now its time to design the packaging and label. To design a label that really stands out, you must know your market—and this process should hopefully have begun as soon as you had that solid idea for a new product!
Research your market. Talk to people in your market, ask them questions on social media, forums in your product niche, and get out there in person to stores where you are planning to launch your product to see how customers are looking at your competitors—what they like and don’t like on your competitor’s labels.
If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and do it yourself but have never designed a label before, we’ve come up with 9 key pointers to help you get it right the first time.
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Choose your colors wisely!
Psychologists have proven many times over that color is the first thing consumers notice on the packaging. If you get your colors right, your product is guaranteed to stand out on store shelves and grab the attention of your target market.
Choose an appealing main color combination. It will reflect an emotional tone that radiates the main benefit of your product. The Red Bull brand is a perfect example of this. Just make sure that your main color combination doesn’t clash. Clashing color schemes negatively effect the way your potential customers will see your product and will ruin the visual appeal of your whole package.
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Keep It Sharp Keep It Simple
When you keep your designs, fonts, and images simple and sharp, browsing customers will be able to connect with your product easily. Check out your competition and you’ll see how many of them have too much going on in their labels. This creates confusion and people’s eyes will tire of all the “activity” and they’ll be drawn instead to labels that are clear, sharp and easy to understand while having a strong visual-emotional appeal at the same time.
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Select The Right Font
Avoid generic fonts that are used mainly in articles and publications. Find a unique, easy to read font that reflects the appealing main concept of your product. For example, if your product is hand-crafted western-style riding saddles, you’ll try a western font. Your font should also be consistent with your original branding font if you’ve already created one. But don’t worry if you haven’t. Many people usually conceptualize their brand font style and how they imagine their labels should look at the same time. Finding a perfect font is easy. There are excellent free font websites with thousands of unique fonts available online. The important point to remember is that you want a good looking font that projects the “feel” of your product, that’s also easy to read. Remember, your customers are buying the emotions they want to feel, not logic.
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Find Or Design An Unusual Package Or Bottle Shape For Your Label
Unusual and unconventional shapes jump out and grab people’s attention and they make the ideal “stage” for your unique labels. Many product shapes are square, rectangular or round. Yawn! Choose a shape that will be unique to your product and reflective of its unique properties. Again, the Red Bull brand is perfect example of this: they sell carbonated energizer drinks. To look different, they didn’t use conventional pop cans, they designed their own tall slinky cans for a very cool effect. We know you’re probably not a bottle or package designer, so just sketch the shape you have in mind and find a company that can produce it for you just the way you imagined. You’ll be surprised at how many affordable companies there are to choose from.
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Material
Make sure the material you choose matches your label design. Your design needs to be compatible with the material of the label itself. The higher the quality of your label materials, the better impression you’ll make. “Quality” has its own power to jump out at your prospective market. Make the effort to observe shoppers searching for a product similar to yours. Watch their facial expressions as their eyes scan over the different labels of the products in your niche until they stop and actually reach out for a product that’s appealing to them. You’ll get very helpful information and teach yourself quickly how to tell a great label material from a bad one.
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Keep Your Label Finish Consistent With Your Brand
If for example your product is sleek, modern and trendy, the finish on your labels should reflect that with a glossy finish that will bring out your choice of colors, giving them an extra richness and sparkle. Once your design is set and you decide its appropriate, you can even find a label company that makes embossed labels where the font lettering and even main image logo design stands out and above the background of the label. They’re a little more expensive to produce, but well worth it because your market research will prove that embossed labels will stand out above your competition if most of them aren’t working this concept.
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Include Your Contact Information On Your Labels For The “Boomerang Effect”
Your contact information on the back label of your product will reinforce the positive impact you’ve made on the front label, making your label much more than just a passive marketing tool. To many customers, your contact information brings your product label to life, giving it a personal edge. Let people know how to contact your business. Include an 800 phone number, your website, customer support email and physical mailing address. These will tell your customers that you stand behind your product. Giving your customers the chance to get back to your brand and interact with your company, creates the “boomerang effect”. It makes your product label stand out and above the rest with the added invitation to your customers to get more involved with your brand.
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Your Product Theme Is Reflected On Your Label
When the theme of your product is included in your label, it makes your label stand out in a special, direct way. For example, if you’ve come up with a delicious exotic fruit drink product that’s actually good for your health at the same time, (unlike Red Bull, which tastes hideous and has been clinically proven to cause hearth attacks) promote that theme right on your label. It can be easily done by keeping your brand constant in the upper right hand portion of your label while changing the rich color of the label to match each of the rich fruit flavors in your skew.
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Label Size
You could have the best attention-grabbing label design out there, but if your labels themselves are too small, no one will be able to spot them easily. A great way to maximize your label space is by using clear labels that are large and cover the whole face of your bottle or packaging. Because these labels are clear and the edges can’t be seen, your brand, fonts and images can be as large as the bottle or packaging itself and catch the customer’s eye in an instant.
A good example of this concept are USB storage devices: they’re small, with no real area for great “stand out” labeling. The way around this is to print your brand and label info on a
larger cardboard background onto which a clear plastic facing is attached enclosing and protecting the device.
The Synergy Of Nine
When you get these 9 factors working in harmony on your labels, they will not only stand out above your competition, they’ll give your labels the psychological edge to
jump out and greet your potential customers before the other products from competing companies have a chance to!
