Label types and design considerations for drinks and supplements
Great label design can set your product apart from the competition. Lazy label design can doom it to obscurity.
Certainly, in the year 2024, there’s never been less of a good reason to not endeavor to capture customers’ attention, nor has there been a higher penalty if you do not at least try. The specific design style of your label is less important than its ultimate impact: simple-looking “apothecary style” labels, mostly in black & white, have shown that it’s not just color, or specific style, that are able to elevate your product’s design.
That’s why some super high-end products feature comparatively “simple” designs, without an abundance of bright colors. At the same time, other approaches embrace them and run with it. There are no hard and fast rules.
What's important when choosing a label type and design?
Hi, I’m Chris. I am the Product Manager at our family business. I learned a lot about labels and labeling by making a stupid amount of mistakes over the years.
Not all designs work well with every canvas. Which is why the choice of label type and design both should be considered together, rather than in a vacuum. That’s a rookie mistake, and I’m here to advise you how to not fall for it.
Let’s start with some of the basic realities: there exist different types of labels. Some are more expensive, but offer benefits such as larger sizes proportionate to the entire product, while others are cheaper, but have limits on just how much of the total area of your next private label product can be covered in them.
It is therefore important to consider what your end goal is when selecting a label type and design.
If cutting costs is a priority, it’s probably best to go with a wrap-around style label (think Coca-Cola).
If you require many different sizes of the same label, or with minimal differences (for example, different flavor), but are bothered by larger Minimum Order Quantities (MOQs), then self-adhesive labels are the preferred way forward.
And if you’re just looking for the highest-end solution, with the most room to express your creativity, then shrink sleeve type labels are likely what you’re after.
How do these differ form one another?
These three main categories of labels (and yes, there are other, less popular styles out there) differ across a number of factors, including initial investment, per label cost, application method, size limits, and sometimes even the number of specialty inks and various “effects” available for them.
Specialty printing options
An example of a specialty inks would be such as those required in markets, such as Germany, with their Pfandsystem—allows you to return your empty soft drink bottles at self-service kiosks for store balance. Great for helping incentivize recycling!
As for specialty effects, those would be techniques such as giving your label a matte or glossy texture, raised areas with improved tactile-feel, a metallic look, and many others.
Initial investment
While the cost of acquiring a custom label is on the lower end in comparison with other factors in production, it is not unimportant and the topic is more nuanced than you might initially think.
For example, you have to keep in mind that most non-trivial quantities of labels are produced using so-called printing plates. These are thin sheets of metal or other material, with raised areas that hold ink. When pressed against a surface, the ink is transferred, creating the desired text and image. Think of them as sophisticated stamps. These stamps are required to print your label at anything approaching a scale, and they cost money and time to create.
And while their cost is low big picture wise, they can creep up if you require many design changes or many different labels—for example if your product range is large. The only alternative to printing plates is digital printing, which can be an attractive choice if you’re eyeing a production run of just a few hundred or so. The price per label with digital printing is, of course, higher.
Example wrap-around label on an old concept render.
Wrap-around labels
Wrap-around labels (again, think Coca-Cola) are the most common in mass production. This is because they offer the lowest cost per label. The downside to them is that they require significantly more sophisticated labeling equipment to pull off properly, especially compared to self-adhesive labels, and most printing companies are adamant on MOQs of thousands and tens of thousands per order.
Most at home as part of larger scale productions, wrap-around labels wrap around the bottle (or other, usually cylindrical, containers) and are fixed to the bottle with a thin strip of hot-melt glue, applied automatically by an appropriate labeling machine. Since the glue can expand along with the label, it remains safely secured on your product even if significant contraction or expansion occurs due to temperature.
Shrink sleeve labels
A full-body shrink sleeve label. It covers the entire product, allowing for more creative design.
On the other end of the cost spectrum are Shrink sleeve type labels.
These full-body labels are shrunk to the size and geometry of your product by passing through a heat tunnel powered by either electrical heating elements or steam. The latter is more complex, but ensures a better and more consistent final result because steam is evenly distributed within the tunnel. I say this because I’ve had the misfortune of having had to work with electrical shrinking tunnels, and it’s just not comparable (we now use steam only).
Why are Shrink sleeve labels in vogue if they’re more expensive? It’s simple: no other label type provides the breadth of design expression.
This is because sleeve labels typically wrap around the entire body of your product, leaving you and your designer with significantly more space to attract the attention of customers. Full-body sleeves are not all there is—you can shrink a smaller label on your product if you wanted to in order to save on costs, but then certain requirements to the geometry of the container apply.
Moreover, non-full body sleeve labels rarely make sense, unless your manufacturing partner can’t handle other types of label. This is because even partial-body sleeve labels are still more expensive than the previously covered wrap-around labels, whilst requiring a small investment in printing plates just as well.
Self-adhesive labels
The final of the Big 3 label types is the self-adhesive category of labels.
As the name suggests, these labels have an adhesive of some kind pre-applied to them, so you basically just stick ’em onto containers. Their popularity mainly stems from the ease-of-access that comes with them—these days even small companies can buy a relatively cheap printer that can print them on sheets of paper that have an adhesive side. Moreover, labeling equipment working with self-adhesive labels is orders of magnitude more budget-friendly.
This offers an important advantage, as it allows smaller label production runs, and for those looking to start their own manufacturing, a cheaper entry fee to achieve some level of automation. Very helpful for micro productions.
Unfortunately, there’s a downsides to self-adhesive labels, too—cost. Unlike wrap-around labels that only require a tiny portion of glue that costs essentially zero, self-adhesives are three-component labels. On the top (face stock), you have your design. Under it, there’s an adhesive layer. And on the bottom, you have your release liner—a piece of paper (called backing paper) that protects the adhesive until use.
To apply the label onto a container, a person or a machine peels away the release liner, exposing the adhesive. The face stock is then applied onto your bottle or jar or what have you.
That is why self-adhesive labels can never match wrap-around labels in per label cost—they’re just more complicated, requiring more materials per label.
Other ways to label
An inverted embossing plate as an example. We use it to create a relief design on our 19L/5gal water bottles.
Few industries are as competitive as the packaging & labeling one, so printing houses are quite relentless, coming up with entirely new solutions every year.
For example, these days you can print directly onto an appropriate packaging—popular with tiny containers, such as those miniscule complementary bottles of shampoo and shower gel at hotels. Or lip balm and lipstick containers.
Paper labels are another smaller category—these have mostly gone out of fashion, although they’re still around, especially if you’re looking to create a more vintage look. Those are applied to containers using wet glue, which is automatically applied to the back of the label immediately before it is affixed. AMATA used to label with such labels, but there are some serious drawbacks to paper labels, which is why we retired that machinery.
Final example: hang tags and ribbon labels on closures. The former is simply intended to hang around the neck of a container (bottles, mostly, but you can get creative if you want). The latter is typical of jars—twisting the lid to open them tears the label/ribbon. These are a guilty pleasure of mine, and not because of the pilfer-proof function—they just look super cute when done right.
Label design
Before you go, a few words on label design.
Firstly, I can’t stress enough how short-sighted it is to not invest in professional product label design. With the advent of illustration tools, stock images, and the vast availability of designers on the various freelance platforms out there, getting a tasteful design done these days is really not that expensive. If you’re unsure on how to approach this, reach out and we’ll guide you or just do it on your behalf. Don’t worry, you’ll still have final approval.
Whatever your approach, hear this: Some of the designs I’ve used on our products in the past have cost less than $500, and the results were definitely superior to what I could’ve done myself, or the printshop (some of them do offer to design your label, but my experience has been negative). Certainly, if you’re hoping to succeed on the marketplace, that’s an investment worth making to ensure your product at least stands proud among rivals. Hopefully, it ends up outshining them. And yes, that can be done with good enough design vision.
But whether you handle your product label’s design on your own or let us do it for you, it’s important to remember that it absolutely always must go through pre-print. At this stage, your design is more or less final, but important technical factors are keyed into the physical production of the label at the print house. We’ve been doing this for a long time now and have plenty of experience in recognizing problematic designs. Because it’s not so simple.
A pre-print technical file. All labels go through this process.The label’s physical dimensions need to be precisely calculated in order to fit well on your container.
This is quite important with wrap-around labels, where the portions that overlap can end up hiding entire elements of the design. If you unwrap such a label from a bottle or container you have at hand, you’ll notice that there is a generous buffer of empty space at the end of the side on top of which the other end is affixed to.
The above is also true for shrink sleeve labels.
Precise calculations and real-world tests are carried out to ensure that the otherwise much larger sleeve shrinks correctly to the smaller size of the container, without distortions, layout shifts, etc. The manufacturer that then shrinks the label needs to also ensure that the label is being heated equally on all sides at all times in order to retain the correct proportions.
Wrap-around and self-adhesive labels, when applied automatically like at AMATA, require the insertion of a tiny, contrasting rectangle at their end.
It’s also best practice for that area to be empty on the horizontal plane—a sensor reads this area until it encounters said rectangular mark. When it does, it tells the machine that that’s where your label ends, so it can engage the cutting mechanism and separate it from the roll.
Highly transparent designs often look awesome in digital renders, but not so much in real life.
This is because of several reasons.
An important one of them is the need to add a solid background behind all text, decorations, images. This is done because otherwise these elements are highly illegible/faded-looking. This adds complexity to the printing process, and there’s always a very slight mismatch.
Furthermore, any imperfections on the container itself are visible under the label. In an ideal world, there’d be none, but… you know how the saying goes. This is not to say it cannot ever work/be done, just general advise: use transparency sparingly.
Lastly, as mentioned, digital renders are one thing. A product with full-on transparency in person is typically harder for your customers to read, even with proper background. This is only natural—in the real world, we’re often in environments where reflectivity is high.
It’s important to consider the base material of the label.
These come in a multitude of types—some are more premium, others less so. The choice of material is highly specific to what you’re trying to achieve. If you’re envisioning some transparency, you have to use a more expensive base that allows for it. If your design is entirely solid color, then you can choose cheaper bases to save on costs.
We can help you pick, or you can talk directly with the print house if you so prefer.
Embossing can be cool, but it does add cost and not all print shops offer it.
Yes, certain areas of your design standing out in relief is cool. No, you probably shouldn’t have every single element embossed on your final product—it becomes too much.
…and just about another two dozen, more general Best Practices that we try to adhere to.
Please note that AMATA does not produce the labels we use for the products we manufacture. We can help guide you, but we do not expect payment—these consultations are free for private label clients and we do not seek to profit from this service. It is perfectly acceptable for you to provide the labels to us, or deal with the print houses we usually work with personally to ensure costs are kept in check.
If you’ve gotten this far, congrats on your attention-span, that’s impressive! Hopefully this basic introduction into label types and label design has been of at least some use.
Now that you’ve got the fundamentals covered, perhaps it’s time to shoot us a message? Whether it’s Text, Viber, WhatsApp, E-mail or a call, that’s fine—feel free to pick the least personally existential dread-y way to get in touch and we’ll oblige.
