With so much competition, it has become more and more difficult for your product stickers to stand out on the retail shelves these days. The question that needs to be raised, is ‘how can you create a label that will be noticed?’ High quality design as well as excellent print quality are critical when it comes to standing out from the crowd, but, if you really want to create some buzz around your product, you should try and do something unique. At Label-it, we understand your sticker printing requirements and have therefore taken the initiative to share an article that provides a few product label ideas. In this way, we hope to assist you in designing and printing superior quality labels that will sell your product!

1. Tell a Story
When it comes to the design and printing of your sticker, you need to think ‘out of the box’. Think about the last time your child bought a bottle of milkshake. How about adding a fun little story related to the product? Why not have several different stories for each flavour, so that each time someone has bought a bottle, they could read something new. Kids would more than likely buy more than one bottle at a time, to collect the different stories.
There are so many copywriters out there that would jump at the chance to work on a project like this. You don’t have to spend thousands – you could even hire a student. When designing your label, you just need to leave a small space on it for these stories we will take care of all your sticker printing requirements.

2. Run a Competition
You could use a part of your label to run a competition with your customers. Here is an example of what you could do. Provide simple instructions and print a random 10 digit code on every label. Instruct your customer go to your website to enter in this code to see if they win. There would be a different 10 digit code on every label. On the home page of your site you could have an area where your customer can enter this 10 digit code.
Not only will this enhance the look of your label, but you could also start to gather some marketing information. You could try and capture an email address and other personal information once they have entered the code, thereby creating a great marketing database for future communication activities such as email marketing.

3. Numbered Stickers
Sticker printing just lends itself to consecutive numbered labels! If you want to emphasize the fact that your product is handcrafted, not mass produced, you could feature unique numbers on your labels. Just add a little note: “Bottle X of 2000” (ask us how we can do the consecutive numbering here) to your product label.

In today’s competitive marketplace it is so difficult to be different – with digital sticker printing you can create a self adhesive sticker that is truly unique.
Who was it that decided that every label for a particular product should be exactly the same? With the power of digital label printing we no longer have to live by that rule. There is a huge opportunity here for enterprising companies to create something completely new in the world of product stickers.

For custom label printing, we work with artwork files on a daily basis. We often find that there are many ‘obvious’ common errors in some of the artwork we receive. We thought we’d jot down these common errors to save you time, energy and money when it comes to label artwork design. Here are the top 10 label artwork mistakes we have encountered:

1. Missing Fonts
You may have selected a fantastic fancy font in your artwork, but the reality is, that if we don’t have it, when we open your file, we will get an error message. The best way to avoid this is to always outline your fonts before sending us your file.

2. Missing Bleed
If you want your colour to print all the way to the edge of your custom label you need to include a bleed. For example, if you want to print a 80mm x 100mm custom label, the size of the artwork you would create would be 83mm x 103mm Also, you need to leave some space around the very edge of your label that is free of text. The reason we need this is because during die-cutting the label material can shift ever so slightly (up to 1mm), so you need to make allowances for this in your artwork.

3. RGB vs CMYK
Most digital colour printers today print in CMYK, also known as four color process. However, all computer monitors display colour as RGB (Red-Green-Blue). Now if you create your custom label file for the RGB colour space, the colour is going to look different when printed on a CMYK printer, so it is always a good idea to create your artwork as CMYK. You should request a press proof if colour is very important to you.

4. File Resolution
Many times people send us a file of a picture or graphic that was on their website and expect us to create a high quality custom label from it. Unfortunately, in most cases the file on the website is very low resolution, often as low as 72 dpi. In order to provide a high quality finish, we would recommend a resolution of 300 dpi for best results.

5. Tight Borders

It is often tricky to print a thin border on your custom labels. There is often very slight movement when printing and die-cutting your labels. While this movement is relatively small, if your border is near the edge of the label it will be noticeable. Our advice, if you really want a border, is to make it a thick one (more than 4 point). That way the slight movement will be much less noticeable.

6. Spelling Errors
While we do check your artwork for mistakes, it is up to you to check your custom label artwork carefully. Sometimes we print beautiful custom labels only to discover a spelling mistake after the fact. You can save yourself a huge expense by ensuring all your text is correct.

7. Missing Graphics/Links
All your graphic elements should be embedded into your document before sending them to us, otherwise when we open your file there may be missing graphics or links.

8. Unsupported Software Format
For label design, we recommend that you use the graphic industry standard programs: Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. These packages create high quality label artwork that will produce the best quality custom label. If you don’t have this software, then make sure you can export into a standard graphics format such as EPS, TIF or a hi-res JPEG.

9. Colour Expectations
Many people create their custom label artwork and then print it out on their inkjet or laser printer, thinking this is how their labels will look. But anyone who owns more than one different printer knows that colour can look vastly different between printers. If colour is important to you we recommend you request a press proof – this way you will see exactly what your labels will look like when printed on our press.

10. Incorrectly Sized Artwork
We often receive artwork where the size of the art does not match the size of the requested label. If your artwork is a different size than the requested label please include detailed instructions when placing your order.

If you can avoid some of these common mistakes when creating your artwork, your custom label order will be processed more quickly and you will receive the highest quality result.

If you are unsure about your label artwork file, we will be happy to help! Give us a call or email your label artwork to us and we will guide you on setting it up correctly.

Label-it attended the expo in September to keep abreast of technological developments in the industry. The expo is a showcase for the world’s leading industry suppliers and is held every second year in Chicago, the windy city.

After the recent installation of our MPS EF 330 servo press we were on the hunt for finishing equipment to accommodate our newfound capability of printing on unsupported film.

The show had many innovations on offer. Most remarkable was the strong presence of digital printing equipment – An entire hall filled with digital printing equipment suppliers! Also noteworthy was the strong presence of servo driven flexographic printing machines. Manufacturers were demonstrating set-up times for a full colour job in just over two minutes. With the faster print speeds and lower operating costs offered by flexo printing, the aim of the press manufacturers is to take digital head on.
Quality monitoring systems were very much in evidence. Suppliers demonstrated the ability to scan a job on press, move it to a re-winder, and then identify and remove the defective labels using “GPS” technology.
The improvements in Management Information Systems were also mind boggling. You can now track workflow by interfacing directly with design software like Esko, measure the speed that the job is run at in real time and compare it to estimated times, and scan your material back in to stock with an i-pod scanner.

All in all the show emphasized better control of workflow, faster turnaround times and improved quality of labels.

Welcome to our newly redesigned easy-to-find-your-way-around website.

We hope that you’ll take the time to read up more about the unlimited variety of jobs we can print for you. If you’re after a cost estimate in a hurry, you can fill in our online quotation form and we’ll respond to you within 2 working days.

As many of you are already aware, earlier this month, Label-it moved to a more modern and even bigger premises. The reason? We like to think big. So big in fact that we bought ourselves a MPS EF 330 printing press.
Imported from the United Kingdom, the EF 330 is equipped with no less than 7 different print heads and is capable of converting a wide variety of different substrates into high-end results. In short, the system’s combination of superior printing quality, high productivity and unmatched flexibility means that we can now handle even larger print runs and offer an even better and faster standard of service than ever before.

So, next time you’re in the area feel free to pop in. We’d love nothing more than to show off our new press and premises to you:
Unit 12
Kya Sand Industrial Village
22 Elsecar Street (corner of Bernie Road)
Kya Sand
Gauteng
South Africa

Call us on 0860 103 569 to schedule your visit!