When designing custom product labels, it is extremely important to consider the intended size of the printed label and how it will display at its actual size. Far too often we discover that the designer of a label (often times not the business owner), created an elaborate design on a 25″ iMac screen (zoomed in for good measure) and didn’t think about how all of that artwork would display on a 3-inch printed label.
Having custom labels digitally printed for your product can be a great way to get the highest quality labels while also saving time and money. However, those savings can be negated very quickly if you don’t bother to check the printed output before ordering your labels. Sure, our printing presses aren’t exactly the same technology as your desktop printer, but if your label isn’t easy to read from your printer then there’s a good chance our presses won’t make a significant difference to the final product.
As a general rule of thumb, printing your design on a desktop laser printer (at intended size) should reveal any obvious quality and readability issues. Don’t expect our presses to magically create better quality and resolution if it doesn’t exist in the artwork. Also, hand-cutting the printed test label to final size and applying it your product is an excellent way to check that your design works in real life and fits the product properly. It’s better to make the effort to check all these items BEFORE we print thousands of them and you find out they don’t fit or look right.
In short, never assume that a label design will fit onto your product packaging or that every design element will print clearly. Take a few minutes and print out a test label before ordering a large order of printed custom product labels.
Learn more about the product label artwork files needed to print labels with high clarity.