Does the type face and font style impact the effectiveness of your label? Will it make a difference to a consumer? Does a Georgia font really lead to better outcomes than Ariel? You might be surprised at the answer. Read how to use type and fonts to power your label design to learn more.
How to use Type & Font to Power Your Label Design
When selecting labels for your business, color, size, and the type of label are all important considerations. But when printing a blank label, how often do you choose the default printer settings with little regard to other label design factors? Unless you are a graphic designer, that’s understandable. Printing a label is likely low on your priority list. But regardless of your business, here’s why it’s important to take the type and font into consideration when making label design decisions. The type size and font style impact the message, even when you are only printing a few characters. For healthcare or veterinary professionals that can mean the difference in patient safety outcomes. For manufacturing, distribution and in offices of all kinds it increases the odds your staff executes instructions properly instead of accidental errors. So to ensure your label design creates the desired impact, use these tips to improve the experience.
Design Definitions
First, a few quick definitions to help those uninitiated in the world of design:
Typeface
Typeface is a font “family,” including all styles of a particular font.
Font
Font is a specific weight or style within a typeface family (i.e. Courier New Bold)
Serif Fonts
Serif fonts are fonts that appear to be more formal, and have a finishing off stroke on the letters. (i.e. Times New Roman)
Sans Serif Fonts
Sans serif fonts are more “clean,” with no finishing off strokes on the letters. (i.e. Helvetica)
Kerning
Kerning is the space between letters in design.
Leading
Leading is the space between lines in design. How will knowing these terms help you with your label design? Combining this information with the following tips will help you design the most readable labels your colleagues have seen in quite a while (maybe ever)! So, read on…
For The Sake Of Everyone’s Eyeballs!
For the sake of readability and everyone’s eyeballs, we recommend sticking with sans serif fonts. While the information your label design conveys may be very serious, a formal serif font and its flourishes are simply not necessary. In addition, here’s a word on the ubiquitous Comic Sans and similar styles. Don’t. Just. Don’t! This font is informal at best, unreadable at worst. Need further proof? Check out this study.
Timid Labels Miss The Mark!
Varying the size and weight of the font you choose for your label design will help to emphasize the most important information. For example, does your label convey a critical dosage amount or other important instructions? Perhaps that information should be in BOLD, ALL CAPITAL LETTERS.
Expressiveness Vs. Usefulness
Ultimately, the most important label design consideration is to not let expressiveness affect usefulness. In other words, do your best to design a label that clearly communicates the necessary information, while highlighting the most important segment of information displayed.
United Ad Label produces labels for printers of all kinds including laser, thermal, DYMO, Zebra and more. Check out our complete line of printer labels here. And if you need help with your label design, contact our customer service staff at 800-423-4643. They can guide you through the process and improve the impact of your message.
What are your best practices for label design? Let us know in the comments below.