One of the first avenues that brands can use to communicate with their target customers is product label design. Whether you make luxury bath products or delicious snacks, most of your consumers won’t be able to try or taste your product before making a purchase. Without that proof of your product’s quality, what’s left to help them decide to spend their hard-earned money on your product over all the rest on the shelves? Three words: product label design.

While product label design refers to a long list of creative decisions and important steps, one of the most underestimated aspects of this equation is choosing the right font. The font you choose for your product labels will impact the way potential customers perceive your brand as a whole. Learn about the importance of fonts and a few tips for choosing the best font for your product. 

Importance of Font on Product Labels

Selecting a font may feel like a small decision. However, consumers quickly form associations based on fonts. Whether or not they realize it, people make connections and assumptions about personality, values, style and more based on font alone. Additionally, choosing a font that’s easy to read and nice to look at can create a better overall experience for your customers. 

In order to communicate efficiently with your target market, choosing a font that accurately represents your brand and product is essential. What’s more, choosing a legible font in industries like food, beverages or CBD may even be a legal matter. Your consumers need to know the ingredients of your products and their intended uses. 

Typeface vs. Font

While the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, typeface and font are not quite the same thing. A typeface refers to what you see, and a font refers to what you use. Typography experts have explained this distinction with the statement, “Typeface is to font as song is to MP3.”¹ A typeface is a family of fonts, each of which can have their own values and weights. For example, Helvetica is a typeface while Helvetica Bold is a font. 

Define Your Target Customer

The first step in choosing the best font for your product label design is to clearly define who your target customer is. In order to stand out to your intended audience on the shelves, your font should reflect their preferences and speak to their particular personality traits. For example, if you make delicate fine wines and you hope to appeal to an elegant customer base who values classy products, you likely won’t opt for a font that is whimsical and silly. Instead, you’ll choose something classic and beautiful. 

Make It Legible

When it comes to fonts, there’s one thing that is even more important than being beautiful: being legible! If your future customers can’t decipher what your label is trying to say because your font is too over-the-top, you’ll be losing sales to an entirely avoidable mistake. Visual appeal is important, and part of that appeal lies in being easy to read. 

Choose a font with an appropriate weight and style that ensures that it’s legible, even from a few feet away. Ideally, your customers won’t be thinking about your font at all. They’ll simply be reading your label with ease and internalizing the exact brand traits you’ve set out to communicate through your product label design. 

Try Different Options

Especially if you haven’t given much thought to fonts before, it’s natural not to know exactly which one you prefer off the top of your head. Even typography experts need time to experiment with different fonts in the context of each specific project. Try a variety of font options in your product label design mockups, and give yourself some time and space to look at each option a few times. You may try combining a few different fonts to convey the right message and tone through your design. 

Test Your Fonts

Once you’ve experimented with a few different fonts and made a selection, print out a few sample labels. Test your fonts by checking that your labels look as you hoped in varying lighting and positions. As much as possible, ask others for their opinion about your fonts and your overall product label design. 
The decision may seem small at first glance, but selecting a font that speaks to your brand personality and resonates with your target customers can make a world of difference in moving your products off the shelves. Put your best foot forward with a beautiful and legible font on your high-quality product labels from Lightning Labels. Get an instant online quote today!

¹ https://fonts.google.com/knowledge/glossary/typeface