The plastic or glass jar is the container of choice for food products ranging from peanut butter to olive oil. But making a jar stand out on store shelves is a challenge, whether your brand operates in small settings, such as local farmer's markets, or goes toe-to-toe with large companies in supermarkets. Your choice of food jar labels will help you catch customers' eyes at the critical moment before they make a purchase.

There's an art to designing compelling food labels, as they have to combine necessities such as the Nutrition Facts panel and ingredient list with exciting imagery and solid branding. If it's been too long since you thought about your product labels and packaging, now is a great time to make a new start.

What Goes on a Food Jar Label?

Each custom jar label will have to combine a lot of elements in a small space, give or take some extra if you combine a wrap-around label with a sticker on the jar lid. What does that mean? You'll need:

• Food and Drug Administration required information, from size and ingredients to the Nutrition Facts panel, which has recently received an update.
• Branding that is consistent with your other products, ideally including a memorable logo.
• Imagery to encourage customers to choose your brand instead of competitors. This could be as simple as a picture of the food in the jar, or a more complex illustration seeking to set a mood or evoke local pride.

Jar Label Considerations: Container Size, Imagery and More

Many of the traits of your labels will be determined by logistics. If you're using bigger jars, you naturally have extra space to work with on the labels and can include more explanatory text, such as recipes or serving suggestions. When you want to include this information but don't have a big jar to work with, you don't have to resort to tiny typefaces. Instead, you can employ an extended content label that peels away from the surface of the jar. You can also use these special labels for coupons customers can redeem at the register.

While text is nice, imagery is where you get to make a compelling case for your brand. As Food Starter pointed out, an eye-catching design can be as subtle as a vintage food illustration accented in metallic ink with a nice font. You don't have to go overboard to pick great images, but rather think about what people will want to see when they are in the market for that particular food. If your product is an especially compelling color, you can even opt for a very small label size and let the glass jar show through.

Designing Eye-Catching Jar Labels

Effective jar labels combine every element in a package that conveys your company's brand identity. The logo and imagery should work in harmony with each other, and the way the labels feel in customers' hands should also be consistent with their visual style. For example, organic foods that feature earthy brown or green labels may benefit from a rough paper label feel while sleek, chrome labels work better with matte or gloss textures.

One of the best choices you can make when designing a food jar label is to work with an expert third-party custom printed label partner. Lightning Labels has served as a label printer for successful brands of all kinds, and we can create the exact look and feel your products demand. Because Lightning Labels only uses digital custom label printing, turnaround times are short and order sizes are flexible. We offer a wide variety of materials and finishes, so you can be sure your jar labels have a look and feel that fits in with your brand identity and appeals to shoppers.

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