Labels - one of my many tasks!

Running a small business means you have to basically do everything from designing and producing product to answering the phone and emails, taking orders, shipping, packaging, sales, marketing, and one of my favorites, label design!

I usually start with my logo and a rough color pallet. For the most part I like to keep it simple and let the products shine through, especially when I am doing a clear packaging so you can see the product without too much distraction. An exception are my bar soap labels which are a little fancier since I mostly use recycled paper boxes that hide the soap.

Here is the new square label for the Cardamom Vanilla Marshmallow Cream Soap! (And the old for comparison.) I added some more color to it as you can see - I am on a teal thing lately! All of the information is much larger and clearer. These didn't take too long since I had the old label to work from but my new lip balm labels for instance took 2+ hours to design! Usually the first label in a series of products takes the longest, then it is just a matter of changing color and tweaking text.

new

 

old

The ingredients and my company info will go on a smaller label on the backside. Soap labeling must have the company name, the word "soap", and the weight on the front. The company address can go on the back and I always include my ingredient list.

You may have purchased soap that did not have ingredients and this is perfectly legal but I like to include it so my customers know exactly what the are purchasing. The rule is only for soap -  I won't get into the details, but as soon as you say that your soap is good for anything other than cleaning, like that it is moisturizing for instance,  it is then considered a cosmetic and must be labeled differently. A lot of my soap falls under this category. The FDA defines soap as:

• the bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the product's detergent properties are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds, and
• the product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap

Next is the Chocolate Marshmallow Cream Soap labels and then I can take pictures and get these listed! Look for them June 13th at naiadsoaparts.com!

The 2 hour lip balm label! I'm slow! :)

Design Sketches

For my Birthday my friend Anna got me the Gluten Free Red Velvet and the Vegan Red Velvet cupcakes from Sprinkles Bakery. I am going to do a post on my comparison between the two and in preparation I took some pics and am designing my images. I though my process might be interesting for you to see...

The design board

This is the original photo. I took it into Photoshop CS5 and corrected the gamma and exposure which really made the red pop against the teal. I also stamped out some annoying stray crumbs.

The Vegan and Gluten free cupcakes come with an edible letter on them close to the Futura font (thank you for figuring that out Shaun). I really liked the idea of doing the letter in bold so I did a knock out of the letter on the red background. When I was searching fonts for the other text I fell in love with the font Handwriting - Dakota but it doesn't really work with the block letter. The "Red Velvet" text on the plate was added after doing a few different designs. I did it on a curved path with the letter getting smaller in font size. I also adjusted the Kerning (space between letters).

I have been into swirly dashed lines and created this one freehand with the pencil tool and then adjusted the loops and curves with the pen tool so it flowed better. As you can see the knock out block letter has no place in this design - I am happy with this one. The whole line "Red Velvet Gluten Free Cupcake was originally white and the red change came after the dashed line was created.

Just an idea to replace the dashed line with hearts - I was thinking valentines day. The hearts are drawn freehand with the brush tool on 2 pt oval.

I had text on the pasteboard in white that I wanted to see better so I added a grey box behind it. Just messing around I added it to the photo to see how it would look in the design. Red white and grey are nice colors together! I think this is off balance.

This was my last design and last attempt to make the knock out block letters work. I liked this one too but it reminds me of some other ad or logo that I can't quite place. If someone knows please tell me - it is killing me!

Overall I think they are still a WIP. I feel like the composition needs something towards the bottom to balance it out. I will just have to look at them for a while - maybe one of them is ok as is after all.

What do you think or which do you like best?

New postcard designs

Things I do late at night when I have had too much green tea...These are some new post card designs I am having printed up! I will include them in orders either blank for you to use/send (frame? LOL!) or with coupon codes on the back!

What do you think?

odds & ends are coming soon to the etsy shop!

this photo is a personal favorite and I think it makes a nice post card!

for when I get requests to include a note in birthday gift orders!