Use this guide to make a clearer decision before you brief, order, or review a design project.
Label design is a specialist discipline. A great logo designer isn't automatically a great label designer — and vice versa. Labels live on physical products, must comply with regulatory requirements, need to survive production printing, and have to work at a scale of a few centimetres. Getting all of that right requires specific experience.
What Makes Label Design Different
- Communicate at shelf — The primary sales job happens from 1–2 metres away, in a competitive shelf context.
- Hold regulatory compliance — Depending on product category, a label must carry specific mandatory information: ingredients, allergens, volume/weight, country of origin, batch codes, safety symbols.
- Survive the print process — Colours must be specified in CMYK or Pantone, bleeds must be correct, fonts must be outlined.
- Work at small sizes — A 50mm × 50mm label leaves very little room for complexity. Hierarchy must be ruthless, typography must be legible at very small point sizes.
What to Look for in an Agency
Label-specific portfolio
Look for case studies showing the actual applied label on product photography — not just a flat design file. If an agency's portfolio only shows flat artwork and no production mockups, they may not have real print experience.
Production file delivery
Your label artwork must be delivered as a print-ready file: correct colour mode (CMYK), bleed allowance, correct resolution (minimum 300dpi for print), with fonts outlined or embedded.
Regulatory knowledge
Does the agency understand the labelling requirements for your product category? Food labels, supplement labels, and cosmetic labels each have specific legal requirements in the UK and EU.
Category experience
A label designed for a hot sauce looks very different from a wine label or a pharmaceutical supplement. Designers with category experience understand the conventions, the competitive set, and where breaking those conventions creates premium differentiation.
Why ideahits for Label Design
ideahits has designed labels across food and drink, beauty, supplements, and lifestyle products. Every label design project includes print-ready artwork, correct bleed and colour mode specifications, unlimited revisions, and full ownership of the final files.
If you need a label for a new product launch or a refresh of an existing range, start a brief here — we'll have first concepts ready within 2–4 business days.
