Ready to Design Your Brand Labels?
You don’t need to be a professional graphic designer to create great clothing labels. Whether you have chosen a woven or printed label, getting them made is easier than ever. Label builders, like the one available at The Dutch Label Shop, make it simple to design your label with no prior design experience needed. Alternatively, if you have a logo or font, you can use any design software you would normally use, such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, to design your perfect label.
If you are unsure about which labels your products might need, check out the Label Basics Guide for a break down the different types of labels you will find on any garment. You'll be able to find out if you need a brand label, care & content label, size label, hang tag, or perhaps, all of the above.
To help you in the design process, it is important to think about the overall look and feel of your products. This label will function as a business card—it might be small, but it should tell a story about your entire brand. This story must be powerful and simultaneously match the particular product or collection. Use these questions below as a starting point for your process:
- What will your labels go on?
- What story do you want to tell with your brand and your products?
- What makes your products unique?
- What colors do you use in your products?
- How will the labels be attached?
- Do you have a preference for fibre composition of the labels (polyester labels, cotton clothing labels, etc)?
What Goes on a Brand Label?
Labels are usually small, so keep this in mind when deciding on what to include on yours. It is common practice to have a number of labels within a single garment, so you don't need to squeeze all of your information onto one label. Customers understand that a brand label is usually paired with other more technical labels, so use this one to really tie together your creative vision without worrying about additional information.
Brand Label Checklist
This label is for your brand name, the logo of your company, or the name of your product. The text is supposed to be short (one word, or just a few words at most) so that it remains the focus of the label. This label can be the same on all of your products too, so create something that reflects the essence of your brand.
Brand Name & Logo
The name of your business, brand, or even your own name. If you have a logo, you can choose to put this onto your brand label, too. Just be aware of the actual size of the finished label and make sure your logo is still clear if it's going to be very small. You may wish to remove some of the finer details or scale it back to something more simplistic if it has a lot of detail. This is particularly important if you want a woven brand label. Remember to include a copyright or trademark symbol if you have one registered.
Location or Establishment Date
If your brand ethos has strong ties to the location where you started your company then you can include that on your brand label. This doesn't have to mean where the product was made, but just where you are based. The same goes for including the year you started your business. All of these help build an identity around your brand.
Extras
You may have something that really emphasizes your uniqueness. A short saying, tag line, or simple illustration that reflects your personality can go a long way to catching the attention of a potential customer.
Font & Text
After seeing thousands of designs made into labels, we have a pretty good idea of what works (and what doesn't), so we've included some helpful design tips to get you started. Keep in mind that these are not rules to strictly follow as we know every label is different. There are always exceptions, and we encourage you to follow your intuition when designing—they are your labels after all!
Be stylish, but keep your text legible at a glance. The right font goes a long way in expressing your brand's personality, and you can use this to appeal to your intended customer. If you are taking a classic approach, you might look for a typeface in the Serif category. Or if you're looking for modern and minimal branding, a Sans Serif typeface might appeal more. Using a Script or Handwritten font can be perfect for getting across your style, but be careful with any fonts that have a distinctive brushstroke, grain, or texture which may not cleanly translate into a label. For this reason, it's a good idea to choose something on the simpler side, and to consider the spacing of each letter to keep it clear.
Keep an eye on the size of your letters. When using a label design tool, the minimum size of the letters will be specified. If you choose to design a woven label from scratch then you are free to choose the size of your characters yourself. We recommend any lettering be at least 1.5mm for it to be readable. For hard-to-read fonts such as those in the Script family, you'll need a larger character size. Another recommendation is to print your label design at 100% scale on any home printer to get a feel for the size and scale of your design. If you are finding it difficult to read when printed then play around with the size and weighting of the font to see if you can make it clearer.
Brand Artwork & Logo
Leave your mark. Designing a label offers the opportunity to create your official artwork using the same creativity that you used to build your brand. How can you do this? By first defining the core values of your company. For example, if your products are modern and designed for a younger buyer, use some of those modern elements such as sleek graphic lines and pop colors in your brand artwork. If your products are ultra-minimal, then reflect that back into your garment label by using a clean font with a lot of white space.
Less is more in logo design. A strong, simple logo will stick better with your customers than a busy logo displaying too much information. A straightforward logo design will also translate well to a woven label without losing any detail. The weaving process used for making woven labels adds a whole new dimension to your logo. The extra texture and a subtle luster make a logo look much more luxurious than it does on a computer screen.
Colors
Choose the right colors for your label. Select colors that match your brand, and consider colors that frequently occur in your other products as well. Colors can evoke specific emotions, so you can use that to your advantage. Light blue is often associated with freshness, bright yellow radiates happiness, and red is a powerful color that expresses strong feelings. Using colors to create associations in your customers' minds can be useful for the branding of your product or collection.
How many colors is too many? When designing your labels, keep in mind the maximum amount of colors you can use with your preferred type of label. Woven labels can have a maximum of 12 colors (including any shades), so you will need to make sure your design is under that limit. If your intended design does have color gradients or just more than 12 colors, you might have to select a digitally printed label which doesn't have any color limitations.
Sizes
The label size will likely depend on what fits with your products best. If you sell small, handmade soft toys, then you will probably want a small label to match. However, if you want your label to really stand out, go bigger. It is also important to decide whether you want your custom label to be square, rectangular, round or a free form shape.
(List of common sizes for common items - T-shirts, shirts, blouses, coats, children's clothing, beanies, hats)
Seam Allowances and Folds
While designing your labels, make sure to consider how you plan to attach them to your items. In general, you will want to leave at least 0.2 inches / 0.5cm between the edge of the label and where your design begins on any edges that will be sewn. You can add this seam allowance as a border while designing your labels so that you can be sure the center of your label doesn't change once it's attached. Just make sure to remove any seam allowance indicators (if you have used lines or boxes) before saving your artwork to send to production.