Labels 101

The starting point: what labels are made of, how they are printed, which adhesive holds and how to get them onto product straight.

Labels look simple from the outside — a bit of paper, a bit of glue, a bit of print. In practice every label is a short stack of decisions: the facestock, the adhesive, the print process, the size and shape, the finish. Get one of them wrong and you find out on the loading dock, when the labels curl off a cold pack, smear in a wet cooler or refuse to peel off the liner at all.

Labels 101 is our plain-English introduction to those decisions. Start with what a label is for, then work through choosing a material and a size, the printing processes behind it and the adhesive that has to hold it to your container. The practical guides cover the rest: applying labels by hand, running a roll through a splice, and the extra rules that apply once the product goes into a freezer.

Nothing here assumes you have bought labels before, and none of it is a sales pitch. If you would rather skip straight to the answer, tell us the product, the container material and the storage temperature and we will spec the label for you — then send samples so you can test it before you order.