Stirring up the market: 5 core steps for beverage label refresh

On busy drink aisles, where brands have just a short window of time to catch the eye, a fresh label design can be one of the effective ways to stand out.

As a specialist prepress partner to label printers, Creation understands the importance of having an impactful and effective label design for beverage products and uses its expertise to make the process simple.

With consumers making their purchase decisions in just a few short seconds, a drink label redesign can breathe new life into a brand and attract attention.

What sets Creation apart for label printers is the combination of experience in areas such as colour management, sustainable platemaking and rotary screen printing. Our team believes that by getting prepress right, quality, consistency and sustainability can be accessible to businesses of every size – and is pivotal to creating that ‘wow’ moment on-shelf.

In this blog, we take a closer look at how printers, design teams and brands can make the most of a beverage label redesign, and the key factors that must be taken into consideration.

Begin with purpose

A clear goal is everything. Before starting a beverage label redesign, make sure the extended team, from operatives to C-suite understands the why. Is the goal a shift in target audience? Is it capturing a greater market share against new competition? Is it a modern update to brand image?

Clear understanding of the end goal will help to ensure that the label redesign has a unified team behind it, which in turn guides the design process and ensures the end result aligns perfectly with the overall brand goals.

Be bold in experimentation

Label redesign is a fine line to tread – brand owners typically require designs to look fresh and original, while still being immediately identifiable as their brand. This requires careful consideration of elements such as colour, typography and imagery, as well as periphery elements such as label substrate and tactile finishes. Would a metallic foil help to capture attention when stacked next to the competitors? Does earthy graining fit the brand identity?

Collaborating with a designer is a chance to explore new ideas that could push brand identity forwards without sacrificing existing brand equity.

The mock-up stage is an ideal opportunity to get creating and push boundaries within existing brand guidelines – which makes it a very important step in the evolution of a label design.

Think material

Great label design engages more than just sight – how does the label feel to the touch? Does it suggest slick and modern, or more traditional? With tactile finishes available, label redesign is an opportunity to switch up the material. Furthermore, it’s another opportunity to make products more sustainable, depending on the carbon impact of the material selected.

Substrate choice has a significant impact on the overall look and feel of the product, but also needs to take environmental factors into account. For example, a wine label is likely to require a material that can withstand humidity and moisture, where a beer label may need to be resistant to condensation.

Trust an experienced prepress partner

First impressions count, so why settle for anything less than the best? Creation supports label printers with a full spectrum of prepress services and technologies, ensuring every print task gets off on the right foot.

As well as supporting our customers in the delivery of foil stamping, embossing and varnishing for an added touch of luxury, Creation provides comprehensive colour management services, and print technologies that drive true value. These include water-washable flexo plates that eliminate the need for solvents in prepress, as well as high-performance rotary screens.

Consider ditching spot colours

Spot colour inks are still used extensively through the label printing industry, but Creation is challenging that. We proudly champion extended gamut (ECG) or fixed colour palette (FCP) printing as a more effective alternative to spot colour inks. Not only does the approach help printers to reduce the carbon impact of their operations by negating the need for wasteful spot colour inks, but there are added benefits in cost control too.

With a fixed gamut of up to seven standard colours, FCP can replicate around 90% of Pantone colours using a set palette of CMYK/OGV inks, standard cyan, magenta, yellow and black (key), with the extension of orange, green and violet.

Whether it’s to attract a new customer demographic, grab a bigger slice of market share or rejuvenate a brand image, a beverage label design can make all the difference in a competitive beverage market.

However, printers never need to go it alone! Creation reprographics supports printers of every size to deliver label printing excellence, every time, without compromise. Our team specialises in turning ‘good on screen’ into ‘great on shelf’, supporting printers in all aspects of prepress.

Whether it’s tighter control of ink inventory, controlled printing costs, reduced sustainability impact or the expertise to deliver excellence on print runs of every size, make Creation your prepress partner of choice. Click here to learn more about our services.