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We received over 300 entries for our Product Photo Contest that ended earlier this month. It took quite a while to go through all the entries. After much deliberation we are pleased to announce that the photo above from Bella Lucce has been selected as the overall winner. It is a beautiful photo and a deserving winner. You can view all the winning photos here. And thanks to everyone who entered the contest.
We have a Whole Foods Market just a mile from where I live and whenever I shop there I enjoy browsing the shelves and looking for products with labels that we printed (there are usually a few). Whole Foods is the holy grail for many makers of natural products, and here at Lightning Labels we have a large number of companies providing these kinds of products. Whole Foods often source locally made products, so even for new companies you have a chance of getting on the shelves there. But how? This week Fortune Small Business tackled this issue, and they provide some very useful advice for any company looking to make it into a big retail store like Whole Foods.
The article covers a range of issues such as when to hire a consultant to help, getting in touch with a Whole Foods "food forager", attending trade shows, and making sure your product stands out from the crowd. If you are graduating from selling your products at the local farmer's market on weekends to Whole Foods, you will need professional looking labels. Your products will look far better with a high quality, durable label than one you printed on your desktop using blank Avery labels you bought at Staples.
Some people start their company with the idea that they want a professional looking product right out of the box. Other people are on a tight budget and want to do everything themselves. But if you want to get in to Whole Foods, printing your labels on your $100 ink jet printer just isn't going to cut it. Once you are ready to make that leap you need a great looking label, so your product launch has the highest possible chance of success.
The wine labels above are bright, colorful and fun. Unfortunately, we didn't print them, they are Australian wines from the liquor store chain Liquorland. Last month the UK magazine, Design Week, featured these wine labels in an article about wine branding. Basically, they were saying that US and Australian wineries were leaving the Europeans behind with their fun and fresh wine label designs.
I don't think there is any product where the label is more important than in wine. As the article says, people often enter a liquor store with a price range in mind and have no idea what brand they will purchase. The visual appeal of the label can have a huge impact on whether or not a wine is purchased. If you were shopping for a white wine on a hot summer's day and came across the labels above, they would certainly catch your eye.
This is the challenge for anyone, whether it be a European winery or a small company selling soap at Whole Foods. If you want new customers to try your product, you have to have a compelling and visually appealing label.
I came across this interesting article a couple of weeks ago on the history of print. It describes a rich history that starts way back around 1800 BC and continues all the way to the 21st century. The photo above is from one of the first rotary printing presses invented in the 1840's. For anyone involved in the printing industry it provides an interesting historical perspective.
The article does not mention the HP-Indigo press, which in my humble opinion was a very important part of the history of printing. But it does provide an interesting analysis of most of the major printing advances over the last several hundred years.
This past weekend, Seth Godin had an interesting post regarding Flickr and brainstorming. Flickr has quickly become one of the world's largest collection of online photos with literally millions of new photos being added every month. Most of these photos are tagged and many of them are available for free for commercial use.
What is most powerful about Flickr, as Godin points out, is that it has become an incredible brainstorming tool. Let's say for example you make honey and you are having trouble coming up with a cool idea for your honey labels. Go to Flickr and type "honey" in the search box (I usually use the "tags only" button and click on "most interesting") and you will be provided a list of hundreds of photos relevant to the term honey. You might decide you want a photo of a bee, so you can narrow your search to "honey bee". If you want to see photos you can actually use, be sure you use the advanced search, choose Creative Commons Commercial license so you can display photos that can be used commercially
You may find exactly the photo you want, but regardless you will definitely see hundreds of ideas that you could use in your packaging for your honey. The photo above is an example of just one of the professional quality photos available on Flickr. There are so many photos that no matter what your product category you will find some photos to help stimulate your imagination.
