Lightning Labels Blog

The Château Mouton Rothschild Wine Labels

I thought we should end the year with something fun. Château Mouton Rothschild is acknowledged as the world's greatest Bordeaux but what interests me most about them are their labels. Every year they commission a famous artist or sculptor to create an illustration for their wine labels. The painting featured on their 2004 (the latest vintage) was actually done by Prince Charles. Other famous names such as Picasso, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali have all had their work printed on these wine labels.

Recently I stumbled across this website that displays the entire collection of labels produced for Château Mouton Rothschild dating back to 1946. It is interesting to see how the styles and colors have changed through the years. Many of these labels have become real collectors items.

If you are lucky enough to bring in the New Year with a bottle of Château Mouton Rothschild (the 2004 retails for around $300) then 2008 was probably a good year for you.

Happy New Year.

Creating Product Labels in Photoshop

I was catching up on some reading over the Holidays and I came across this interesting tutorial on how to create product labels in Adobe Photoshop. The tutorial gives an example of creating a beer label from scratch using a scanned drawing and various effects within Photoshop.

If you use Photoshop regularly you should check out the Photoshop Lady's site. There are hundreds of tutorials and everything is free. As always if you have any questions about how you should prepare your files for printing at Lightning Labels, be sure to check out our Art Specs page.

Happy Holidays from Lightning Labels

On behalf of everyone here at Lightning Labels I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support in the past year. We wish you a safe and happy Holiday Season and hope you have a relaxing break. Here's to a great 2009.

Lightning Labels will be closed on the following days this Holiday Season:
Thursday, December 25th
Friday, December 26th
Thursday, January 1st

What Font is That?

Today, there must be literally millions of fonts in existence. Heck, anyone can create their own font quite easily so the number probably keeps increasing every day. Sometimes you might be browsing online or reading through a magazine and you come across a font that you really like. How do you know what font that is?

Anyone involved in graphic design has to deal with unknown fonts on a regular basis. Luckily there are plenty of tools to help you identify unusual fonts. This post features seven such tools. These tools work well with most commercially available fonts and can help you identify fonts that are close to your selected font even if they can't identify it.

Thanks to Kathy at Saponifier for the tip. For the record the graphic above is not a real font - it is just an arrangement of M&M's.

Pantone Selects Color of the Year for 2009

Pantone has selected their color of the year for 2009 and it is this yellow-orange color they have dubbed Mimosa. According to the Pantone press release this Mimosa color "exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance. Mimosa also speaks to enlightenment, as it is a hue that sparks imagination and innovation." They indicate during these difficult times of economic uncertainty yellow expresses hope and reassurance.

So what does this really mean? Well if you are in the fashion business you could expect Mimosa colored fashion to be prevalent throughout 2009. And you might see this color featured if you visit your local paint store next year. If you want your product labels to reflect the cutting edge of color fashion then be sure to throw in some yellow-orange hues into your label redesign for 2009.

Gather All the Printing News at Alltop

Sometimes when you are trying to research a topic a google search can get frustrating. You often have to sift through pages of search results before gathering all the information you need. Wouldn't it be better to go to one location and find all the important news that is completely up to date? This is the idea behind Alltop, a new venture by Guy Kawasaki, the serial entrepreneur, venture capatalist and author.

Alltop gathers all the latest news from around the world and organizes it by topic, kind of like an online magazine rack. It pulls in news from traditional sources such as newspaper and magazine web sites, but also includes new media such as popular blogs and online forums. If you need to do research on ballroom dancing, woodworking or New Zealand then Alltop has you covered. Best of all it is updated every hour with all the latest news on every topic so you know you are getting only current information.

Recently a printing category was added to Alltop. It includes news from the commercial printing industry as well as label printing. So now all the news from our industry is gathered conveniently in one place at printing.alltop.com. And yes, you will find the Lightning Labels blog in there as well.

Beautiful New Die-Cut Labels From Villainess

We printed these beautiful labels recently for Villainess, an online bath and body products company based in Tennessee. They did a number of unique things with these labels, so I thought it would be useful to share it with everyone on the blog. They wanted a label that was really different, that would stand apart from their competitors, so they decided to invest in a new die-cut shape, unique for these perfume oil bottles. They were after a vintage look with a copper texture, and to achieve that they chose our Chrome stock. The design was then created to simulate a well-worn copper plate, and a matte laminate was added to complete the vintage look.

These bottles are only small, just 5 mil (0.18 fl. oz.), so there was not much room to create a distinctive look. Their graphic designer, Kira Butler, did a wonderful job creating this unique label which was part of a complete re-branding effort undertaken by Villainess earlier this year. With only small quantities required and 37 different scented oils, this was a perfect job for our digital label press. We love doing jobs like these that show off the unique capabilities of our digital label printing technology.

A Law Blog About Beverage Labels

I stumbled across this interesting blog yesterday. Bevlog is the blog of Lehrman Beverage Law, a law firm specializing in beverage law, specifically alcoholic beverages. According to their web site, there are more than 100,000 applications for wine, beer and spirits labels approved by the TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) every year and the people at Lehrman Beverage law review almost all of them. The most interesting labels make it on to the blog.

It is necessary for every alcoholic beverage maker to obtain a certificate of label approval (COLA) before they can sell their products. This is all public record - you can search the database here. Somehow this law firm obtains pictures of the labels and includes the most noteworthy ones on their blog together with some commentary about the label or the product. For anyone interested in wine, beer of spirits labels you really should check it out.