Lightning Labels Blog

When your product demands a cold environment in stores, your labeling requirements are different from the average business's needs. Unless you find durable labels, your branding won't last as long as it needs to. This is where Lightning Labels can step in, delivering great-looking packaging for your ice cream or other frozen treats this summer.

July is a perfect time to purchase new product packaging labels for your ice cream products, because it's National Ice Cream Month. These weeks, set aside to celebrate frozen treats, can yield new limited-time flavors or simply bold and attractive imagery to remind customers to pick up your everyday offerings. While you may believe there's no need to tell people that ice cream tastes great in the summertime, a little reminder wouldn't go amiss.

Pick Your Labeling Strategy

If you've decided to launch a new flavor  to celebrate National Ice Cream Month or the summer in general, a new label design is a natural addition to your brand's offerings. You simply need to ensure that it matches a distinctive, can't miss appeal with enough continuity that buyers tie it in with the rest of your line.

Even if you're not branching out with a new flavor, a custom label strategy based on National Ice Cream Month is a fine way to drum up excitement and attention for your brand. Potentially, the packages could even have a functional element to their design, listing desert recipes that make use of your ice cream. This time-tested strategy can encourage people to take the products home and follow the instructions.

"You have to employ durable labels so that they'll stay visible and vibrant."

If neither of the aforementioned ideas fit your strategy, you can simply execute a line-wide redesign. That may be enough to catch the eyes of consumers in the frozen foods aisle, especially if you make use of colorful and compelling imagery. You have to make sure, however, that you employ durable labels, so that they'll stay visible and vibrant after months in a freezer case.

Lightning Labels Can Help

You have your choice of label materials and finishes with Lightning Labels, including those capable of resisting the moisture and cold temperatures associated with ice cream. Combine this with lightning-fast turnaround times enabled by an all-digital printing process and you've found the ideal partner for your brand's next redesign, whether it takes place during National Ice Cream Month or not.

The warm summer months are made for ice cream, and your brand can launch promotional campaigns during this time for a perfect storm of attention and excitement among customers.

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Stickers: An Eye-catching Form of Branding

When you want your brand's logo and message to reach a wide audience, custom stickers may be the medium you're looking for. Stickers can take many forms - bumper stickers, window stickers, small stickers to attach to your products on the shelves - but the concept is always the same. These are a way to bring your company's visual identity out into the world and catch people's eyes.

Pick What’s Right For You

"Quick turnaround times and low minimum order amounts mean you can experiment with different sticker types."

There's no wrong way to promote your company through stickers, but the following are a few particularly likely ways to make your campaign successful. Keep in mind that you don't have to try just one idea - Lightning Labels' quick turnaround times and low minimum order amounts mean you can experiment with different sticker types in rapid succession, all without breaking the bank.

Bumper Stickers: The name "bumper sticker" can be deceptive. These aren't just for cars. When you order bumper stickers for your business and hand them out to customers, those recipients can stick your logo on a variety of surfaces. Think of these as tough and sizable stickers that can appear all over town, bringing your company's logo, slogan or contact information wherever they go.

Window Stickers: Sometimes, business stickers aren't meant to be hand-outs. When you buy window stickers, you can stick them around your store or office. They can contain information such as your hours of business, which payment types you accept and any seasonal sales that are going on, all with a branded flair that will make your brick-and-mortar location more visually interesting.

Product Stickers: Stickers for products have a special role in any branding strategy. They can add information that makes items more compelling or relevant, potentially tying them in with temporary promotions or sales. Adding a little seasonal flair is a great reason to add stickers to your items. You can also promote features or simply point out a new offering.

No Reason to Hesitate

When you order business decals or stickers from Lightning Labels, you're signing up for great service and the convenience enabled by all-digital operations from domestic facilities, rather than outsourcing. This means quick turnaround times, putting your new business stickers in your hands within days rather than weeks or months.

Whether you're jazzing up your retail stores, creating a new line of bumper stickers to pass out or printing a run of seasonal decals for your products, you can get started in your new project right away. There's no reason to delay!

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Promote Your Organization with Window Decals and Bumper Stickers

Stickers designed for the windows or bumpers of cars are an ideal way to get a name or logo out there, and they work for just about any kind of organization you can imagine. Small businesses, large companies, schools, sports teams, nonprofits - the list goes on. It's time to consider whether decals for auto use fit your promotional plans for this year.

Decals That Look Great

There's something about decals for cars that makes them different from other forms of advertising. First and foremost, people stick these to their cars because they're happy about how they look. The decals serve the dual purposes of promoting your brand and letting the car owner express his or her personality.

"People will have little hesitation about sticking a good-looking decal on a car window."

This focus on appearance can be an important guiding principle when you design custom window decals and bumper stickers. Instead of going for openly promotional messages, why not just use your visual logo or brand name? People will have little hesitation about sticking a good-looking decal on a car window, provided they have a history with your organization and like the way the logo complements the vehicle's appearance.

Cars bearing your branding will travel around, spreading your name or logo far and wide. This has the potential to raise awareness of your organization, and it's just one of the many uses of these stickers. When you order decals tough enough to stick to car windows or bumpers, you gain a versatile marketing aid that can be applied to just about any hard surface.

Quick and Seamless Ordering

Window decals, bumper stickers and other kinds of promotional materials are easy to procure when you work with an experienced partner like Lightning Labels. Due to its all-digital printing processes and use of domestic facilities, Lightning Labels delivers quick turnaround times. You can see your designs on car windows and bumpers in a matter of days, not weeks or months.

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Michael Haft and Harrison Suarez became friends and coffee drinkers while at Basic School in Quantico, VA. The two young Marine lieutenants wound up commanding platoons in Afghanistan, where coffee became an important ritual and reminder of home.

So, it’s no wonder that the duo started Compass Coffee in Washington, D.C. upon returning stateside. Featuring nine light to dark roast blends from primary growing regions of East Asia, Africa and the Americas, Compass is packaged in recyclable and refillable 12-ounce tins “which look great on the shelf at our local Whole Foods,” notes Michael.

With four locations in the D.C. area, Compass is growing chiefly because of positive word-of-mouth, based no doubt on high quality and good taste of its signature blends.

Michael enjoys sharing the Compass Coffee experience beyond the walls of the stores. He points out that “kids at the elementary school around the corner from our roaster use recycled tins of coffee to build pyramids, make little planters, even create vegetable gardens. It’s just fun seeing how excited they are about the tin. When you’re five years old and already have all the energy in the world, reusing packaging to build your recycled empire is what really matters.”

He also takes pride in helping others in the military get a sense of home by shipping coffee to such places as Diego Garcia, a distant refueling station in the Indian Ocean, and Afghanistan battlefields.

Relationship with Lightning Labels, the Beverage Specialist

Lightning Labels is doing its part to help keep Compass pointing in the right direction by providing custom coffee labels for their products. Notes Michael, “Lightning Labels has been a great partner. They are high quality and fast, and our sales rep, Mary, always goes out of her way to keep our customers happy! Lightning Labels has done an incredible job making sure that our unusual requests are handled in a timely and sensitive manner. They’ve truly gone above and beyond supporting Compass as we work to keep our customers happy.”

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Picking a Suitable Lamination Type

The appearance of a label comes down to more than just the information printed on it. Product labels are defined by the materials they're printed on - and the lamination types applied to them. When you're planning your company's next order of custom labels, you should consider the method of lamination, as it can help you present a unified look and feel.

Consider Your Options

When you work with Lightning Labels, you have four different laminate options. Each is especially suitable for certain kinds of labels, and picking one over the other can elevate the quality of your product labels. The following are a few of the traits that each of these different lamination styles brings to the table:

• High Gloss: High gloss labels receive the closest thing Lightning Labels offers to a "standard" laminate. It's popular, flexible, and costs the least of any option. It protects your labels to ensure they survive the manufacturing and selling processes, and gives a shiny, glossy sheen that makes products attractive on store shelves.

• Matte: Instead of the shininess of high gloss, matte labels have a different feel. If you're going for a highly modern or more "natural" look for your product labels, this may suit your design better.

• Thermal Transfer: If you use an over-printing thermal transfer printer, this is the laminate for you. While it's designed to work with most of these printers, you should order a sample first to ensure it suits your needs.

• UV Outdoor Gloss: This laminate is the toughest option we at Lightning Labels offer. When combined with a vinyl label material, it makes sure your products will be safe and sound in the great outdoors. The UV resistance that gives the finish its name is designed to ensure the sun doesn't wither your products' labels.

A Label for Every Occasion

The mix-and match quality of materials and laminates at Lightning Labels ensures your products will always have the look they need. From cast gloss labels for the wine industry, which combine a paper base with a high-gloss finish, to Recycled Kraft Labels that aren't laminated at all, there is a combination to suit every brand. Lightning Labels is committed to delivering these customized labels in a quick and efficient manner, printing at domestic facilities instead of outsourcing and using all-digital processes to keep minimum orders low. You can give your products the labels they need in a hurry, to ensure that they look great on store shelves, with consistent branding topped by the right laminate.

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Summer Means Produce

A whole host of different fruit and vegetable varieties are becoming ripe as spring gives way to summer. If you can and preserve produce, you can save this freshness all year round. Those canned goods are also great to give away or sell, provided you can give them the proper pizzazz.

"It's time to think about harvesting, preserving and canning your goods."

When you're ready to turn your green thumb into a small business, launching your own line of food products, you'll want eye-catching labels and stickers to mark the products. Preserves and canned foods made from your own fruits and veggies are great to give away to family and friends or, if you have enough on hand, they can be a big hit at farmers' markets and local stores. In June, designated as National Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Month, it's time to think about harvesting, preserving and canning your goods.

What's Your Brand?

Whether you're canning goods to give to acquaintances or to be sold at markets, the process involves thinking about jar label design. There's no reason to leave the jars blank — not when there are affordable labels for canning available from Lightning Labels. Friends and family will love the personal touch that comes with your chosen imagery, and if you choose to sell the goods, branding just becomes that much more important.

Shoppers at a farmers' market will likely have a choice between many different growers' offerings. How can you prove yours are worthy of their money? Label design plays a key role here. The imagery and text you choose for your packaging, as well as the material, finish, font and other little design touches, will set your preserves and canned goods apart. If you opt for canning jar lid labels, you can brand multiple faces of the jars and make them look more distinctive, no matter what angle people view them from.

Preserve labels can include descriptions of the flavors within, or use local imagery to promote the locally sourced nature of your items. Shoppers today have a lot of choices regarding how they get their foods and what brands they consume. Playing up the wholesome nature of your offerings could help them stand out in a world largely dominated by big brands and artificial ingredients.

Team Up with Lightning Labels

Whether you're simply a hobbyist or you've made the jump to produce entrepreneur, Lightning Labels can help you stand out, with labels for canning that fit every need and requirement. Since you operate independently, you may assume that professionally made labels are out of reach, with high minimum order sizes and prohibitive costs getting in the way. Lightning Labels, however, works differently.

Lightning Labels uses digital-only printing processes at domestic facilities. This means you get your labels in a hurry, and can place an order affordably even if you don't need many labels in one go. The produce in the fields and orchards is getting ripe and because it's National Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Month — there's no better time to get serious about your canning and preservation efforts, whether as gifts for your acquaintances or the beginning of a new business venture.

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Impressive Label Designs and Great Photos

For the past five years, Lightning Labels has held an annual photo contest, showing off its customers' creative label designs in their natural habitat. Between now and July 1, Lightning Labels will be accepting applications for the sixth iteration of the contest. If your products use Lightning Labels, you can enter via Facebook — the entry form is here.

This is an especially important year to hold a custom label and sticker contest, as it's Lightning Labels' 15th anniversary. No company makes it to the decade-and-a-half mark without a great customer base, and this is no exception. The label contest isn't just about Lightning Labels itself — it's a celebration of all the creative ideas that have come to life through custom labels and stickers in the past year.

Chasing Big Prizes

There's more than just pride on the line when it comes to this year's label contest. The first prize winner will walk away with a 60-inch flatscreen HDTV, while second prize is an Apple iPad and third prize is a pair of wireless Beats headphones. Fourth- and fifth-place winners will earn free labels, to help them keep their award-winning labeling campaigns rolling into the months ahead.

Taking home these big rewards takes two elements - a good-looking label and a well-constructed photograph. Business owners can step up and show off how they've taken advantage of Lightning Labels' ability to print just about any kind of design, harnessing a wide variety of materials and finishes to make a company's unique value proposition come to the fore.

Lightning Labels' offerings run the gamut, from 100 percent recycled labels that show a brand's commitment to the environment to chrome BOPP polymer labels that give a shimmering, classy look. There's no one perfect product label. Each company will have its own best option, and Lightning Labels helps these businesses reach their disparate goals.

Reflecting and Looking Forward

Every year, a new crop of incredible label designs graces the Lightning Labels photo contest. For an organization with 15 years of history, this is a heartening sign that customers are always finding new ways to make its offerings work for them.

With all-digital printing processes that make orders of any size possible and affordable, Lightning Labels is ideally suited to follow its clients into the future, no matter where they go from here. If you're not a customer yet, look at the entries to the label contest and imagine how great your branding could look with Lightning Labels' help.

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