Product Labels in Dubai: Read From Half a Metre on a Shelf
A product label is doing three jobs at once. It sells the thing, it identifies the thing at a till, and it carries whatever text the law and the retailer insist on. Product labels in Dubai have to do all three inside a space usually smaller than a playing card.
Product Labels: tell us the size, the quantity and the date you need it by.
An estimator replies with a firm, VAT-inclusive price and a production date.From your file to the finished job.
Six steps happen between the brief and the finished job. Here they are, in the order they happen on our floor in Dubai South.
It Is Read at Shelf Distance
A shopper stands about half a metre away and scans a shelf in a couple of seconds. The product name and the variant have to be legible at that distance, and everything else is detail they will read only after picking it up.
Barcodes Need Space Around Them
A barcode wants a clear margin on both sides and enough height to be caught by a scanner at an angle. Shrink it to fit a gap and you get a code that fails at a busy till, which is the fastest way to be dropped by a retailer.
Compliance Text Takes More Room Than Expected
Ingredients, weight, origin, batch, storage, importer details and warnings all add up. Draft that block first and design the label around it, because doing it the other way means shrinking the text until it is unreadable.
The Surface Changes the Adhesive
A label going onto rough cardboard, textured plastic, powder coated metal or a sachet behaves differently on each. Send us a sample of the actual packaging if you have one, since the surface is the part that decides whether a label stays on.
Variants Multiply Quickly
Four flavours and three sizes is twelve different labels. Keeping the layout identical across all of them and changing only the name and the colour panel is what keeps artwork costs and errors down.
Proofed at Actual Size
Every label proof goes out printed at the real size, because a layout that looks balanced on a screen at four times scale often falls apart at the size it will be made.
Below about six point, printed text starts to fill in and thin strokes disappear. We will tell you when a block of mandatory text will not survive at the size it has been given, and that is better heard now than at the proof. One boundary worth stating plainly. We print the regulatory wording you supply and we do not verify it. Whether your ingredient declaration or import text meets the requirement is between you and your consultant, and we will print exactly what is approved.
See also bottle labels, round stickers, and labels and product stickers.
Setting up your file.
- 01Work at the finished sizeSet the page to the exact trimmed size of the piece, not a larger sheet with crop marks drawn in.
- 02Add 3 mm bleedRun background colour and images 3 mm past every edge that gets trimmed, so no white line shows after cutting.
- 03Keep text off the edgeHold text and logos at least 4 mm inside the trim line, clear of the blade.
- 04Send a print-ready PDFCMYK, fonts embedded or outlined, images at 300 dpi at final size. AI, EPS and high-resolution JPEG also work.
Quick answers.
About six point. Below that it fills in.
No. We print exactly what you approve.
It helps. The surface decides the adhesive.