Labels and stickers have never been cheaper or easier to source and no matter what you need, you should be able to find a print and design partner who can deliver what you need, at the price you demand and without sacrificing quality.  You are only restricted by your own imagination though many printers will offer a very wide range of designs and templates for you to use if you want something quickly – still, there is always scope for your own personal touch given the technology available today.

Many online websites are offering cheap printed labels and other services but you should establish who you are dealing with before you place the order and part with your hard earned cash. You are strongly advised to deal with a US based supplier who will also be directly responsible for producing your order; many online web suppliers are actually sub-contracting the print work overseas, particularly to the Far East, where print work is conducted on old presses (usually sold off as obsolete from the US and elsewhere back in the 1970’s and 1980’s) – the quality is poor, the environmental impact is extremely high and you have very little control over the print process with extended turnaround times and almost no recourse if something goes wrong.

The moral of this story is to buy American!

Many people never even consider how a label can help them in the first instance so here is a brief list of typical label orders which can be fulfilled by a competent print and design partner – remember it will serve you well if you can keep work with the same supplier because it will reduce lead times, decrease design team input and as a supplier gets to know you better, they will be able to help you that much better too.

Here’s the list:

• Barcode labels
• Anniversary labels and seals
• Shipping labels
• Cheap or Value Labels
• Control Panel Graphic Overlays
• Custom integrated Shipping Labels
• Bespoke or Custom Labels
• Custom Wine Labels
• Parking Permits and Stickers
• Custom Short Run Labels
• Embossed Labels
• Four Color Process or CMYK Labels
• Hang Tags
• Medical and Veterinarian Office Labels
• Oil Change Stickers
• Personalized ID Tags
• Short Run Custom Labels
• Waterproof Labels
• Window Decals

In addition there is a growing interest in the personal use of labels and stickers.  It is quite common for orders to be placed for personalized stickers for kids; anniversary and birthday occasions; Christmas, Thanksgiving, 4^th July and New Years celebratory tags and sometimes any old occasion just for the fun of it such as a personalized beer label when you are having a family get-together.  Wine buffs have been getting in on the cheap label act by personalizing their wine for serving at table or weddings and such – it is a lot cheaper and is easier than you may think!

As we said at the very beginning, you are only restricted by your imagination in terms of what you have on the labels and stickers you want and what you are going to use them for – and it is definitely not going to break the bank either.

OK, I know currently you have the choice with your advertising medium – plaster your brand name all over the place, hit the potential prospect with a high impact assault on their senses, gain attention, generate interest leading to making a decision and then getting them to act on it.  Except no billboard hoarding is going to be able to do that as the prospect is driving along at 60 mph and how many people do you see stopping alongside a billboard with pen and paper in hand taking the advertisers contact information from the ad?

Not many if indeed, any!

In Japan they have been experimenting and innovating 2D barcodes and cell phones equipped with a reader or more usually, just the ability to send a Multimedia Messaging text (known as MS as opposed to SMS).  The system is known as Jagtag and the 2D barcode labels at the center of this concept is able to store music, audio, picture and video information as well as gain access to marketing collateral stored online.

The neat part of Jagtag is that it is able to deliver information both ways – not only is the 2D tag able to give you immediate information, but it can also be integrated with an online back-end you can hook into with your cell phone giving the website your personal preferences or your location so the marketing response to your request for information is highly contextual.

Imagine you see a an ad, you like what you see so you text the Jagtag code (by scanning it with your cell phone) to the text number provided, the code is processed and the appropriate message is then returned to the user’s cell phone which is then used on the cell phone as and when they wish. There are no API’s to download and no fuss while the advertiser is updated in real-time with the response to their marketing efforts.

The US version simply requires you to subscribe to either Verizon or AT&T networks and some big names have signed up for the concept including Nike who have been trailing the system with Nike 6.0.

A barcode is an optical machine readable representation of information that originally used simple parallel lines with the width of the lines and spacing in between determining the information being carried.  A rapid development was the introduction of other geometric shapes (triangles, squares, rectangles and other polygonals) to represent data and these are also known as barcodes.

A barcode costs a fraction of a cent (approximately $0.005) to produce and implement which competes very well with more recent systems such as RFID tags which are capable of greater functionality (such as real time tracking of inventory) however, they do cost substantially more (around $0.07 to $0.30 per tag).

Today barcodes are used to carry much more detailed information for users and the information is also now capable of being read by the product’s end user as an aid to the selection and usage of the purchase.  Barcode readers are equally simple and cheap to operate and many retail outlets are providing customers with handheld readers for self-scanning of their purchases and also to provide the customer with greater information that is tailored to the marketing aims of the retailers rather than the manufacturer.

The universal applicability and cost effectiveness will ensure that the barcode will remain with us for many years to come and no doubt its life expectancy will continue to be extended as the simplicity lends itself to greater application in the technology led world.