Honey manufacturers may experience unique challenges when designing their container labels. With many industry standards and material options of different advantages, the options are practically endless. Luckily, Glassnow‘s work with honey businesses has allowed us to offer the guide below for your honey label design.
Good Honey Jar Label Designs Make For Good First Impressions
As discussed in our previous blog on eye-catching labels, a product’s label is the first indicator of quality to a customer. For shelved products, aesthetic assessment is the first brand experience that most customers have with your product, and your label must capture their attention from the shelf in mere seconds. To do so, you must understand who that customer is, and what is important to them.
Understand Your Honey Product Customers
Knowing your customer and what they value is key when branding your honey. Pairing this with general eye-catching design tactics is the best formula for winning shopper attention.
With many health benefits & culinary uses, customers choose honey for many purchases. FoodInsight.org reports that the top purchase drivers can be summarized in the following:
- Price
- Ingredients: Locally sourced, minimal processing, natural and organic
- Sustainability: Produced in a sustainable way, responsible packaging, and minimal use of pesticides.
These drivers speak to what’s important to a customer’s purchase. So, communicating them with content and imagery through the label design has become ever so important. Save shoppers time by sharing the important characteristics in an easy-to-consume way.
Ask yourself what values are important to you and your brand of honey? Which of the purchase drivers above can you claim to provide? Chances are, these are values shared by your customers, and ones that you can honestly speak to with your label.
With a focus on these value propositions and effective messaging through good design, flying off the shelves may be easier than you may think.
How to Design the Perfect Honey Jar Label
When designing a product label for an established industry like honey, brands must remain familiar with returning customers while capturing the attention of first-time buyers among the competition.
It’s well worth the effort for honey brands to explore what does (and doesn’t) work for the established industry. The most important things to consider are package-label fit, colors, imagery, brand story, values, and high-quality characteristics of your honey.
Use label design elements that are associated with honey
The very nature of honey brings many images to mind:
- Made by bees
- Created in beehives & honeycombs
- Taken from flowers
- Loved by bears
- Collected in honeypots
These are universal facts known by manufacturers and consumers both. They are the fun facts about honey that we can speak to in creative ways.
Utilizing a few of these images as part of your label makes it easy for customers to identify what product you are selling and what values matter to you. It can be as simple as featuring a bear in your label or making your label/jar in the shape of a honeycomb. The goal of featuring these is industry recognition.
Let Your High-Quality Honey Shine with a Simple Label Design
You can use imagery and iconography creatively to make it clear that your jar contains honey. Once your product can obviously be recognized as honey, it’s time to set it apart from your competitors and achieve brand recognition. This can often be accomplished by looking outside of your own industry and into the trends of others to discover unique packaging options.
One of the newest trends to date is that of minimalist packaging design. These styles let the product speak for itself and feature limited images & copy to catch the eye. Instead, they use the raw look & details of their product to sell to customers.
For honey, this could mean clear glass jars that show the amber tones of your sweet product. Any colors or images here would be in service of the natural vibrance of your product, no distractions.
Written copy should always be minimal on a design, but newer label styles are taking it a step further. For natural & medicinal products like honey, simply putting those words front & center on your packaging shows customers exactly what they’re looking for. These are the words on customers’ minds when they’re shopping so seeing them on your packaging can be an easy way to stand out.
Information to Include on Your Honey Package Label Design
Not to be forgotten when designing your honey label is the information required by law to be printed on it. This sort of information can take up valuable space on your label, but can also help your brand grow if used correctly.
FDA & Nutritional Information
The Food & Drug Administration has certain requirements for selling honey in the USA. Meeting these is not only legally vital to selling your product but also important for consumers. Customers are more conscious than ever of what they’re consuming, what it does to their bodies, and to our environment. Being open & honest about what’s in your honey can be a big selling point for customers looking for a product that has nothing to hide.
Contact information
Just as vital as nutritional information, your business’ contact information is important to feature all over your product label. This doesn’t just stop at your phone number but includes fun things like social media handles.
This is a good opportunity to promote your online presence!
Giving your customers multiple ways to reach out about their experience with your product frames you as a company eager to connect. This connection goes a long way to forging bonds with your customers and giving them an incentive to share you with others.
Honey Packaging Material and Label Design
While your honey label is the most communicative part of your overall packaging, it is only one part. When designing it you must think not only about the label, but the packaging itself. These two components must come together for a singular & consistent experience for every customer, so it’s worth exploring what makes them both right.
Always Choose Glass Packaging for Honey
As discussed in our previous blog on glass vs. plastic packaging, plastic always runs the risk of compromising sensitive products within, whether through leaching moisture or chemicals.
With honey, maintaining moisture is key to preserving a luscious product. The impermeability of glass packaging ensures no crystallization or fermentation of products for much longer than plastic alternatives.
| Image | Name | Capacity | Label Dimensions |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Wide Mouth Roma Glass Bottle | 16.9oz | 4"H x 2"L : 102mm x 51mm |
 | Glass Jar With Cork And Spoon | 8.5oz | 0.5"H x 0.5"L : 12.7mm x 12.7mm |
 | Square Glass Jar | 3.4oz | 1.25"H x 1.25"L : 31.75mm x 31.75mm |
 | Glass Honey Pot | 1.2oz | 0.5"H x 0.5"L : 12.7mm x 12.7mm |
 | Cylindra Glass Jar | 1oz | 1"H x 1.5"L : 22mm x 40mm |
Again, we recommend using clear packaging for your honey. The natural amber color is a beautiful base for any label, and provides instant product recognition on the shelf.
Brand Originality
With brand values & physical packaging in mind, you’re ready to start designing an original label! This typically starts with your color scheme, which stems much from the color of your logo & packaging.
If you’ve selected our recommended transparent packaging, you’ll want your color scheme to be as complementary to that amber color as possible. This typically means other shades of yellow, but going the extra mile for a transparent label really exudes a vintage feeling.
If transparent labels aren’t right for you and you’re looking for something to stand out more than a yellow label, purple could be the way to go. As a complimentary color to yellow, purple really pops off of the packaging while seeming a pleasant fit to the customer’s eyes.
Just as it’s important to use the right colors for your label, it’s also vital to use the space that your glass packaging provides to the utmost advantage. This is especially true if you’re using colored packaging as opposed to clear.
Be as economical with your required information as possible so that the value propositions you decide to feature can be big and bold. However, don’t go so big that your product is unrecognizable. Choose a label that fits your product’s packaging, but does not dominate it.
Accessories for Honey Jar Glass Packaging
Accessories provide the finishing touch to complement not only your label but your entire packaging. This could be as vital to the packaging as its closure, or something like a wooden honey dipper. You may even decide to add a label on the closure.
Either way, these pieces of your packaging tie together the overall experience and provide various ways to impress your customers with creative choices. Glassnow offers a few finishing touches to address just that.
| Image | Product Type | Use |
|---|---|---|
 | Corks | A quick & easy method of sealing your product. |
 | Screw Caps | Controlled means of product closure. |
 | Wooden Spoons | Provide easier serving to your customers. |
 | Heat Bands | A tamper-evident solution to product safety. |
We’re confident that by utilizing the above methods, you’ll soon have a honey label that’s as sweet as your product. Paired with the fine honey packaging that we offer on Glassnow.com, your products will produce smiles in no time!
