Labels, Product Decals & Stickers

The substrate decides how long a label lasts. Waterproof PP vinyl is the standard for beverage bottles, cosmetics, and anything that will be refrigerated, submerged, or handled wet. It is a synthetic film, so it does not go fibrous the way paper does. Holographic and mirror chrome materials are for security seals and short-run editions, where the metal reflecting through the printed ink makes the label hard to copy.

Match the adhesive to the container, not the artwork. High-tack permanent backing bonds to glass, rigid plastic, and cardboard. If the label has to come off cleanly later, that is a different adhesive, and it needs to be said at quote time.

Kiss-cut and die-cut are not the same thing. Kiss-cut means the blade cuts through the label and stops at the backing, which is how stickers arrive on a roll or a sheet. Die-cut means the label is cut out of the sheet entirely, an individual cutout with no surround.

Roll labels are built for machine application, and the wind direction matters if a bottling line is doing the applying. Sheet labels are for hand application and for jobs with several variants on one run. Individual cutouts suit giveaways, envelope seals, and hand-applied decals.

Roll stock is slit to the width of the label, printed, laminated where the spec calls for it, and rewound. Sheet work prints flat, then kiss-cuts in a separate pass.

The prepress check covers two things on labels: that the artwork is in CMYK, and that white ink is set up correctly. On transparent and chrome stocks, white is a separate ink layer that has to be specified in the file. We catch that in the review before plating.