How to Design Address Labels

Businesses, organizations, schools and individuals often want to design address labels to affix to correspondence. The reasons for address labels are multiple: first, address labels save time. Second, time is money – so address labels save money. Finally, address labels can help brand a business or add prestige to organization, school and individual mailings. The following explains what you need to know to design address labels that are as impressive in form as they are useful in function.

Start with a template

Whether you want to design address labels from scratch in Photoshop (or another design program) or you want to simply customize an existing address label design, you should start with a template. A quick online search will yield hundreds, if not thousands, of pre-designed address label templates that you can customize with your own name and address. Some are available for free and others are paid – just make sure you can download them in a high resolution (at least 300 dpi) or you risk a grainy print job. If you're going to go it alone and design your own custom address labels, you can get free address label layout templates in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. You can even create your own unique shape and have it die cut – PsPrint will make a template for you to use for your design. The major advantage to downloading free address label templates is that they're already set up for the press with safe areas, bleed lines, cut lines, and the correct color mode and resolution. This saves a lot of time and lets you dig right into the fun part – your custom design!

Name and address

Obviously, you need to include your name and address in your address label design. You can add flair to your name and address by using fonts that match your brand or personality style, so long as it is still easy to read. The last thing you want is a bunch of return to senders because your font isn't readable. The most readable font types are Times New Roman and Arial, but many address labels use Calibri or calligraphic fonts. Again, as long as your font matches your style and is easy to read, it will suffice – and can even help your correspondence stand out.

Logo or photo

If you're a company or organization, your logo should grace your address labels. You could position it above, below or to the side of your name and address. You might also want to include your URL alongside your logo. If you're an individual making personal address labels, you can include your photo or a symbol of you in lieu of a logo.

Backgrounds and borders

Your address label design can make liberal use of creative backgrounds and borders, ranging from simple shaded background color fill and single line borders to wacky animal print backgrounds and wavy, zig-zagging borders. Just make sure your label text is still easy to read against your background.