Designing product labels on a Mac: jars, candles, soap and coffee bags

Before you design anything, decide what the label will be printed on, because it decides the design. A 4x6 thermal printer can make perfectly good product labels, but only in black, on paper that dislikes heat and sunlight. An inkjet or laser on sticker sheets gives you color and durability, at the cost of trimming or buying sheet labels in the right size. Many small makers end up using both: thermal for dated and short-lived labels, a print shop or an inkjet for the main product label.

Thermal or not: what each is good for

• Direct thermal (Rollo, MUNBYN, Zebra and most 4x6 shipping printers): no ink, crisp black, very cheap per label. But the paper darkens with heat, fades with light and over months, and can smudge with oils. Good for coffee bags, bakery boxes, jam with a best-before date, ingredient stickers, batch labels. Poor for a candle jar or anything that sits in a sunny window. More on that in why thermal labels fade.
• Inkjet or laser on sticker paper: color, and longer-lasting with the right stock (look for waterproof or oil-resistant labels for soap and cosmetics). You print sheets and either buy pre-cut labels or cut them yourself.
• Printed by a label printer service: the most durable and best-looking, with a minimum order. Worth it once a design is settled.

The free way: Pages, Word or Avery

For sheet labels on an inkjet or laser, the tools you already have are enough. Buy labels with an Avery product number (or a compatible one), open the matching template in Pages or Word, or use Avery Design & Print Online, which is free and lays the design out across the whole sheet for you. Design one label, repeat it, and print a test sheet on plain paper first to check alignment before you use the label stock.

On a thermal roll, the same apps can work, but you set up a custom paper size matching your label, set margins to zero and print at 100%. Our 4x6 printing guide covers the print dialog side; the same steps apply to a 50 × 30 mm roll with different numbers.

Designing product labels in LabelPrint

If you print on a thermal roll, or you want dates and batch numbers filled in for you, the designer in LabelPrint works in label sizes from the start. Its 48 templates include, under Product and Food: jar, spice jar, cosmetic jar, honey jar, wine bottle, soap bar, candle, coffee bag, ingredients, best-before, allergen warning and an organic product label. Each is an ordinary design you can change completely.

Built-in sizes include 50 × 30 mm product labels, a 50 mm round sticker, a 100 × 100 mm square and 4x6. If your roll is something else, a custom size in millimeters or inches needs Unlimited.

Designing for a thermal head

A thermal printer makes a dot black or leaves it white. There is no gray. Designs made for a color printer often print badly for that reason alone, so:

• Use patterns instead of gray. A light-gray background turns into a speckled mess or vanishes. In LabelPrint, shapes can be filled with stripes, dots, crosshatch, chevron or a checker pattern in solid black, which prints the way it looks on screen.
• Convert your logo deliberately. Imported images are turned into pure black and white with a threshold you adjust. Slide it until thin parts of the logo survive without the background filling in, and crop the image to the logo itself.
• Keep small text bold enough. At 203 dpi, very thin fonts lose strokes at small sizes. Ingredient lists are where this shows; test a print at the size you intend before committing.
• Leave a margin. Labels drift slightly on a roll. Keep text and borders a couple of millimeters in from the edge, so a small shift does not clip them.
• Make lines thick enough to see. Hairline borders print inconsistently. Dashed and dotted strokes are available if a solid border looks heavy.

Best-before dates and batch numbers

Two things change on a product label from one run to the next, and typing them by hand is where mistakes get in.

Dates: type {{date}} in a text element, for example Best before {{date}}, and set how many days ahead it should be. It fills in when you print, so a 14-day setting on a label printed today shows the date two weeks from today. Formats include MM/dd/yyyy, yyyy-MM-dd, dd/MM/yyyy and a written-out month such as 3 Nov 2026. Because the date comes from the day you print, print on the day you pack.

Batch numbers: {{serial}} gives each label a running number, with leading zeros if you want them. Combine the two, as in Lot {{serial}} next to a packed-on date, and every jar carries its batch. Numbered labels covers series printing in detail.

Barcodes on product labels

If you sell through shops, the retailer will want an EAN or UPC barcode with a number issued by GS1. If you only sell online or at markets, you probably do not need one at all, and a Code 128 of your own SKU is enough for stock-keeping. The differences, and how to print them so they scan, are in barcode labels on a Mac.

What is free and what is not

Designing and printing labels with text, shapes, symbols and drawings is free, up to five labels a day. A label with an image (such as your logo), a barcode or a QR code needs Unlimited to print, as do custom sizes, CSV batches and PDF export. Pricing is here. For a few jars of jam a week, the free tier and a text logo may well be all you need.

One thing this guide does not cover

What your label is legally required to say. Food, cosmetics and candles each have labeling rules (ingredients, allergens, net quantity, warnings, the maker's address) that differ by country and sometimes by state. Check the rules where you sell before you print a thousand labels, because the templates are a starting point for the layout, not for compliance.