Cultivate Creative Independence: Design Your Own Labels in Procreate

1. Introduction: You a creative who likes to do as much as you can by yourself when it comes to your business? You came to the right place. I'm Ami, a graphic designer, illustrator, and visual artist. After a few years working as an employee, I decided it was time to do my own thing. During my years working as an in house graphic designer, one of the areas I was lucky enough to touch upon is packaging, and that's what we'll be talking about today. The main goal of this class is to give creatives without a graphic design background the means to create their own product labels. Plus, I'm giving the class an unexpected twist for even more accessibility. We are going to use Procreate on the iPad. I'm so excited to teach this class because I'm a big believer in creative independence. As you may well know, procreate isn't made for graphic design, but it doesn't mean you can't use it for that purpose. Many creatives already use the app for drawing and painting, and by learning the basics, which you can apply in any other software anyway, you will be able to create custom labels for your products. I suggest taking this class if you are a creative who likes to do things your own way. Apart from the app, you will need your iPod and a home printer, scrap paper for test, full sheet, sticker paper, a safety knife, a metal ruler, if you have one and a cutting mat. The class project is in two parts. First, I suggest you follow along as I work on a label for a scented kindle, and then you can go ahead and test what you have learned on your own with a second brief crafted just for you. To get there, we'll first learn about the purposes of packaging. Then we are going to build our label in steps from the label Skeleton to building our layout with type two adding details. Along the way, I'll show you some print design basics, a few typography fundamentals, as well as the specific procreate tools that will help us design at the right size. We end up the class by testing our design and then printing a batch. So if you're ready, let's dive right in. 2. Your Project: Your project for this class is in two parts. First, you can follow along as we create a label for a watermelon scented candle together. Starting from a made up client brief crafted just for you by your Strui. We will design the label from scratch using Procreate. We start by deciding how big our label is going to be and where to place it on the candle, then I'll take you for a quick toor of the procreate tools that are useful to us for this specific project. Next is the part where we create the skeleton of our label in Procreate. Then we'll talk about information hierarchy, and we will continue with placing type to create our layout. After the basic layout is done, we'll add details and graphic elements to make it fun. We end the project by testing or design, making adjustments if needed, and then printing a whole batch. It's a whole journey, but I've carefully prepared every step so it would be easy to follow. I can hear you telling me that you don't have the candle with you to test out your label once it's printed. I know. Let's look at a few containers that you probably have lying around the house and that you can test it on. I found these two containers and they're about the same circumference as my kindle, as you can see. The only downside of the eagle brangar is that it doesn't have a separation between the top and the bottom. However, the roundness is the same. The only thing you can't test is the height of the label. The little ental soup jar is quite similar, and I'm sure most households have that laying around somewhere. For the rest, I invite you to use your imagination. Even just designing the label is where the learning is happening. The principles will be transferable to any other product label you design. Once you have completed, the follow along project comes the second part. In the class handbook, I've prepared a second client brief for a strawberry jam jar this time. You can now design the label for this product without me to test out what you learned. You could also work on your own product. Another great way to assimilate your new skills. For the class, you will need your iPad and a home printer, the procreate app, scrap paper for tests, full sheets, ticker paper, if you can, or good printing paper with glue or double sided tape, a safety knife, a metal ruler, if you have one, and a cutting mat. That's it. If I were you, I would go to the projects and resources tab right under this video to download the class handbook. This is where you will find the info to follow along. I'm super happy you're here with me to learn something new, and I'll see you in the next lesson, where we're going to talk about packaging, label design, and the importance of creative independence. See you, so. 3. Packaging, Label Design and the Importance of Creative Independence: Hey, folks, welcome to my new label design class. I'm so glad you're here, ready to add a few tools in your toolbox. Before we dive into the thick of it all, I'd like to talk a little about packaging, label design, and why I thought it would be a good subject to teach. When we think about it, I imagine that our first reflex is to think about packaging as protection for a product, yes, it's part of its use when we talk about outer packaging, of course. But there is so much more to it. Packaging is like the silent salesperson on your products shelf. It's a first impression. It's a way of communicating your brands identity and a crucial part of the customer experience. In other words, a product's packaging is like an ambassador of this brand. And label design. Where does it fit into this? Well, I'd say you can think of a label as the face of your product. It's a part of packaging because it wraps a product like clothing. It definitely isn't there for protection when you think about it. But it's often used to share the essentials, like ingredients or care instructions or legal information. But it's also a canvas for your creativity, isn't it? It's a chance to tell your brand story and connect with your customer on a personal level, and once they connect with your product, who knows? They might buy it. All in all, Packaging has a functional use, safe for protecting your product and informing the customer, but it also has a marketing use, such as communicating your brands identity or being aesthetically appealing to your ideal customer, so they connect with the product in order to buy it. One of the biggest reasons I'm passionate about teaching this is the freedom and independence it gives you as a creative. As small creative business owners, we are used to do pretty much everything by ourselves. In my humble opinion, being able to wrap your products according to your own standards, your own philosophy, and your own style is a beautiful, beautiful thing. It puts you in complete control of your products presentation. No, I don't believe it's bad to delegate when you need help. That's not it at all. But sometimes you might need to do things at a small scale for a special event, for example, or you might need to cut down costs, and it sure will come in handy to be able to do those things by yourself. It's like having a superpower. Here's another reason why I think this class is worth it. It's fun. You may know that I'm a graphic designer, and for a few years, I worked in house for an art materials company. We did a lot of packaging. We did the kind of packaging that needed to have seven languages on it, and let me tell you. It was a challenge getting all of the info in there without compromising the look. From tiny paint tubes with a mountain of information to fitting everything on a very small label. I've learned to think creatively and find solutions. Here's how I see it. Designing packaging is like solving a puzzle. It's about thinking in three dimensions, considering the shape of your product, the size of your label, and how everything fits together. It's a skill that's not just useful for packaging, but for problem solving in general. You have a last minute presenter wrap? Great. There you go. You can make it original with those cool skills of yours. Here's an example of something I did for a fan. This friend of mine is a jewelry designer and maker, and her necklaces are very delicate and high end, and she wanted to bring them to an event to sell them. Very last minute, she needed something to present the necklaces to the customers. She asked me if I had any ideas. Did I? Here's what I did. I developed a dieline and since she only needed a small quantity, we ended up printing the thing that holds a necklace. I actually don't know what it's called on watercolor paper because that type of paper holds itself together pretty nicely in addition to being classy and we cut them with safety knives and metal rulers. The result is fun, It's classy, and it's exactly what my friend needed in this precise case. To sum things up. Yes, packaging protects a product, but it's also what communicates the personality of a brand at first sight. Label design is a part of packaging and it's a way to inform the customer while conveying the vibe and the values of the company behind said product. Also, I think it's an important skill to develop as a creative business owner, because it gives you creative independence and also because it's fun. Remember that this class is meant to help you upgrade your product packaging with tools that you most probably have at home. We are aiming for small productions that you would prefer not to send printing at the print shop. This being said, we are now ready to jump right into designing a label that fits a specific object. See assume. 4. Designing With a Specific Object in Mind: Hello, and welcome back. In this lesson, we'll be looking at label placement and sizing. We are going to learn how to decide how big your label should be and where to place it. It might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but don't worry. We're going to break it down. The object I'm working on today is this cute candle right here. If it's your first time doing this kind of thing, I certainly hope you're following along with me. If you feel confident enough to work on your object or if you're coming back to this class to do the strawberry jam project, that's awesome. You can follow the same steps and adapt it to what you're working on. Now, first thing I'd like to mention is that designing for yourself is completely different from designing for a client. When it's your own product, you're the boss. You make all the calls. But if you're working with a client, there's a brief to follow and that comes with its sound set of challenges. Keep that in mind. The first thing I'm going to do is look at how much info I'll need to place on that label in order to get an idea of the kind of space I need. When beginning a project, you should look closely at the client brief and pay close attention to the demands. I also suggest crafting a brief if you are working for yourself, by the way, as it helps you figure out the info and getting clear on what's important for a specific project. So Let's look at what's important here. The name of the candle is Watermelon Fountain, and it is for a company called Clebery Lane. They specialize in fruit scented candles and their products are handmade. They really want to show their fresh minimalist vibe on the label. In terms of the info that the client wants, there isn't much, so that means that we will have many placement options and the label will be able to breed. They even put the colors in the brief. The last thing they mentioned is that they want their logo, but not as the most prominent info. The process will be the same if you're working on your own object or if you're doing the strawberry jam brief. All right. Let's get started on figuring out where your label is going to exist on the object you're working on. First, things first. Take a good look at your product. What shape is it? Is it round, square or something more interesting? Are there any curves or bumps to consider? For my kindle here specifically, one thing to keep in mind is that since it's a circular shape, well, a cylinder actually, we have to be mindful of where the information stops being visible. What I mean is, since we have a round surface here, when looking at it from the front, the sides are receding in space. If there is a long line of text, this receding in space will make it hard to read the whole sentence without turning the candle around. It might seem like a detail, but this is an ideal for readability. We want the person reading to be able to understand at a glance. I will probably need to make sections of information to keep optimal readability. Here's a tip. Measure the maximum length the information blocks can have before losing readability and steer clear of that awkward space where you're not sure you can see the info anymore. Your label can go beyond that without problem. It could make the whole circumference, it's okay, but you will need to think in sections to keep everything readable. Next, think about the surface. Where can you actually put your label? Is it just one side, or can you use multiple surfaces? Should you split the information on more than one label? It sure is easier when knowing exactly what needs to go on the label. It helps determine where you place the label and how big it's going to be. Don't forget that you can be creative. You're allowed to think about how you want the product to look on a shelf. Do you want it to stand out or blend in? Maybe you want to create a specific visual effect when there's a bunch of the same product side by side or stacked on a shelf. You can give your label a special shape if you like. But keep in mind that if you're printing and cutting it yourself, which is what we're doing in this class, it will be more complicated to cut a batch unless you have a laser cutter or something of that kind. With my candle here, I'll do one long rectangle label. This will be enough for all the info and also to get creative a little. Since the candle is a cylinder. I don't have to ask myself on which side the label will be because it's basically just one continuous surface, so that's that. I could do a label for the top. It would work on the surface, and I could add more information on there, but I'll keep this for a special future project. Maybe a future mini class, why not? I have more than enough space for all of my information on just a front label. Now that I have a good idea of where I want to place the label, it's time for the very technical stuff, meaning deciding on the actual size by measuring everything right. Here's how I do it. For the height, I can use any kind of ruler and it should work just like measuring anything else. For the length. It's a little more complicated because I'm measuring a cylinder. I like using a soft measuring tape, the kind I also use to sew. It helps me follow the shape to get it right. If you don't have a soft measuring tape, don't worry. There's a very easy work around that you can use to get the right result. You can use a piece of paper. Wrap it around while making sure it's up right and mark where it should begin and end. I like to do this step anyway because I like to have a physical example of the thing I'm working on in general. By doing this, you are trying it out in real life. If all else fails, you can also rule your ruler around your object. This method is sketchier, but like I said, if all else fails, it will at least give you an approximation of the measures you need. But for now, let's just use the soft measuring tape. I have to decide how much space I leave around the label. Do I want the customer to see the color of the candle? How much is the question? But here, since we will be able to see the product at the back where there's no label, I prefer giving myself a bit more space for the design. Another thing to keep in mind is the material on which you're going to print this. When printing at home, you might be limited on the size of the label. I already know I'm going to print on a full size sticker sheet, a letter sized one that I'm going to cut at the right size. My design can't be larger than the size of the paper, but it's not really a problem here. We also have to take the bleed and crop marks into consideration. If I lost you there, don't worry. We'll talk about these two things later. Now, let's measure for real. From what I see here, I'll make my label 2 " high and 4 " long. The maximum length for a text block should be about 2 " long more or less. Don't forget that these measurements can always change later. You want to have the closest measures that you can before changing these parameters drastically will strongly affect your design. But changing for say an eight of an inch won't do. Here's a recap of what we did in this lesson. We pay close attention to the brief in order to know how much text and elements have to be included. We decided of the placement and size of our label by observing the object we are working on to evaluate the shape and the available surface, and then we measure the space where we're going to put the label and decided on a tentative size for the design. With all of this in mind, let's jump to procreate and see how we can achieve our mission with this wonderful app. See you there. 5. Procreate: A Brief Introduction: Hi, folks. Welcome back. I'm so glad you're still here. In this lesson, we're diving into procreate, one of my favorite apps in the whole world. As you may know, procreate isn't typically a go to for graphic design for many reasons. First, there's no vector support, and the tools and options for professional graphic design simply aren't there because this is not the intention behind the app, but hear me out. As artists and small business owners, I think we gain from thinking creatively and trying new ways of achieving our daily tasks. Plus, I'm thinking accessibility here, and I'm thinking about using an app that is already popular within the artistic business community. I believe procreate can definitely help us create simple, effective packaging if we know how to use it for this specific purpose. Always for small batches and home production, of course. You probably already know how to use procreate for digital painting. But today, I'm going to show you how you can use some of the apps tools for graphic design while incorporating digital painting or drawing in there. Plus, the principles we'll cover here can be applied to any design software, whether it's illustrator, affinity designer, or something else entirely. I want to be upfront. This isn't AD dive into Procreate. It's more like a quick tour of the tools we'll be using. If you're already a procreate pro, feel free to speed through this part. But for those who are less familiar with the app or only know how to use it traditionally, let's get started. The first thing you see when you open procreate is the gallery. This is where all of your artwork is stored. The first thing we need to know is how to create a custom document. To do that, you see right at the top to the right, there is this little plus sign right here. Tap the plus sign. You have all of these templates here, but what we need to do is a custom canvas, and this is right here. You tap this little plus thingy there. This is where you get to customize your canvas. For now, the size of our canvas does not really matter. Let's just do an eight by ten canvas at 300 DPI. Let's do a quick tour of what we are going to need in the tool bars at the top. The first one is the actions, right here, the little wrench. In this menu, I suggest you pay close attention to the ad tab right here. There's a few of the items that will be useful to us to create the label later on. First, the ad file tab. Adding a file, lets you import a compatible document into your Canvas. It can be a JPEG, PNG file, a TIF TIFF file. We are going to need this option later on to import the company logo to the artwork. Another one of these menus items that's going to be essential for us to know is the add text item. Needless to say, there's going to be written information to include to our label, and this is where you go to include text in a document. To access the text options, first, select the text. While there's a quick menu that appears right over your text when it's selected, I prefer having the full menu to work with. To find this menu, look for the little A's right here. This is where all of the options to format the text will appear. The typeface, the alignment, kerning, all of it is right here. They might appear at different places in your screen according to where you start from, but the trick is to look for the AA icon. If we go back to the actions menu, there are a few other items we are going to use later on for the project. Amongst others, we are going to use the crop and resize item. This is where you go if you need to resize your Canvas after the work is started. We are now getting to the item I really want to show you because this is the one that makes all the difference. Here comes drawing guide. Let's tuggle this switch on. Most people use it to help with perspective or to draw in symmetry. But today, I'm showing you a completely different use. We are going to use the drawing guide to build the skeleton of our label, and we are going to use it as rulers to get a sense of size. Are no rulers in procreate, and this is one of the tools that are essential to print design. With creativity, we can use drawing guides to replace rulers. In the next lesson, we'll really get in there and set up all of the options that we need. But for now, just remember that drawing guides are here. In the actions menu under the Canvas tab, you can also access the Canvas information at the bottom completely. In this section, you will find the dimensions of the Canvas, the number of layers you have available to you, but mostly the color profile information. If you need to change the color profile on your Canvas after you have started working on it, you can do it here. The last step of the actions menu that I'd like you to notice is the share button. This is where you are going to go when you are ready to print your project. Right next to the actions menu is the adjustment menu. I'm not going to use it today, but it's good to know that it's there. Same for the selection and the transform tool. These you should really experiment with. I'm not getting into the tools at the right, since they are the very basics of the app. If you need to get familiar with them, the Procreate website has a really complete handbook for their users. If you want to learn more, I recommend you check it out. As mentioned before, you should really have a working knowledge of Procreate for the project, and I just wanted to give special attention to the less known tools that can be used to design the label. This concludes our quick tour around Procreate. Hope you enjoyed it. Here's a reminder of what we did in the lesson. We had a quick tour of the Procreate app with specific attention given to the tools that will help us design. Amongst them, we looked at how to add a file or some text, how to add drawing guides. We also navigated the Canvas information and saw how to export our artwork. If you have questions, please feel free to reach out. I'll do my best to answer any interrogation you may have or find reference to help you in your journey. Meet me in the next lesson to continue this adventure. Oh. 6. Some Print Design Basics: Hey, team. Welcome back to this label design class. In this lesson, I want to show you what it looks like when you have a document ready to send to a print shop. We'll look at the elements it should include, so when we'll go to procreate, you'll have a better understanding of what our skeleton, as I like to call it has to include. Come to the screen with me, and let's have a look. Here is a document that I designed for one of my clients. It's a simple double sided gift certificate. The document is pretty standard in itself. The first page is at the top and the reverse side is at the bottom. But what I really want to show you here are the crop marks. You can see them in every corner of the document. They are used to indicate where the edge of the document is, or if you prefer, where the design will be cut where it ends. Another use that they have is to make sure both sides of the document are aligned when printed. Most graphic design softwares can generate crap marks automatically according to the size of the document you're working on. But sometimes you do need to place them yourself. This will be our case today. And the reason we don't just trace a black rectangle and call it a day is precision. When cutting, if you are not 100% perfect with a rectangle, you'll get a black edge around the artwork, which we really don't want. Cutting marks are more forgiving. They are there to align the cutting machine or your ruler and safety knife in today's case and make sure the result is clean. Now let's talk about bleed. When an image or a shape touches the side of the artwork, like you can see right here, we need to include something called bleed. Bleed, as its name indicates, bleeds outside or extends beyond the artwork. We put this there in this way because sometimes when the design is cut, life happens and the cut may not be exactly where you think it will be. Most of the time, it's because the cutting machine shifts a little for some reason, but whatever the reason when you have bleed. You are making sure that you won't get a wide space when this happens. Note that the standard size is an eight of an inch or 1.125, if you prefer. It's about 3 millimeters in the matrix system. Now, let's look at this little business card project that I design, and that is printed on a home printer. It's a little different. You can notice that I've already lined up 12 cards on one cardboard. This is called imposition. Print shops do this by themselves usually, but when you're printing at home, you can do it yourself to save some paper and use as much of the printing surface as you can. There is one thing that's not ideal in this situation here, and it's the absence of bleed. As you can see, my crop marks are aligned with the end of the design. I chose to do this to save on paper space because I know that I will be cutting these myself with a safety knife, but I would never, ever in 1 million years, send this to a printer. I don't think they would be very happy about it. Now, in both of these designs, there is something that we don't see and it's a security margin. For the same reasons that we need plead. It's also good practice to keep a security margin on the inside of our document, and in this space, you won't put any important information. It's okay to put graphic elements in there if you intend to have them cut, maybe not text or the logo of the company if you can help it. You would risk it being cut and we don't want that. I recommend a minimum of an eight of an inch for security margin, but you can judge according to your document, the precision of your printer and the precision of your cutting. Wow. That's a lot of information. It may seem complicated at first, but once you put it into practice, you'll see most of these things are only logical. Also, the reason I like to do my technical setup before everything else is that I find it easier to design with all the technical stuff already taken care of. So many decisions will depend on that. I prefer setting up my space in the beginning. It's much easier to think about it now because if the technical specs change too much, you'll have to redesign. So I do it now, and then I have fun being creative. Here's what we covered in this lesson. We have looked at the essential elements of a printed document such as lead, crop marks, security margin, and imposition. Let's jump to procreate. 7. Setting Up Your Document in Procreate: Hello, and welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to be using Procreate to set up the structure of our label. We are going to go back to the gallery to create our real new document. As mentioned earlier, I'm going to go on the plus tab here, and I'm going to create a new Canvas, from a template. So a new one. Today, we'll be working in inches. Here's a random fact for you. I live in Canada, and even though the metric system has been officially adopted for most purposes for years, and it's the only one we learn in schools. The imperial system is deeply ingrained in our cultural and commercial landscape. Also, many international design standards and software are still based on imperial units. This means that designers need to be proficient in both systems to work effectively with global clients and industry standards. When I was working for the arts materials company, we measured in millimeters because the home office was in France. The truth is it doesn't change anything while we are designing. The real difference is when it comes to printing. The standard paper sizes are not the same in the US and in Europe, for example, either way. I think it's essential for graphic designers in Canada to be comfortable with both imperial and metrix units. And personally, I think knowing two things is better than knowing just one. So long story short we'll be working with the imperial system for today, but don't let that stop you if you prefer working with the metrix system. Just know that your blade side should be about 3 millimeters and your security margin at least that two. For the size of the canvas, I have my label size in mind, which is 4 " long by 2 " high. But I want to have a lot of white space around it so I can sketch and do some tests. I'll go for eight or maybe ten by five. I'll go ten by five. It's really important that you keep the DPI to 300 here because it's the standard for print design. I'm not going to get into too much of that. But if you are printing at a professional printer, you really, really need to have at least 300 DPI here. It's also better when printing at home. Sometimes in some cases, you might only need 150 DPI, but it's rare. These are really exceptions, I really recommend always designing at least 300 DPI. You can go bigger if you want, but If you go at 300 DPI, with your right size, you know that your label is going to be exactly how you want it size wise. Let's go to the color profile. Let's make it short. RGB means red, green, and blue. It's the color system used for screens like computer screens, TVs, and phones. This system is light based, and the more light you add, the brighter and closer to white it becomes. CMYK means cyan, magenta, yellow and black. This color system is used for print design, and it is based in matter or pigment, if you prefer. The more colors you add, the darker they become. Watch me as I add color through these RGB sliders. The result gets paler and paler until it reaches white. On the contrary, here I'm playing with markers, and you can directly observe that as I layer the colors on top of one another, the result gets darker and darker. It is, in fact, way more complicated than that, but here's what you should remember. In the real world, when you send a document to a printer, the traditional color profile used is CMYK. Because they are dealing with ink, which is matter. The standard for printing is the CMYK system. When you send something to a printer, you usually need to convert to CMYK. However, today will be working in RGB. The reason it's pretty simple. Home printers usually deal pretty well with RGB. Plus, since we're just starting and testing things out, working in RGB keeps things simpler. Don't worry. If you'd like to take your designs to a professional printer, you can always convert them to CMYK later. But the design we're working on today should really be printed on a home printer. And then the Canvas properties. Just so you know today since we are going to print this on white paper, it's okay to have the background color set to white, but you could also put a background color if you wanted this to be yellow, so you wouldn't have to do a layer with your background color. But we don't really have to do that. Also just so you know, if you were going to print on a transparent material, you could hide your background and make it transparent. And now you can create your document. Once our document is created, as you can see, there's no ruler, no guide whatsoever. So let's do something about that. In the actions menu, little ranch over here, right there. You are going to go to the drawing guide and put them on so you tuggle this little thing in here. And then you have to go to edit drawing guide. Pixels will be of no use to us because we are working on an artwork that will be printed. The first thing I'm going to change is the grid size. Right here, I'll go to inches. I like to use an eighth of an inch as a unit because it's the smallest unit that will be useful to me. As I mentioned earlier, the standard side for bleed is this size, one eighth of an inch, and I find it very useful to have this as my basic unit. From there, I can also easily measure inches, half inches and quarter of inches. Let's click done. Also, you can adjust the opacity. And the thickness of your grid. This seems about right to me, but it's really a question of personal preference right there. And click down. And now you have everything you need to build the skeleton of the artwork. All right on a first layer, I'm going to measure the size of my label, and I'm doing this to give myself a reference. As I said, 1 " is eight of these, so I'll measure it. This is an inch. We said 2 " high, so twice that. As you can see, it's a little tedious, but I find it's worth it because the app is so accessible. It's worth having to go through this little process here. We need 4 " in length. This is my light. I could have just created these two and duplicate them and put them there to have my second set of guides. But it doesn't matter. I want to create a line. If you didn't know, that's very useful for what we're doing here. If you trace a line and just hold it, it will make a straight line for you. This is called quick shape, and it also works with squares, rectangles. It also works with circles. Yeah, just a little trick for you there. There you go. This is the size of my label. 2 " high by 4 " in length. Apparently, I drew the rest of my label on another layer. If it happens to you. No big deal. What I want is all of this on the same layer, so I'm just going to tap here, and then I'm going to merge down. It's going to merge with the layer right under. There we go. I'm going to rename this because I like to be organized in my layers. I'm going to name this label. Now, what I want to do is another layer because remember, the goal is to have the same thing as we would have in a professional graphic design software. We want the crop marks, we want the bleed, we want the safety margin. We want all of that. What I'm going to do next is create another layer for the crop marks. I'm going to go with a black because I want to see them well. Now I'm going to trace my crop marks. This is why I made my guide. From my rectangle, I know that this is the size that I need and I'm going to offset my marks a little so that when I cut them, I don't see anything and trace as precisely as I can my crop marks. I really really try to be on my guide to make sure my crop marks don't touch my design. I'm going to draw them a little outside of my bleed. Remember, we said bleed was one eighth of an inch, this unit here, meaning my crop marks will be a little outside of this. They don't have to be really long, just enough for you to see them when you're going to cut your design. This one is touching upon the bleed. I'm going to erase it at. And now we are going to do this on all four corners. As you can see, quick shape is really coming in handy in this part, because if I was not using quick shape, it would be all wobbly like this. Well, this one is good, but Quick shape. Make sure everything is straight. The reason I want my crop marks on a separate layer is that when I'm going to design, maybe I want them off. Maybe I don't want to see them. It's really good practice to put different elements on different layers. You can separate your artwork logically this way, and it will help you in many situations. Now that we have the crop marks, I strongly suggest tracing on another layer, your security margin. If I did not mention it, it's really really good practice to name your layers in any app or software that you use. Because when you come back to it, then you don't have to search for what you're looking for. If I named my layers, it will be so much easier to find my security margin if I need to make adjustment to it than if I did not name my layers. As I said, security margin should be at an eight of an inch, same as the bleed. That's what I'm going to trace right here. But not in black, not in gray, I'm going to be using say, sien like this because I want to see it, but I want to know that it's different from the edge of the artwork. I find it a little bold. What I'm going to do is adjust the opacity. Say 50% would be good, I think. Yeah, like this. Perfect. What I will also do is trace myself a center guide. Well center guides. On vertical, one horizontal. This will help me balance everything. My center is right here. I'm also going to do another layer. I'm just going to name this one guides because I might want to add more guides when I'm designing. The last thing I'm going to do on my label skeleton is grouping all of these. To group, I need to select the first layer I want to group, and then I s right to select all of the layers I want to put in a group, and then I tap group here. This is the skeleton. You can name it whatever you want. I'm naming this skeleton. I know what it means for me. I put this in a group, and now I'm going to center everything because it might help me later when I'm designing to have everything snapping to the middle. As you can see, it just snapped here in the middle. That's good. Now I want to make it snap horizontally too. If you can see it, we have snapping here on the horizontal and at the vertical. This means everything is centered. Perfect. There you go. We have our skeleton. Good. Our document is set up and we are ready to go. I know that this lesson was quite technical. Actually, it's the most technical in all of the present class, but bear with me. When you master the technical side of things, this is the moment your creativity will be able to shine. It's comparable to a painter mastering the medium. The more you master your pigments, your brushes, and your techniques, the more creative and successful you can be. As a re, here's what we've covered in this lesson. We have set up the skeleton of our label artwork in Procreate, taking care of the technical aspect of things in order to help us get creative later on. In the next lesson, we are going to look at information hierarchy. See you there. 8. Information Hierarchy: Welcome back. In this lesson, we are going to look at the brief in the class handbook to establish information hierarchy, because it will directly inform the layout of the label. Basically, hierarchy is about deciding what information is the most important and making sure it stands out. It's important because you want your customer to find the information your product has to offer quickly. If they connect with the product, they will take a closer look and read the rest. If they can see what they're looking for, chances are they will move on to the next product quickly enough. We see information hierarchy every day without really noticing. You can think of a magazine cover, for example, the cover story or the biggest journalistic file will be bigger. You should see the title or the cover photo before the rest. Sometimes the name of the magazine is more evident, though. These elements should stand out. If the title of the cover story is the first thing you read when you look at the cover, it's a job well done. Another example would be a movie poster. Most of the time, the main character's face is huge and in the middle with the other characters behind or in the background right. That's hierarchy in action. We want people to see that first and then everything else. This way, you are guiding the viewer's eyes through your design. Once you know what information is most important, it's time to make it stand out. We have a few tricks up our sleeves for this. The most obvious one is size. Yes, bigger elements usually have more importance. However, I'd like to point out that bigger is not always better. Sometimes what you will need is white space. White space around a graphic element will also make it prominent. Placement, color, and contrast are also important. These are only a few, but it's a good start. Now, let's look at our brief and see what should stand out in it. I have the client brief, right here. This is the class handbook. On page two, you have the brief for the label design for A Kendall Company. This part right here is the information that we need to include along with the logo of the company, and the colors that the client AK A M asked for. We're not talking about color right here, but we are looking at the info, and we are deciding what needs to stand out. All right. So here we have the name of the candle, watermelon Fountain. It's a handmade soil walk skdle. We have the volume here, the time it takes to burn. We have a little warning, caution burn within site and the website, which is not a real website. Don't try to go in there. It's just a website.com. We have a choice of the two logos. We don't have to decide which one we are going to use here because it depends on the layout of the label. What we need to do is decide which one of these information needs to be put up front. This one is an easy one. I think it's quite obvious that the name of the candle is very important. Wow, that's a big marker. Anyway, this is very, very important. Of course, we are going to need to know m the name of the company that does the candle. But it's not what I want to show first. I really want people to know the name of the candle because this will tell them the scent, which is watermelon and it will give them the whole vibe of the thing. I'm not even sure the logo of the company will be on the front of the label. Yeah. My most important information is the name of the candle. Then what can be very small This we need to see, but it doesn't have to be this big unless it's like a real selling point. If the client asks you to do something with this, like, Yeah, this is our big sale argument, then you are going to do something with it. But today, no, today we want just the name of the candle. This is probably this is going to come second. This one here, because it's an argument. It's soy based, so I don't think it's organic, but it's natural and this is going to be very small and we need to see this well. The website. I'm thinking we probably will have a section with this and a section with the company logo, and website, maybe. Maybe the website will be with the name. We'll see. But the most important part is the name. Quite simple after all, don't you think? The neat thing is, once you know what's the most important piece of information, it really helps you decide how to build your layout. To sum things up. In this lesson, we looked at the information hierarchy. We decided what should stand out on our label in order to get our message across and connect with the customer. In the next lesson, we'll work with typography to get our layout down. See you there. 9. Finding Your Composition With Typography: Welcome back, artists. In this lesson, we will be talking about typography and layout. This is the logical next step now that we have figured out hierarchy. The best advice I was ever given concerning layout was to place typography first. One of my graphic design teachers always said that, and it has served me well ever since. Now that I think about it, it probably had something to do with the fact that placing what matters most first will help make it stand out. Let's dive into that. I'll show you how I choose fonts and how to import them to procreate if they're not already there. I'll show you how to import the company logo that's in the brief. Note that for now, we are doing everything without color. This is the way I prefer to do it. I like to get everything in order first, make sure I have a strong structure and then get playful with color. Importing a font to Procreate is very simple. There probably are many ways to do it, but here's the one I prefer. First, you need to have the funds in an accessible folder. Then, all you have to do is split your screen between your files app and the Procreate app. Select the funds you wish to import, and then drag and drop them to the app. As simple as that, you will now find them in the Apps menu with the different styles that you imported. Let's look at how to combine funds. I already chose the funds for my designs, and I'm not going to show you the whole process of choosing them, but I'll give you a few general and basic principles to help you choose your own. They apply to every situation. The first principle is less is more. More than three funds in the document starts to fell all over the place you are a complete typography master. I suggest sticking to two funds to ensure good results, especially on a small document like a label. Second principle is that when combining fonts, you will want to think about contrast. Two fonts that look alike, but not quite will probably clash together just like when you pair two colors together that are a bit to alike, but a bit off. It's better to find fonts that are clearly different in their shapes. This is why I chose Avenue and read as font pairing. Let us look at them closely. As you can see, the Avanir type face is very round, very regular. It has a super modern feel to it. The O's are circular, and the as are double story as. My second font is more swirly. The letters are less round and more elongated. If you look at the's and the A's, the shapes are different from the first font. All in all, it has a more whimsical vibe, which is often the case with script fonts. These two fonts also answer pretty well to the overall vibe that the client wishes to convey, which is fresh, and minimalistic. I can give you a few general cues as to finding the right vibe for your designs. Usually, sire fonts have a more classical look. They give an impression of strength and an overall notorious vibe. San sire fonts look more modern, still classy, but in a more streamlined way. Scripts, on the other hand, lean towards a more romantic inspirational vibe. These are very general guidelines, but I'm sure you can see it. What I'd like you to retain from this is that fonts that work well together in combination usually have good shape contrast between them. They should also fit the overall vibe, even if they don't answer to it in the same way and never forget that less is more. Importing the company logo is very easy. In the actions menu, under the Ad tab, tab Insert A file. The company logo is in the resources under this video, and you should download it to your iPad. Then you can simply select it from your folder and voila. Now is a good time to copy all the written information from the brief to your Canvas. You can split your screen and copy the info from the PDF, then add text to your document. This way, you are sure not to make any mistake by retyping everything. I like to put all of the info at once in my document because it helps me visualize the layout, even though it looks like a mess in the beginning. You can also apply the fonts you choose, even though they probably are going to change later on. Now that all the information is copied to my Canvas, I'm going to try my hand layout. I have to be honest here. I usually do a big brainstorm before this step to find a concept or a graphic line. But I want to keep things simple here, and we have enough information in the brief to create something solid. One thing to think about when working on my layout is to create a strong focal point. You will see me working towards this as I play around with the elements. For this, you can use size and placement to draw attention to the most important text, and don't be afraid to leave some white space. It helps to improve readability and create a sense of balance. Plus, white space will work to strengthen your focal point. I'll get rid of some of the elements that I don't need, like the name doubles, for example. We already established that the most important piece of information is the name of the candle. This is a good element to place first. If you remember well, when I measured my candle surface, I established that the maximum length for a single block of information is about 2 ". Beyond that, it's unreadable. Now that I look at it, I think it could be 2 " and a quarter. So what I'll do is create a guide for myself. This way, I'll know how long my blocks can be. For this, I'll measure 2 " and a quarter on my grid and draw a rectangle. I'll be able to move this shape around for reference. I will align the rectangle with my security margin and then align some info to the left edge of the rectangle. Also, I'll place the rectangle in the skeleton group because it's a guide. Now, I'm placing the name and it becomes my reference. Second most important piece of information is the handmade soil walk scandal. Let's place this. A good guideline when sizing your type is this. Characters under eight points in size may be hard to read. I'm keeping that in mind as I place the smaller information, such as the volume and the number of hours the candle takes to burn. Even though I don't want these two elements to be at the forefront, I still want them to be seen, so I'll make them a bit bolder. It's a case of trying to balance how much we see them and how well we can read them. Can you see what I'm doing here? What I'm doing is I'm taking this line here and I'm using it to align my information. It's not perfect yet because it's procreate and we don't have snapping guides on. But I'm aligning the information aligning left to create order in my information. As I'm working, you can also notice that I'm regrouping the information to create logical focus points. Proximity between elements creates a visual connection and when regrouping related information, you ensure that customers get the info they need. Handmade soy wax candle qualifies watermelon fountain, and it is logical to have it right under it. As you can see, I'm headed in a direction where there's going to be one block of information in this section here, and I'm going to use that part of the label, probably to put the company logo, and also the cosin burn within sight. Next challenge is placing the company logo. We want it to be seen, but it is mentioned in the brief that it's not the most important piece of info, so I'm not going to put it on the front of the label. I don't like the fact that this information here appears bigger than this one, even though it's not, I see it before I see handmade soy wax candle. And I don't like that, so I'm going to adjust it. And look, we still have the contrast between this type face and this one. We still have a lot of contrasts, so that's good. And I still see this one before, and then this one. And I'll make this a little bigger. I suggest you work on this until you're satisfied. With the cues that I've given you, you should have a few tools to guide you, but don't forget to trust your too. There's a few things you can try if you're not sure of yourself. For example, you can create an alternative layout. When both layouts are advanced, you will be able to compare and choose which one works best for you. You can also take a step back and look at it from a distance. It works for painting, and it sure works for graphic design. And one last trick, take a break. When your eyes can't see anything anymore, leave your desk and come back later. A few things to remember when working on your own layout. Align elements together to create order and visual harmony. It will also enhance readability by creating a clean and organized look. Elements that belong together should be close together. This helps guide the viewers eyes and makes your design easier to understand. Also, try alternative layouts. Look at your design from a distance and take a break. Anything you need to see more clearly. When you're satisfied, give yourself a little pat on the back. All right. We've covered a lot of ground since the beginning of this class. Here's a recap of what we covered in this lesson only. We've learned that it's good practice to start our layout by placing typography first. We've looked at how to choose fonts that have the right vibe for a design and how to combine them following a few basic principles. We also looked at how to import fonts in procreate, as well as how to import a compatible file from your folders. Then we have explored the concept of alignment and proximity and learned a few layout tricks like creating a strong focal point and using wide space. Remember, typography is a powerful tool. When you have strong typography, chances are your design will work. But I'd like you to especially remember to not be afraid of experimenting and having fun with different fonts and layouts. Sometimes you will find a cool layout almost by mistake while trying something else. Don't hesitate to explore your options. Also, I'd love to see what you're up to, please post your project in the resources and project tab down here. It's a space for us to share thoughts, ideas, and I can give feedback if you'd like. So please don't hesitate to chime in there. In the next lesson, we'll play with graphic elements and details to refine our label design. See you there. 10. Adding Details and Personality to Your Design: Hey, folks. Welcome back. Now that we've got a solid foundation with our type and layout. It's time to add some personality to this label. In this lesson, we are going to use color, shapes, and or illustrations to elevate our design. Think of this step as hair spray on your hair do. It will stick everything together. We have a good thing going, and we want to make sure it's the best it can be. Let's get creative and have some fun. All right. Let's talk color. Color is another super powerful element, and it can definitely change the whole mood of a design. In fact, I encourage you to do a quick research on color psychology to get an idea of how color affects the vibe of a piece and the viewer along with it, or how certain colors are associated with certain moral values. Color theory is a whole other thing, but I don't really encourage you to try to do a quick research on color theory because this domain of knowledge is so vast, it would be impossible to do a quick research only. It's a real Pandora's box. So anyway, in the case of the candle, the client, AK A M, has provided the colors associated with the product, which is a great starting point. But if you're choosing your own colors for any reason, make sure they match the mood of your product. Let's look at the brief and put those colors in the palette dedicated to this project. What I'm doing here is I'm actually copying the Hx color code given by the client to pick exactly the right value in procreate. In the color tab at the bottom completely, you can choose the value option. This is where it's possible to paste the value directly. Then you can add it to a color palette if you wish to. I personally like to have swatches of the color on my Canvas on another layer, so then I can pick directly there. I take this chance to also paint darker swatches of these colors to have a few options to choose from. Now it's time to explore my options concerning graphic elements that I want to add, so I'm going to start experimenting. Let's try a line to separate sections. Oops wrong layer. I'll have to go back. Actually, let's keep things organized and group the text in my layers so I can keep graphic elements separate. And let's delete everything we don't need. As you can see, I'm taking time to try different brushes before committing to one, and you definitely do that too. Okay, double line is fun. Let's work with that. We have a fruit theme here, and I'm thinking illustrations would be fun. Let's draw a few melons and see what I get out of it. Also, I'm choosing to keep them very, very simple, and minimal, so it fits with the vibe asked for by the client. Adding colors from the colors given by the client works really well in this case. I'm drawing a set of three because uneven numbers have a tendency to work, especially for dynamism. They're all in the same spirit, but different enough that it smells like variety. I keep them organized in my layers to be able to select them easily when needed. Here's a secret. Colors look different on screen than they do when printed. Those super bright colors you love on your favorite website or web interface might not come out as vibrant as you'd hoped when printed. So it's a good idea to steer clear of the extremely vibrant colors in the color wheel. Also, if you're printing at home, as is our case in this class, it might be a good idea to go easy on the ink. Too much ink can make your paper soggy and ruin the result you were hoping for. They're pretty cool. I like them. Before I rescale the melons, one thing I want to do is duplicate them. I think I've mentioned it before, but when you work in graphic design, it's really good practice to work in a non destructive way. This means that if you need to, you can go back and you don't have to do it over again. I'm probably going to scale down these melons, but I want to keep a copy of their original size. I'm going to duplicate and once it's a double, I'll flatten it because then it's going to be just easier to move it around. I'll do it with the three melons. Then these three, I'm going to group and give them a cool boy band name, I guess, original melons. That's awesome. I'll put them at the bottom and lock them. This is melon. One, I guess. Melon two. And Melon three. All right. Ah, they were visible. That's why these are more opaque than I remembered. And now, let's place these melons in a balanced way. I want to try something different for my separation because I think the first one style doesn't fit the new melons at all. And I like the melons, so let's adjust this. I'll keep the old line to be able to compare, but I'll work on a new one in the same water style as the melons. I need to put this separation under the tight group, because as you can see, it messes with the contrast of the information here because the color is over it, and it's transparent, but still we want this to be more readable. Oh, Last idea. I'll add seeds to the separation. It's fun. Whenever I'm designing something, even if I like my first try. I usually do at least another one, and if I'm presenting to clients, there will usually be two or three options. Even if I do like this, what I've done here, I'm going to do something else and I'll try to make it quite different so we have something to compare it to. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take Everything I did here. Let's unlock the skeleton because I'm going to group all of this together, and this is going to be design one. Then I'm going to duplicate this, call it design two. This one, I'm going to move right in this corner here. This is Design one. I'm going to lock it there. My second design, I will not need the graphic elements that I did. I'll keep the type, but everything else, I'll delete them. And I'll move all of my design two. Right here. I'll hi my colors for now. We have to keep the same vibe because the client specified that it was to be fresh, it was to be summary and minimalistic. But I can use colors differently. What I'm going to do is I'm going to try blocks of colors to create sections. Let's regroup the info a bit differently. I feel like I should try to have this information in a organic block of color, if it makes sense, and it's going to be reversed. I'll use the same rushes, so we have the same vibe because this part worked. Maybe I'll make it a little less equal. Yeah, more organic, more transparency. I like this. But the type though I like it. I like the first one where everything is black, but the illustrations. But since we're trying something else, D NFO here, I'm going to use the second color. We will actually have to use a color that's a bit. Well, that's an option. Since I want this to be the main focus, I'm going to put these two in green also because I'll show you. If they're red, by the way, you can change the logo by. It's a PNG, so you can tap on the layer to select it. Go to Alpha log, and then you will be able to paint over. You'll need an Pac brush, and it will change the color. Actually doesn't do what I thought it would do. I thought it would give more importance to this here, but what it does is because this is all of the same color, and then this is green. This actually has a little too much importance because because it's contrasted. What I'll do is I'll take this layer and use the same dark green that I've used, like this. Now this is going together, less important and this is the focus because of the shape. Yeah, that's another option. I actually think that both work, but I still prefer this one. And there you have it. You should now have a pretty eye catching and effective label. As a reminder, in this lesson, we played with color and graphic elements to elevate or lay out to the next level all the while making sure we were keeping our higher key intact for readability. Do remember that practice makes progress, and I encourage you to keep experimenting. Don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Also, don't be afraid to show me what you've been up to by posting in the project gallery. I would love to see what you come up with, and I will give you feedback if you want me to. In our next lesson, we are going to test out our design. See you there. 11. Testing Your Design and Making Adjustments: Hello again, so glad you're still hanging out with me today. We have come a long way since the beginning of the class, and this is the part where we finally get to test our design onto the product. See what it looks like and make any adjustment if we need to. I suggest using cheap printing paper for this step at least for the first test because we're still not sure everything is just right. I personally am always trying to cut down on cost where I can, and this is a good place to do it. First thing to know is that you cannot print directly from Procreate. So you do need to export your artwork to print it. And this is what I'm going to show you right now. I will not go into details with the sending to printer part because this is not what this class is about, and there are many ways to do it depending on your network setup, for example, but I will show you how I do it my way, and then how I test my design. All right. Now is time to test our design. I prefer this one, so this is the one I'm going to be printing with design one selected. I'm going to put it about in the middle. Very important at this stage, when you are going to be printing in your skeleton, you need to turn off your guides they're already off. Security margin two. If you still had it visible, turn it off. This layer here off the label size really needs to be off. But we are keeping the crop marks. Perfect. Now, we are going to be exporting. In the actions menu, the share tab. We are going to share as a PDF in the best quality possible. I'm going to save to file. This is my test one. I'm going to name it, so I know what it is in all of this. And save. Now, as I've mentioned before, there are many ways to print, according to your setup, your network, what kind of printer you have, what kind of iPad you have probably. But the way I do it is I just go to the navigator. I choose my PDF, so it's my test one. Then I click share here, and I have the print option right there. My printer is over Wi Fi, so it's right here. Whatever you do, you should never scale the design. We have designed up to here with a specific size, and this is print, so we want this to print at the right size. I don't see an option here, but if you have an option that says scaling or it gives a percentage, usually, it needs to be 100%. There's no scaling. All right. Media quality. Well, for now, I'm going to keep it normal because it's just a test, but I'm not going to go at draft because I want to see if everything prints well. What I mean is whatever the options you have, don't go to the lower quality one, but you don't have to go to the best either because we're trying to save on resources at this step. Normal should be fine. I'm going to I have plain paper. That's what I'm going to choose here. Print in color, one copy is good. I don't have any presets for now. Lay out, I want this to print only once, and this is actually a scaling. If I were to put two here, it would be smaller. No. Only one. There you go. Also, keep in mind that my starting document was 10 " long by I don't remember. It's four or five in height. I think it's five. This will be okay if I print in a letter size paper format because it's 8.5 by 11 or 11 by 8.5. I'm okay right there. It's as simple as that. I'm going to print this and I'll be back with the result. This is the most exciting part. Here's my label. Oh, I love it. It's really cute, so so cute. Here's what you have to look for here. First, you need to look at the size of your fonts. Is everything big enough? I know like this and this is very small, but still very readable and since I don't want the customer to read that first, it's fine for me. I really like it. Also, Does the color print well? I have to say I was not sure about the green, but it's really beautiful. It prints well. If your color is too pale, what will happen usually is you have a color that's too vibrant and it's an unprintable color? You have to change that. The logo is very clear. And what I like the most is it breeds. It's minimal, but it does have some impact. Now we have to try it on the object, so we are going to cut, and you will see why we have the crop marks. So I have my safety knife. And I have my metal ruler, and here's what you have to do. Usually to cut a design, you will align your ruler with the crop mark, and you will make it so you are cutting outside the design. So if you make a mistake, it will not cut the design. Be careful with your fingers. You do have to keep pressure on the ruler, but be careful not to cut your finger here. Fingers on the ruler and you cut. Do this for the four sides. Safety first. And we are going to try it on the candle. Going to place it as centered as I can. What do we have to check here? We already established that I was going to have one block of info here and another block here? Is everything readable? I think this is a little long. The water melon fountain could be shorter because I'm not sure it's easy to read at first site. This is one thing I want to change. Something else I want to pay attention to is does everything appear together logically? These obviously go together, and this is the more practical info. I think this is good. The only thing I don't like on this one is the length of the watermelon fountain. I could try to put it on three lines, but then I would have much less space for the illustration. I may try it, but I'm not sure it's going to work. Now it's your turn to assess how you did and what you need to change. I'm going to try the changes, print one last time, and see if it works. We are back in the document. Now one thing I was certain that I needed to change was this was a bit too long. I'm going to do two versions of this. I'm going to first, go to the type section and take these two and scale them down just a little. This should be good. The reason why I scaled both down is that if I scaled only this one, this will gain importance and I don't want that. What I wanted to try on one B is I want to try watermelon fountain on two lines. So and I keep my alignment here. But as you can see, there's too much space between these two words. I'll go to my stings and there you go. However, I'll need to scale it up now. I am not sure what works best. Maybe I should sleep on it. Well, this does give more importance to watermelon fountain, and this is what I wanted. I'm not sure why I have a hard time deciding. This is the last test that I'm printing to see that everything is all right and also to choose between this label and this one because I'm not sure which one I like best. Same as the four, we are going to cut. This is more readable. This length is better. But this one is really good, though, isn't it? Yep. It's this one. Wow. Great job, guys. You did it. Your label is done. I hope you're proud of yourselves. Before we move on to printing a batch of labels, there's a few things I'd like you to remember from this lesson. When you're ready to test out your label, export it as a PDF from Procreate and print with your preferred method. I find the simplest is to print over Wi Fi, but you should choose what works best for you. Before going further, take a break. Examine your label, try it on your product if you can, and make sure it's readable that everything prints well that the design can breathe, and also that your hierarchy is still working. Make any adjustment you need and print one final proof to make sure the adjustments or tests are okay. And now that this is done, I'll see you in the next lesson. We are going to print a batch of labels. See you soon. 12. Imposition and Printing a Batch of Labels: My back. We are almost done with the class, but before we sign off, I want to show you how you can print a whole batch of your labels if you need to in a more efficient way than printing them one by one. What we are going to do is called imposition, and it means that we are going to place more than one label on a sheet of paper, placed in a that is going to be easy for us to cut in batches. You print a document in a print shop, the printers usually do this step on their own, and it can get complicated for book printing, for example, but the one we're doing today is very simple. It can be quite practical to know how to do it on your own. Remember, when I showed you the imposition of the business card that is home printed, we are going to follow the same principle in procreate. While we are on the subject, I really want to remind you that the way we're going to do it today works when you're printing at home, but I will never encourage you to send this to a print shop. When you have your artwork printed with a professional. You need to be way more strict and precise with the technical aspect of things. This lesson is really meant to give you a way to do it yourself in the simplest way possible with tools that you most probably have at your disposal. This being said, let's jump right into it. Now's the time to print a batch of labels. To do this, we are going to stuck a bunch of them on a page, aligned together, so they are easier to cut. This is called imposition. I'm going to show you the method I found that works best. In order to work in a non destructive way, Let's go back to the gallery. Let's make a copy of the artwork. To make a copy, I select it, and then I duplicate it. And I will rename this one, Imposition. C to your new document. We are going to delete everything that's not our label. Now what I'm going to do, going to duplicate this one to keep a copy, hide it, and my copy, I'm going to flatten it, so it's easier to move around. Now to save us some trouble, we are going to select both these layers, and we are going to not resize them, but have them in the center of the document. This is important because when we are going to resize, we don't want to cut this because it erases the layer if we re and this artwork is outside of the Canvas. Center this doesn't really matter if it's perfect or not. Center this and now. We are going to go to the actions menu. In Canvas, we are going to go to crop and resize. Now, in the settings, adjust the width and height, so it matches the sheet we are going to print on. I want to have a vertical document, so it will be 8.5 large and 11 high. Click De. I'm going to change my drawing guides to a quarter of an inch because I don't need to be as precise with this step. I just want to make sure my labels are aligned. Okay, now we're just going to check that our label is the size we designed it in the first place because from my experience, procreate is not very precise with this. Let's align our crop marks to a guide, and we are going to count. Two, three, four, so that's 1 ", one, two, three, four, that's 2 ". It's a bit bigger, but it's going to be fine. It's not too much bigger. We could adjust it. Make sure it's exactly the right size. But we really don't have to. There you go. Perfect. Now comes the fun part. Here's what we're going to do. We want to have multiple labels on one sheet. You have to consider the margin of your printer. I'm not exactly sure what mine is, so I'll try to play it safe and put it as close to the edge as I can. But leaving a little leeway because this might be cut. I want to have at least a little of my crop marks. That's good. Now, we are going to duplicate this label. This is Cp one, duplicate, and then we are going to turn snapping and magnetics on. You can adjust these settings. I won't. I don't really mind, but you can adjust these to your preference. Now, we are going to move this label. As you can see, you can overlap the crop marks, but make sure you don't overlap the bleed areas. But to save on some space, you can overlap the crop marks. You can. This is Copy one. Well, copy one of copy one. Let's duplicate it again. The goal is to put as many as we can on one sheet. Same principle. It seems that I can't Maybe I can push my lock a little and try Oh, no, I don't want to risk it. But we have some space around here, and I think we could put one or two in the other way. This is not standard practice. If you send stuff to the printer, I'm not sure they're going to do that. But we are printing at home and we have more flexibility on that front. I'm going to try duplicating it. Turn it around. It's super easy because I have snapping on, so we are going to turn 90 degrees p easily. And I'm not sure. Okay. Here's the thing. I'll turn this off for a moment. I can do it, but as you can see, I'm going to be pretty close to the other crop marks around here. So I'm going to do it, but I have to make sure that I don't get mixed up in my crop marks. Let's put this one around here. Maybe even Yeah, that's good. As long as you see, I will be cutting here. So I won't be touching the other quote marks. I should be good. And I'm going to duplicate this one. Turn snapping on again, and once again, moving it. Now it's just a question of what you think you can handle in terms of being mixed up or not Now that we are sure that every label is aligned. I'm going to group them, select the group and place the whole thing in the middle. So now we are ready to print one sheet, and I'm saying this because don't just go and print a whole batch of ten sheets of five stickers on them, because if something is not working, you will be very angry with yourself. So we are going to export APDF. It's amazing. Let's try one to make sure everything works. But right off the bat, everything prints well. The logo is clear, and the colors are okay. Of course, it's on a home printer, so it's not perfect and there are different qualities, but I'm satisfied. Let's cut one. I forgot to show you. The The advantage of imposing your labels that you can cut in series, you just cut this one here. Cut this one here, and it goes faster. Also, you have less paper waste. See, the more you have in line, the easier it is to cut. Of course, this one is not a perfect imposition. Cute. I have to say I don't really get tired of printing my own stuff at home. Even though I have the means to design my documents professionally and send them to the printers, there's something about printing and cutting stuff myself. I really find joy in it. And I'm a real advocate for simplicity, which means that sometimes for a small batch, I prefer doing it myself if I have time and resources as a reminder. In this lesson we looked at how to change the size of your document, so it matches the size of your sticker sheet, how to duplicate and align multiple labels so they would be easy to cut. Lastly, we enjoyed the final result. Here we are. Great job. Now that we've been through the whole process together, it's time for you to test it out on your own. In the class handbook, you will find a brief for a strawberry jam company. I strongly encourage you to take the brief and show me what you got. This is a really good way to test out your new skills. Go ahead and have fun and don't forget that practice makes progress, so don't be afraid to try different things. And please share your project with the community. It's such a great way to grow. I would really love to see what you worked on, whether you followed along for the candle or if you worked on your own object. Of course, the Jam label. I would definitely love to see that. In the next lesson, we are going to conclude this class. See you there. 13. Conclusion: Congratulations, folks. You made it to the end of this label design class. I'm so happy I got to spend a little time with you to share a few things. We covered so much since the beginning from the purposes of packaging to why these notions can be important in your creative business. We've looked at how to create a label that fits a particular object. We jumped for a quick to see which functions of the app we're going to help us. Right after, we set up the base of our label document, and then We looked at information hierarchy, which led us to composing the layout of the label, starting with type. Next, we added details and personality to the design to make it special. We've then looked at how to test the design and make adjustments before. Finally, printing a whole batch of the same label. Following all of this, you might also have tried the whole process on your own, starting from a client brief for a strawberry am Mason jar that was given to you in the class handbook. Wow, I have to say that's quite the program right here. I really hope you found something for yourself and for your business in this class, and please do show me what you did in the project gallery. I will look at everything that is posted there and of course, answer all of your questions. I would really appreciate it if you took the time to review the class. I really wish to make every one of these classes better and getting feedback from students is a great way to know what worked and what did not. So please leave a review if you can. On this note. Thank you so much once again for sticking around for this class. I hope to see you in my next one. Bye.