FDA Labeling Requirements and Ideas for Health and Beauty Products
As most of us know, health and beauty products comprising colored and non-colored cosmetics are required to comply with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C) standards and their labeling is no exception. Health and beauty labels and packaging of cosmetics must comply with the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (FPLA). Both these laws are passed by the U.S. government and administered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA forms regulations based on these laws. Also, in terms of marketing and branding, your label should be designed in such a way that it helps get the attention of the target customers. The label should convey what the product and its base is all about. A few factors that influence this are color, font, and design or graphics. It is, however, crucial to ensure that all the statutory elements such as ingredients, weight, units used, and product name are mentioned on the label. All this means, the labels on the products ranging from toothpastes, shampoos, and face creams to lip colors, nail colors, hair colors and so on need to adhere to FD&C, and FP&L standards. What are these standards? What are the important factors of consideration, while designing labels for beauty and healthcare products? Read the post to know more.
Important FDA Health and Beauty Products Labeling Guidelines
The FDA has laid down some rules to prevent deception of customers from unsafe products and misleading labels, and these are applicable to all beauty and healthcare products, whether they are manufactured in the US or imported.
A few of the guidelines by FDA:
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Manufacturers should ensure that their packages and health and beauty product labels provide accurate information to consumers regarding the value as well as quality of ingredients used.
- Adulterated or misbranded cosmetics are barred from marketing.
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A label must contain the name and address of the manufacturer and distributor, name of the product, logo, net weight, and ingredients along with their quantities, warnings and directions for use, and the price.
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A label is divided into principal display panel and information display panel and has specified sizes and dimensions.
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All labels must have information displayed in English. Labels with a foreign language should also display information in English.
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The rules regarding the information displayed on a label are also applicable to inserts, display packs, leaflets, or any other promotional literature.
Tips for Designing Effective Health and Beauty labels
The packaging should reflect the product’s core nature and mood to the target customers, whether it is a bottle, sprayer, jar, or a tube. This depends on the type of colors, style, layout, and fonts you choose.
Here are a few tips that may help you:
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For organic products, keep subtle yet fresh colors such as shades of yellow or green; they should be close to nature.
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For powder blush or non-color cosmetics, neutral shades such as beige and peach would go hand-in-hand with the product inside.
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Whether a health or beauty label, use two to three different fonts to separate out information— one font for the product name and weight, the other one or two font types for ingredients and important pointers you want users to read.
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The above point is applicable to font sizes as well. The product name should be of the largest size and creatively displayed, followed by net weight, pricing details, and so on.
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Add floral or nature, or fruit designs based on your product ingredients; if it is floral, let it look colorful.
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Finally, it is important to know your Unique Selling Point (USP) so that you can decide what to highlight. For example, if you want to emphasize that your product is all natural, then this fact should be placed in the center and on the front side. If your logo says it all, it should be centrally placed and bold.
For your health and beauty product to stand out among the rest when kept on a retail store shelf, the overall design impact and customer perception matter a lot. It is important that the packaging relates to the product inside. At the same time, it is of paramount importance to meet all the FDA requirements. So, choosing a trusted health and beauty label designer and vendor is key. Performance Label Company (PLC) is one of the industry-leading designers and manufacturers of health and beauty labels in the US. The company provides these labels in a variety of materials and designs.
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