A case label has a hard life: rain on the tail lift, a forklift passing a little too close, and a warehouse that never gets above five degrees in January. The difference between a label that lasts a season and one that is unreadable after two tours comes down to a handful of choices.
Paper
Ordinary 80 gsm printer paper is fine, as long as you seal or laminate it. Heavier paper feels better but curls sooner in the corners of a sleeve. Print in black and white unless you use colour coding per discipline - colour on a laser printer costs more and mostly buys you aesthetics.
Sealing or laminating
Sealing - the label in a plastic sleeve with a closed edge - is fast, cheap and easy to replace. The sleeve is the wear part, not the label. For most companies this is the right call.
Laminating bonds the film to the paper. The result is stiffer, waterproof right to the edge and considerably more durable. The downside is that a laminated label is final. If the contents change, it is bin it and start again.
Rule of thumb: laminate cases whose contents are fixed, seal cases that get packed differently for every production.
Fixing it on
- Document sleeves with an adhesive edge are the easiest, but let go along the top edge after a winter in a cold warehouse.
- Screws or pop rivets through the corners always hold, and on a wooden or aluminium case they are no problem.
- Hook-and-loop tape is the compromise: firm enough, and swapping a label takes five seconds.
What you really want to avoid is a sticker straight onto the lid. It cannot be replaced without adhesive residue, which is exactly why so many cases are out there carrying three generations of crossed-out labels on top of each other.
Reprinting has to be easy
The most important condition for good labels is not the material but the effort of making a new one. If changing a label means someone has to find a template, edit fields in a word processor and then work out which printer still has toner, it will not happen.
That is why Caselabel hands you a ready-made PDF with embedded fonts: open, print, seal. From change to fixed label in under a minute. Also worth reading: why A4 or A5 matters more than you would think.