Here’s how I choose fonts and size vinyl labels in Cricut Design Space to create a cohesive and uncluttered look for all my storage bins, even if they aren’t the same shape and size.
One of the most fun things about owning a Cricut machine is making professional-quality labels to organize your home. But making labels for a bunch of containers that will live next to each other on shelves can be a little difficult, especially if the bins aren’t the same shape or size, or the words are varying lengths of letters. I’ve been a Cricut user for almost five years and have been perfecting my label-making process along the way, so today I’m pulling back the curtain to show you my secrets for perfect storage bin labels.
Step One: List All Your Labels
First and foremost, your bins need to already be filled. You can’t just skip ahead and make labels before your containers even need labels. The bin you think you might need may end up being too small, or you might end up combining two sparse categories. So before you even think about labels, your bins need to be filled and set in stone. (Not literally, unless you’re organizing masonry supplies…haha!)
Now, list out all the labels you need. Yep, all of them. Grab a piece of paper and write out every single label text that needs to be created. Make sure you leave some room beside these words because you’ll be adding to this list in a minute. (Or use the label list in the Organized-ish Garage Cleanup Planner)
Step Two: Measure Your Bin Fronts
Remember when you were in fourth grade and made a happy birthday banner, but you started out with letters that were way too big and had to progressively get them smaller and smaller to fit when you realized you were already at the halfway point and just wrote the letter Y? Yeah, that’s why you need to measure.
Put that tape measure you grabbed from the tool zone down; you don’t need that guy right now. Instead, grab a standard ruler or a seamstress measuring tape, something flat that doesn’t have the teeth at the end.
Measure the width of the front of the container (the side you’ll see when it’s sitting on the shelf) and subtract at least four inches from that number to give you a minimum of a 2-inch margin. Now measure the height of the container and subtract four inches again. Write your measurements on the list next to each label title you wrote down. Do this for each size of container you have.
Step Three: Creating Your Labels In Cricut Design Space
Once you have your label list and measurements on paper, it’s time to create your label designs. Find the longest single-word label text that needs to be created. (Like “organizers” or “collectibles”) We want to start with a long one. Open up a new project in Cricut Design Space and type out that label’s title using the Add Text option on the lefthand menu bar.
Choosing The Best Cricut Label Font
Choose your font next. I recommend choosing a font that is sans-serif and very simple. When you’re making lots of labels for lots of containers that will live next to each other on a shelf, you want the most basic font you can find to keep the shelves from looking cluttered. My go-to is Futura because it’s classic and easy to weed, but I also love Bodini for bulgier labels.
Resizing Cricut Labels In Design Space
Now you can resize the label. But before you mouse over the font size, stop it right there. You will not be changing the font size during a labeling project. Instead, you’ll be changing the measurement size, which auto-adjusts your font size.
Remember those measurements you took? Time to bring those into play. Since we are using the longest word, we can make it the maximum width measurement. If you wrote down 12 inches as the max width, type 12″ into the Width box in the top toolbar. Your label’s text will be automatically resized to 12 inches.
Duplicate that word and change the text to other label words that are also that amount of letters or one or two letters shorter. You can leave those the same.
As you get to shorter words, you can increase the width as needed. You don’t need to make every label 12″ (or whatever your max width is) because you’d have all kinds of font sizes. But you will use this measurement and your longest word as a guide to keep things cohesive.
If you have multi-word labels, don’t be afraid to make your labels have two lines instead of one. In a two-line label, you’ll duplicate a middle-size-range label (not the smallest size but not the biggest). This label will match the other single word labels in font size but will be taller. Just make sure you don’t go over your max height measurement.
Varying Font Sizes Are Okay And Unnoticeable
I got asked so many times during my label-making process on Instagram Stories how I got all my labels to be exactly the same size. They aren’t exactly the same size. Some are bigger, some are smaller, but they all look the same so no one even noticed. I didn’t change the spacing, I didn’t adjust by font size, I just kept the measurements in mind while creating.
These bins have all different sizes of labels, but when stored on shelves, they look like they belong together and the sizing doesn’t look weird at all. The key is keeping words in similar sizes grouped together on shelves. It tricks the eye into thinking they’re all the same.
Opt For White Vinyl Labels For Storage Bins
My final tip is to use white vinyl for all your labels. Unless your bins are white, white vinyl shows up best on any other color of bin, especially clear ones. Black vinyl labels on clear bins tend to look cluttered or blend in with all the stuff inside. So skip trying to color-coordinate labels or do something fancy. Just a plain white label is the way to go.
Want More Cricut Label Font & Sizing Ideas?
This post has you covered with my top ten favorite Cricut fonts for labels. And you can also snag my free Cricut Font Guide that has a quick-reference list of the best Cricut fonts based on what kind of project you’re doing. There are even pairings to help you put together two fonts in one project that look like they belong together. You can download the font guide by dropping your email below. We’ll send it right over!
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