Effective Product Safety Labels: Your Guide to Symbols

For product safety engineers, when designing your safety labels, you want them to be as effective as possible. After all, they can help to prevent injuries and saves lives.

What's one of the most fundamental elements to consider in designing your labels? Symbols. With the understanding that it's imperative for product manufacturers to communicate safety information about residual risks efficiently and effectively, and to do so in a global marketplace, it's the symbols you place on your safety labels that have become increasingly significant.

Here's a good example:

The label, above, is a best practice Read Manual safety label in English with a clear and eye-catching symbol. Because of the symbol, even without knowledge of the English language, the viewer would have an understanding of the labels message.

Interested in learning more about the role that symbols play in safety communication? Read the "On Your Mark" article featured in the latest issue of In Compliance Magazine, which provides an in-depth discussion from Clarion CEO, Geoffrey Peckham, on the use of symbols in effective product safety labels.

"On Your Mark" is a regular column that explores labeling and graphical symbols, and how they're used to convey safety messages. Stay tuned here on the Clarion Safety Systems blog for the next article in this series – and for more insight on best practice safety signs, labels, and markings.

• ANSI
• Geoffrey Peckham
• ISO
• Safety Labels
• Standards Expertise