1. Do your customers have compliance labeling requirements? For example, customers- and their industries- often specify label size, configuration, content, print quality, and the type of symbology to be used in making the labels. Customers may also assess penalties if the proper labels are not provided.

2. What type of label is required? Determine whether both product and shipping labels are required and how many labels will be needed for each item or package.

3. What size, shape, color, and materials are required for your labels?

4. What information is required on the label? Part number, quantity, vendor number, price, and so on may be needed. Determine also which information should be represented by bar codes and which by human-readable letters or numbers.

5. How should the label be configured? Determine the location of bar codes, human-readable characters, or graphic images on the label. Identify the font or type face to be used for the human-readable characters.

6. Where on the product or package will the label be placed? Determine also the type of surface involved- smooth, hard, rough, porous, or curved.

7. In what environment will the labels be used? Determine how long the label will be used; whether it may be exposed to sun, water, chemicals, or temperature extremes; and whether the scanner used may rub against the label.

8. Does the label have a security function? Determine whether the label should be removable, permanent, tamper-resistant, or covered by a protective coating.

- Bars and spaces are known as the elements of the code. They are grouped to make characters which each represent a single number, letter, punctuation mark, or other sign. Bars must be dark enough not to reflect the scanner’s light. The spaces within the symbol and the background around it must be clear and reflective enough to be distinguished from the bars by the scanner.

- The density of the symbol is the number of characters that can be represented, and is usually expressed in characters per inch (cpi). The higher the density, the more information a symbol can carry in a given space.

- Clear spaces, called quiet zones or margins, are placed before and after the symbol. Quiet zones help ensure that only the complete code is read.

- Start and stop characters indicate the beginning and end of the symbol, and sometimes the scanning direction. Bi-directional symbols can be scanned from two directions. Many codes arranged in linear format, a single row of bars and spaces, allow bi-directional scanning. Two-dimensional and matrix codes combine characters in squares or checkerboard patterns and require scanners that can register an entire symbol.

- Check characters and check digits to help determine that the correct data has been decoded. Self-checking codes prevent a single printing defect from causing similar characters to be substituted for each other.

- Data or application identifiers record the general category or intended use of the data that follows them.

- Symbologies that create discrete codes separate each character by spaces that carry no information and are not part of the code. Discrete characters can be decoded independently and so do not require the highest print quality. Symbologies that create continuous codes use every space in the code to carry information. Continuous codes can contain more data per symbol than discrete codes, but require more specialized printing equipment.

- Bar code symbols are most often displayed horizontally. However, they may also be displayed vertically to fit specific spaces.