On Your Mark

This month in our series exploring the latest industry insight on effective product safety label design and symbol usage, we’ll focus on the United States Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of symbol-only safety labels.

This month in our series exploring the latest industry insight on effective product safety label design and symbol usage, we’ll focus on the importance of consistency in the use of symbols and formats for both product safety labels and facility safety signs. For many years, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) regulations for workplace safety signs were based on outdated 1941-era formats. That changed about two and a half years ago. In October 2013, OSHA incorporated the latest versions of the ANSI Z535 safety sign, tag and color standards into its safety regulations, aligning them with today’s best practices. Let’s look at how this change, which allows for consistent sign and label formats using the latest standards, is impacting our products and our workplaces.

As part of our series exploring the latest industry insight on effective product safety label design and symbol usage, this month’s topic focuses on the trend towards multi-symbol labels, showing both hazard description AND hazard avoidance visually – and ultimately moving to a fully graphic approach.

Last year’s "On Your Mark" columns discussed how specific symbols have changed over time...

One of the critical building blocks for your product’s safe design is the proper...

One of the critical building blocks for your product safety labels is symbols. When...

One of the critical building blocks for your product safety labels is symbols. This month,...

In last year’s On Your Mark columns, we discussed key elements in helping to...

Designing product safety labels that help to prevent injuries and save lives is a multi-faceted task. This month, we’ll focus on another key element: communicating risk using signal words.

Designing product safety labels that help to prevent injuries and save lives is a...