How do I make the wall labels for an exhibition?

The wall label is the last thing you make and the first thing anyone notices. It almost always gets put together the night before, in Word, fighting with the margins.

In this guide we'll analyze what goes on each one, what size, and how to avoid the sleepless night.

What information goes on a wall label?

The four nobody argues about: artist, title, year and medium. With those alone it works.

Then come the optional ones, and each one is a decision:

Dimensions. Almost always worth including. They help whoever is thinking about where it would hang.
Price. Only if the show sells. If it is institutional, never.
Series or collection. Useful when the show groups several bodies of work.
Edition. Essential in printmaking or photography (3/10, AP). Without it the visitor cannot tell whether they are looking at a unique piece.

What does not go on it: the curatorial text. That is a separate panel, not a label.

What size should they be?

The three sizes used in practice are 8 × 5 cm, 9 × 6 cm and 10.5 × 7.4 cm.

The small one is enough when you only show the four base fields. If you are including dimensions, price and edition, go to the medium or large, because squeezing six lines into 8 × 5 forces the type down to a size nobody can read standing a metre away.

That is the real test, and it is worth doing before printing fifty: print one, tape it to the wall and read it standing a metre back. If you have to lean in, it is too small.

Where do they go?

The most widespread convention is to the bottom right of the piece, with the label about 10 cm from the frame, or aligned with the centre of the work.

What matters most is not which you choose but that it is the same throughout the show. A room with labels at different heights looks careless even when each one is immaculate.

If two pieces hang very close together, the label goes below each one instead of beside it. And on a wall with many small pieces, a single numbered panel usually works better than twenty labels.

Is a QR code worth adding?

Yes, and it is the thing that returns the most for how little it costs.

A label has room for four lines. The QR solves everything else: the full record, more photos, the detail of the series, your contact. Whoever wants more scans it. Whoever does not sees a clean label.

It also works after the show closes, which is when people remember a piece and have no idea how to find it.

Point it at the record of the piece or at your portfolio, never at your Instagram. The profile changes, the work stays.

What should I use?

A Word or Canva template is perfectly fine for ten pieces done once. The problem shows up when a price changes or a piece comes in at the last minute, because the whole sheet has to be redone.

Artium lets you select the pieces from your inventory, choose which of those fields to show, and outputs a print-ready PDF on A4 in the three sizes, with the QR pointing at the public record of each piece. The data comes from the inventory, so if you correct a price the label is already right. Free up to 100 pieces.

We know what the night before a show is like, because Artium was built inside a studio and not in an office. Everything in this guide the app does for you, so you can spend that night on something else.

Whatever you choose: print one test label and read it standing a metre away before sending the other fifty.