Designed for small business.

An image of a person holding their smartphone in front of the Zebra ZSB Label Printer.
Industry
Small Business consumer products
Service
Research
UX/UI Design
Logo
Photography
CGI Environments
3D Animation
Product Marketing
Awards

Taking printing "off the plate" for busy small business owners.

Small business owners wear a hundred different hats in order to serve their business. The concept behind the ZSB Label Printer was to create an intuitive printer experience that saves business owners valuable time, while giving them the ability to express their business personality.

Zebra Technologies is a market leader in enterprise thermal printing, however the ZSB Label Printer was aimed at a new audience for Zebra.

99% of all businesses in America are small and home office businesses and they cover just about every category, from artisans to innovators and family-owned businesses, and many of them start out with a mission. Above all, small business owners are extremely busy. They just want products that work. They don’t have a lot of time to fuss over products that are jamming or broken or complicated to use.

“With ZSB we wanted to create a printer that works when you need it to.” Brady Tauber, ZSB Product Marketing Manager.

We designed the ZSB product experience to feel personal and appeal to the broad audience segment. To this end we created a range of themed "workspaces”. In collaboration with Architecture and Interior designers (EPOC) we crafted beautiful CGI scapes inspired by the diversity of the small business community.

For launch, we created hundreds of ready-to-use label templates, available on the ZSB App and customizable with the ZSB Label Designer software. Ensuring that small business owners could and get up and running easily, and express the individuality of their business while giving them more time for what really matters, growing their business.

Minimise
Maximize
Mobile printing

The Zebra ZSB Series solution combines printer, mobile App and Desktop Label Designer software. Serving users who are busy and rarely at their desk, taking printing ‘off-their-plate’.

Easy setup
Getting up and running with ZSB is simple. Scan, download the app and away you go.

Quick start guide
The guide was a great place to reinforce the brand values of the product and to emphasize the quick setup.

An image of a black and white paper folded quick start guide pamphlet.
A line-art illustration of the ZSB Series Label Printer, a rectangular palm-sized printer.
Quick start guide

Plug and play
To emphasize the simplicity of cartridge swapping, we produced a CGI-based animation for the go-to-market website.

ZSB Software

The ZSB Printer software provides access to frequently used settings and label templates on mobile and desktop computers.

An image of an arm using a laptop and using the on-screen ZSB software.
Desktop software

ZSB Label Designer
The ZSB Label Designer makes it easy to create and print labels. Once created, labels are available on the App and printable from anywhere.

Objects Panel

Add elements like barcodes, text, shapes, and images to your label design.

Collaboration

Work with team members in real-time and edit designs together.

Data Sources

Connect labels to data sources from your desktop or cloud services.

Object
Properties

Customize properties of objects like text, barcodes, images, and more.

Canvas tools

Customize properties of objects like text, barcodes, images, and more.

Label designer

Icon design
The ZSB icon was designed to reflect the simplicity of the product and be immediately recognizable.

ZSB icon
Celebrating small business

Most small business owners’ multi-task and wear a variety of hats in order to serve their businesses.

Small business owner

Personas
We wanted the software experience to feel personal so we created personas to imagine the needs of a diverse audience.

Workspaces
We crafted CGI workspaces based on the locations and interiors inspired by the small business owner personas. The workspaces theme the app and desktop experiences.

CGI
each workspace was created brick by virtual brick. Starting with the architectural concept, then comes the interior design and shopping 3D models, finally the lighting and the render.

Architecture
Interior Design
CGI Render
Sketch → Render
Labels with personality

We designed hundreds of label templates to cover a variety of use cases and to demonstrate the endless possibilities for creativity. Every label was designed using the ZSB Label Designer.

Labels for everyone
From shipping labels to care instructions and jewelry price tags, the ZSB Label printer is ready for just about any small business.

An image of a shirt tag with a label that was printed using the ZSB.
An image of a wine bottle with a label that was printed using the ZSB.
An image of a box with a label that was printed using the ZSB.
An image of a set of creams in metal tins with a label that was printed using the ZSB.
An image of a envelope with a shipping label that was printed using the ZSB.
ZSB printer labels

Outcome

The ZSB Series launched in 2021 and has made a strong start as a new entrant. Popular with business owners, the ZSB product experience has also won praise and awards from iF Design, Reddot and Good Design Australia.

88
%

Uptake of customized label templates provided for free on the ZSB Desktop Label Designer.

Uptake of label templates

95
%

Faster setup time than competitor models.

Faster setup time

Next up:

Automating production with machine vision.

Zebra Technologies