How To Supply Artwork For Kiss And Die Cutting

To supply your artwork for die cutting items such as custom bookmarks and business cards, our design team needs three high print quality images from you.

Let’s take a look at the example below:

Whether you want to use unique files or different pages of a PDF – the choice is up to you, but the three images do need to be separate from one another.

Please make sure that your designs have the appropriate crop marks and bleed and the cutline for your shape is a continuous stroke (ideally 1pt thick and pink). The reason we ask for three images is so there is no issue of bleed lines or crop marks printing with the final print, but there is a clear understanding for our team of how you wish the print to look. Check out our guide if you would like to learn more about image resolution and a breakdown of image formats.

For double-sided die cuts such as double-sided business cards and custom made flyers, we require five images as we need to ensure your design is arranged correctly on the reverse side.

For example, if you have a double-sided asymmetric design, we need to understand how you want both sides of the print to look once the item is complete. The shape that you will see on the front side will appear to be flipped when you rotate it to face the back. With the composite supplied we can confirm exactly how you want your print to look from all angles.

As the shape flips when you turn it from front to back, make sure you don’t get caught out with your print. Too many times have we seen text being chopped off as it has not been adjusted to match the mirrored back shape. At the proof stage, our team will show you where the front and back shapes will land. If you do forget to flip, you'll have another chance here to correct it before printing.

Please ensure the cutline for your shape is a continuous stroke (ideally 1pt thick and pink). If you wish to provide unique files or different pages of a single PDF – that choice is up to you, but the five images do need to be separate from one another.

If you wish to learn how to put crop marks in indesign for each of your designs, or ai border design creation, please make sure that you are checking our guide to bleed marks.

Our custom packaging options combine both cut and fold lines which are perfect for elevating your brand visibility, and a great way to offer customers a long-lasting impression. Cut lines shape the product and fold lines allow for easy package assembly. Colour coding the cut and fold lines will allow our team to determine which is which. Ideally, pink lines should be used for the cut and blue lines should be used for the folds.

To supply die cut packaging designs, our team needs three high print quality images from you.

All packaging contains “hidden” areas of print - parts of print that will no longer be visible once the item is assembled. There’s nothing to stop you from putting print here but beware that it will not be visible!

You can request custom box templates from our team – it will be labelled with the print and no print areas just for you.

If you want to use unique files or different pages of a PDF – the choice is up to you, but the three images do need to be separate from one another.

Please make sure that your designs have the appropriate bleed and crop marks and the cutline for your shape is a continuous stroke (ideally 1pt thick pink for cutlines and 1pt thick blue for fold lines). The reason we ask for three images is so there is no issue of cutlines, fold lines, crop marks or bleed with the final print, but there is a clear understanding for our team of how you wish the final print to look.

If you want to use unique files or different pages of a PDF – the choice is up to you, but the three images do need to be separate from one another.

Please make sure that your designs have the appropriate bleed and crop marks and the cutline for your shape is a continuous stroke (ideally 1pt thick pink for cutlines and 1pt thick blue for fold lines). The reason we ask for three images is so there is no issue of cutlines, fold lines, crop marks or bleed with the final print, but there is a clear understanding for our team of how you wish the final print to look.

You can request custom box templates from our team – it will be labelled with the print and no print areas just for you.

If you are looking to create perforated tickets with a single tear away section, then they may not necessarily need to be die cut. However, we have just the ticket as singular perforation lines can be run through our specialised perforation machine or even completed by hand.

However, if your artwork contains any of the following, then die cut perforation is for you:

· Perforation lines that end part way into the sheet.
· Vertical and horizontal perforation lines on the same sheet.
· More than three perforation lines on the same sheet.

To supply die cut perforation designs, our team needs three high print quality images from you.

This time, instead of a solid line, we need a dashed line. This lets our team know that you want perforation and that you haven’t selected perforation by mistake (it does happen!) If you want to use unique files or different pages of a PDF – the choice is up to you, but the three images do need to be separate from one another.                                           

Please make sure that your designs have the appropriate bleed and crop marks and the cutline for your shape is a dashed stroke (ideally 1pt thick and pink).

We have two different options for our kiss cut stickers – “on sheets” and “individually cut with padding”. Both options have unique applications and benefits, and it may be situation-based which option is preferred.

Stickers on sheets are, as the name suggests, stickers on a sheet. Our artworkers will perform a precise cutting sticker kiss cut technique to duplicate your design across a single sheet, filling the page with as many of your designs as possible. Each sticker has a kiss cut, remaining altogether on the same sheet ready to be peeled off by you at a later date.

To supply kiss cut sticker designs, our team needs three high print quality images from you.

If you want to use unique files or different pages of a PDF – the choice is up to you, but the three images do need to be separate from one another.

Please make sure that your designs have the appropriate bleed marks and the cutline for your shape is a solid stroke (ideally 1pt thick and pink).

Our second uniquely shaped sticker option is individual stickers with padding. This option requires two cutlines as they are both kiss cut and die cut.

The first cutline is the kiss cut shape which should be the size you’d like your sticker to be. The second cutline is the die cut shape which needs to be 5 mm larger than the kiss cut shape to give yourself some room to be able to peel the sticker.

To supply padding designs, our team needs three high print quality images from you.

As with all our die cut products we require 2 mm worth of bleed, but with the kiss cut with padding, we require an additional 5 mm bleed on each edge. The reason for this huge jump in bleed is to account for the area between the kiss cut and the die cut. That extra area needs to be printed too, so give it some love with 7 mm bleed.

Now that you are perfectly positioned to be a print prep professional, with a clear and concise understanding of the differences between perforations and padding. You know your PDFs from your printmarks to ensure your precisely prepared prints are perfectly positioned. If you do have any queries, questions, comments or concerns feel free to contact the team where we will be happy to help.