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How To Supply Artwork For Die Cutting And Kiss Cutting?
Ever looked at your standard shaped prints and thought “These would look so much cooler in the shape of a giraffe?” Ok, so maybe you didn’t think about giraffes in particular, but there’s no doubt that generic rectangle prints can sometimes do with a little spice, a little pizazz, a little something to grab the attention of your customers.
This is where die cutting and kiss cutting can swoop in to save your printed designs from rectangle prison. With die cutting and kiss cutting, a whole new world of shapes is now open, letting you actually make those giraffe shaped flyers you’ve always dreamed of.
Getting your prints die cut or kiss cut is a special process and so needs a special artwork setup. Just because this setup is described as “special” doesn’t mean it has to be difficult. Together, we’re going to have a look at the right way to supply die cut shaped business cards, bookmarks, stickers, playing card boxes – the list goes on.
What Is Die Cutting And Kiss Cutting?
Die cutting and kiss cutting both refer to creating a custom shape from a sheet of paper or sticker material. A custom shape is pretty much anything that isn’t your typical rectangle or square.
The difference between kiss and die cutting is how much the sheet is cut into. Die cutting cuts through the entire sheet, leaving you with individual cut out shapes. Kiss cutting, on the other hand, only cuts partway into the material. This leaves you with a complete sheet with cut shapes that can be peeled away at a later date.
We’ve got a whole post dedicated to the difference between die cutting and kiss cutting. Check that out if you’d like to learn more.
The most important thing to take away from this is that kiss cutting is for stickers and die cutting is for everything else!
The Different Types Of Die Cutting
When you think about die cutting, chances are you’re thinking about large metal cutting plates that stamp out each shape. In traditional die cutting, metal dies are created that match the shape of your design. This cookie cutter like form then applies pressure to the paper, cutting out the shape.
Sometimes this pressure is strong enough to cut through multiple sheets at once. Sometimes the pressure applied is so light that the form only kiss cuts instead of die cutting.
At Aura Print, traditional die cutting is used for the following:
- Large order quantities
- Duplex and triplex papers (32pt and 38pt)
- Laminate applied to both sides of the print
There is another way to die cut and that’s using our in-house Veloblade. This nifty bit of kit uses laser sensors and a blade to cut your designs from a single sheet. The printed sheets are lined up on the machine’s conveyor belt where they pass through the computer-controlled blade before popping out the bottom to be collected.
The Veloblade can do it all. Die cut, kiss cut, creasing – you name it, this machine can do it.
Our Veloblade sure gets a lot of use and can be found running the following:
- Playing card boxes and other packaging
- Single thickness papers
- Anything without a laminate or laminate to one side only
- Stickers on sheets and stickers with padding
- Complex shapes (shape dependent)
How To Supply Artwork For Die Cutting?
Moving on to supplying your artwork for die cutting. Our design team needs three things from you – your print, the shape you want your print to be, and an image of your print and shape together. That’s it!
Let’s look at an example of this in action.
See how each part is separate from each other? That’s exactly how we need your files to be supplied. Whether you want to use unique files or just different pages of a PDF – the choice is up to you.
Make sure your cutline for your shape is a continuous stroke (ideally 1pt thick and pink if we’re going to be picky about it). Our team needs to know exactly what shape you want your die cut bookmarks and invitations to be. So don’t forget to send them your cutline with the rest of your files.
How To Supply Artwork For Double Sided Die Cutting?
You might be thinking “Surely there’s no difference between artwork files for single sided and double sided die cutting.” And yes, you would be right. Partially.
For double sided die cuts we still need the same three files for print, shape, and composite. The only difference here is the way you arrange your back print design.
Imagine you’ve cut out an uneven shape – perhaps it’s a cute house or maybe it’s a cat playing the piano. The shape that you will see on the front side will appear to be flipped when you rotate it to face the back.
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.
How To Supply Artwork For Die Cut Playing Card Boxes?
We’ve taken a step up the die cutting ladder and have now arrived at prints that have both cut and crease lines. Crease lines allow for easy folding to help assemble your boxes. Color coding your cut and crease lines helps our team know which is which. Ideally, pink lines should be used for the cut and blue lines should be used for the creases.
All packaging boxes contain “hidden” areas of print - parts of print that are no longer visible once the box is built. There’s nothing to stop you from putting print here but beware for it won’t be seen!
Make your life easier and request a custom box template from our team – it will be labeled with the print and no print areas just for you.
How To Supply Artwork For Perforated Die Cutting?
If you’re looking for a tear away on your print, then perforated die cutting could be for you. Emphasis on the “could be”.
Perforated tickets with a single tear away section do not need to be die cut. Singular perforation lines can be run through our specialised perforation machine or even done by hand. So how do you know whether to pick die cut perforation or not?
The answer’s simple. If your artwork contains one (or more) 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
Artwork for die cut perforation is like artwork for standard die cutting. Again, we still need the three main files – print, perforation line, and composite. But 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 clicked perforation by mistake when you actually want a crease. Hey, it happens.
The above example contains all three factors that are classed as a die cut perforation.
How To Supply Artwork For Kiss Cutting Stickers On Sheets?
We have two different options for our custom cut stickers – “on sheets” and “individual with padding”. First, we’ll cover the on sheets option.
Stickers on sheets are, as the name suggests, stickers on a sheet. Our artworkers will take your sticker and duplicate it across a single sheet, filling the page with as many of your designs as possible. Each sticker is kiss cut, remaining altogether on the same sheet.
Setting up your kiss cut sticker artwork is the same as the rest of the die cut artwork set ups. We don’t expect you to prepare the whole sheet, don’t worry! Just send us the three files – print, cutline, and composite – and we should be good to go.
How To Supply Artwork For Individual Stickers With Padding?
Our second uniquely shaped sticker option is individual stickers with padding. These stickers are both die cut and kiss cut. Very fancy!
As individual stickers with padding are cut twice - you’ve guessed it - we need two cutlines.
The first cutline is the kiss cut shape. This shape should be the size you’d like your sticker to be. The second cutline is the die cut shape. This shape needs to be 5mm larger than the kiss cut shape to give yourself some room to be able to peel the sticker back.
Another thing to consider with individual stickers is the bleed area. With all our other die cut products, we only need 2mm worth of bleed along each edge. But our individual stickers with padding, need a whopping 7mm bleed on each edge!
The reason for this huge jump in bleed is to account for the area between the kiss and the die cut. That extra area needs to be printed too, so give it some love with 7mm bleed.
Want To Know More About Kiss And Die Cutting?
So, you know how to set up kiss cut and die cut artwork for print. Now’s the time to get started with your custom shaped projects. We’ve got a team of graphic designers on site who can look at your desired die cut shapes if you have any worries about intricacy. Or, if you need a little more help setting up your die cut artwork, we can provide you with bespoke advice tailored to your very own prints.
Give us a call today to kick start your die cutting dreams with Aura Print.
