Artwork and Dieline Setup

Most reprints are not printing failures. They are file failures that survived until the box was folded. The checks below take an hour and remove nearly all of them.

Start from the dieline, not from a rectangle

A dieline is the flat template of your box: the cut lines, the fold creases, the glue flaps and the tuck tabs, drawn at exact size. Designing onto anything else means designing onto the wrong shape.

If you do not have one, we draw it from your dimensions and send it as a template. That is standard on a first order and costs nothing on a standard structure. Design onto the layer we provide, and keep it in the file when you send artwork back so the two cannot drift out of registration.

If you already have a dieline, send it. We will quote against it directly rather than redrawing it.

Bleed: three millimeters, every edge

Any color or image that reaches the edge of the box must extend three millimeters beyond it.

Cutting has a small unavoidable movement in it. Without bleed, that movement leaves a fine white sliver along the trimmed edge. On a flat sheet it is a blemish; on a folded carton it runs along a fold where the eye is drawn to it, and it looks like a defect because it is one.

Bleed is needed on folded edges too, not just trimmed ones.

Safe zone: keep the important things inside

Pull all text, logos and anything that must not be cut at least four millimeters inside the trim line, and further from creases.

Creases deserve extra respect. Type that runs across a fold distorts as the board bends, and small type across a crease becomes unreadable. If a design element has to cross a fold, make it large enough to survive the distortion, or move it.

Color mode and spot inks

Supply artwork in CMYK. If your file is RGB, it has to be converted before printing, and a conversion we perform may not match what you saw on screen.

Where a color is a brand asset, name it as a Pantone spot swatch in the file rather than converting it to a process build. A swatch that is named correctly is printed as a spot ink; one that has been converted is printed as four-color and will drift between runs. The distinction between the two is explained further in the print and finish glossary.

Set solid blacks as a rich black build rather than 100% K alone, or large black areas come out flat and greyish.

Images

Every placed image needs to be 300 dpi at final printed size. That last part is where it goes wrong: an image at 300 dpi when it is 5 cm wide drops to 75 dpi when it is scaled to 20 cm. Check resolution at the size it will actually appear on the box.

Embed or package every linked image. A missing link is the single most common reason a file cannot be processed on arrival.

Fonts

Outline all type, or package the font files with the document. If a font is neither outlined nor supplied, it will be substituted, and a substituted font changes line breaks and layout in ways nobody notices until the box is printed.

Outlining is the safer of the two, because it removes the possibility entirely. Keep an un-outlined copy for yourself so you can still edit later.

Special finishes need their own layers

Foil, spot UV, embossing and any die-cut window each need a separate layer in the file, drawn as 100% of a single named spot color and set to overprint.

They are separate physical passes on separate plates or dies, so the machine needs to know exactly where they go. A foil area indicated by a gold-colored fill in the artwork is not a foil instruction — it is a printed gold rectangle.

Remember the unlaminated keyline under any foil that sits on soft-touch or matte film.

What to send

A press-ready PDF with fonts outlined, or the native AI or INDD file packaged with all links and fonts. Include the dieline layer. Keep the whole thing under 10 MB where you can, or send a ZIP.

The box configurator accepts files at its final step and attaches them to your specification, which means the quoting team sees the artwork and the spec together rather than reconciling two separate emails.

Before you send: a short checklist

• Dieline layer present and unmoved
• 3 mm bleed on every edge, including folded ones
• Text and logos 4 mm inside trim, clear of creases
• CMYK, with spot colors named not converted
• Rich black on large solid areas
• Images 300 dpi at final size, all links embedded
• Fonts outlined or packaged
• Foil, spot UV, emboss and window each on their own named layer