Hi there! :)

Hope you’re safe and well wherever you are in these crazy times…

Last time I promised to share my experience of ordering custom sticker sheets. Here’s the first post on this topic. It will explore the aspects within your control that you need to take care of before ordering.

I hope your find this useful even if some points may be obvious. Most of them weren’t for me :)

Here we go!

Printing specs

So you found a website to order stickers from. Have a good look at their printing specifications. If the specs are vague, consider clarifying them as certain things may jeopardise the final result. Important specs are:
- minimum distance between your design and cut lines,
- minimum distance between cut lines of different designs,
- potentially the minimum size of a sticker,
- tolerance of movement when printing and cutting.
Some companies provide templates for your design that include predefined bleed and margins for the sheet, which really helps, especially if you’re doing it for the first time.
Don’t take any risks with colour format. Although many printeries can convert RGB to CMYK for you, you’re not likely to be happy with the result! (Been there a few of years ago when printing my first postcards hehe).
Resolution of at least 300 dpi is a must. Probably too obvious to mention but you never know :)
Convert any text to paths so that the font is printed correctly.

The devil is in the cut lines

Make sure your cut lines are good.
Cut lines around the stickers on the sheet can be a pain in the neck if you are not used to working in vector, which is the format most printeries require. When ordering my first batch, I could not provide vector but my raster cut lines were graciously accepted, improved and turned into vector ones by the printery. For a different supplier I had to buy new software to create them myself but quickly run into issues because I didn’t consider the complexity of these lines, more on which in the next point.
Your cut lines need to be as smooth and simple as possible. This is to avoid the knife going too deep into sharp curves and leaving you with a sort of a broken line. And bear in mind that vector lines can appear pretty fluid and smooth when zoomed out when in reality they might have plenty of small sharp curves and angles that are difficult for the knife will follow.
If your cut lines are hand-drawn and not auto-generated, you definitely need to check if there is enough distance between them and the designs. I suppose this can be done digitally but I prefer to make a test print (which is a good practice anyway) and measure the distance with the ruler. Then I simply adjust the curves where needed. Maybe there are more efficient ways - let me know in the comments :)

Last but not least

If you intend to sell your stickers - make sure to specify that the backing sheet needs to be blank. Some printeries (probably the ones that mainly print for advertising campaigns where stickers aren’t meant to be sold) use material with watermarked backing sheet and it doesn’t look all that great.
Oh and don’t be shy to ask for free samples if possible, or buy a small sample pack. Proof prints for sticker sheets are crazy expensive but seeing other people’s stickers (even die-cut ones) can give you an idea of print and material quality.

Okay, I think these are the key points. Let me know what you think. Have you ever had any trouble with any of these? Congrats if you haven’t btw :D

In the next post I’ll talk more about things that can go wrong in production. Oh boy, if only I knew there could be so many! 🙈

Can’t wait to read the second part? Here it is:
Ordering Custom Sticker Sheets: Things I Wish Someone Warned Me About Pt. 2