All articles · 2026-09-18

Die-cut sticker artwork: the design, and the line it is cut on

A sticker is two things: a printed design, and a separate path the blade follows. How to prepare both — and why the cut line is not the edge of the artwork.

A die-cut sticker is printed and then cut, and those are two different files doing two different jobs: the artwork, and a single closed path the blade follows. Sending only the artwork leaves the cut line to somebody else’s software — which usually traces the outer edge of the design exactly, and produces a sticker with no border at all.

A round badge design in teal and yellow: on the left a small JPEG with muddied colours; on the right flat exact colours and clean edges.
Left: 160 pixels, JPEG quality 58. Right: Logo mode, three colours. 5 paths, 72 nodes.

The cut line is offset, deliberately

A blade is not perfectly registered to the print — on most machines it is out by a fraction of a millimetre. That is why die-cut stickers have a border: it absorbs the error. A cut line 2 to 3 mm outside the artwork gives the printer room to be slightly wrong without slicing through your design, and it is also what makes the sticker easy to peel.

Bleed, and why the printer asks for it

Extend any colour that runs to the sticker edge about 3 mm past the cut line. If the cut lands slightly inside your artwork, it cuts into colour; if it lands slightly outside and there is no bleed, it leaves a thin white rim. Bleed costs nothing and removes both.

The edge of the badge magnified: on the left the boundary is a gradient of blended pixels; on the right it is a clean single edge.
The outer edge. On the left there is no single boundary for a cut path to be offset from, which is exactly the file a printer cannot work with.

What to send

  • Artwork as SVG or PDF, at the finished size in millimetres
  • The cut line as its own path, named the way your printer asks — often "CutContour" or a spot colour they will specify
  • Bleed of about 3 mm beyond the cut line on any colour that reaches the edge
  • Ask the printer for their template before designing: every shop has slightly different rules, and following theirs is faster than arguing with them