All articles · 2026-09-18

Printed carry bags: one file, several sizes, no reprints

Paper bags are ordered in three sizes and printed from a flat die line. Why the artwork has to scale without redrawing, and where the fold lines go.

A shop orders carry bags in a small, a medium and a large, usually at the same time and usually from a supplier who sends back a flat die line and asks you to place your artwork on it. The same mark then has to sit on three different rectangles without being redrawn three times.

A bag outline with a handle and a heart-shaped motif: on the left a small compressed copy; on the right clean outlines and flat colour.
Left: 180 pixels, JPEG quality 62. Right: Logo mode, three colours. 4 paths, 103 nodes.

The die line is theirs, the artwork is yours

Your supplier’s template shows the flat shape of the bag before it is folded: front, back, two gussets, a base and a glue flap. Place artwork only where you mean it to be seen, keep the fold lines on their layer, and do not move or rescale the template — it is cut from a real die and the tolerances are not yours to change.

Why vector is the whole answer here

Three sizes from one file is the definition of what vector geometry is for. A mark placed at 120 mm on the large bag and 70 mm on the small one is the same file scaled, with no loss and no second export. With a raster logo, the large bag is the one that gives you away: it is where the stretching becomes visible from across the shop.

The motif on the bag magnified: on the left the curves break into pixel steps; on the right they are smooth continuous curves.
The motif at roughly 2.2×. On a large bag this detail is printed several centimetres across, where every pixel step is visible.

Ink, not screen

Bags are usually printed in one or two flat colours by screen or flexo, not in full colour. That means gradients, soft shadows and subtle tints are either impossible or expensive. Decide the one-colour version of your mark deliberately, and specify the ink by its printing reference rather than describing it — "our green" means nothing to a press operator.

Things that go wrong

  • Artwork placed across a fold, so the mark has a crease through its middle
  • A design that reaches the edge without bleed, leaving a white line along one side
  • Text in the glue flap area, which is covered when the bag is made up
  • A logo scaled to fill the bag: on a large bag, restraint reads as confidence and crowding reads as a market stall

A traced mark is clean and scalable, which solves the file problem. It does not solve the layout problem — a bag is looked at while somebody carries it, side on and in motion, and the only real test is a printed sample held at arm’s length.