What is die cutting in printing?
Die cutting cuts printed sheets into a shape other than a plain rectangle, such as a box, a rounded card or a custom sticker, by pressing a sharp, shaped blade (the die) through them.
What it means for your file
The die is made to the dieline: traditionally steel blades bent to shape and set in a board, with blunt creasing rules for the folds. Short runs are often cut by a digital knife or laser cutter instead. The artwork needs bleed past every cut, because the cut can shift slightly.
Kiss cutting is the same idea at a shallower depth: it cuts through a sticker but not its backing.
An example
A door hanger is die cut: the printer’s die cuts the outline, the hole and its slit in one stroke. A folding carton’s die cuts the outline and creases every fold at the same time. In both, the artwork runs past every cut line, usually by 0.125 in (3 mm), and the cut line itself sits on its own layer as a named spot color.
A common mistake
Drawing the cut path into the artwork as a printed outline, or adding a custom shape to a job the printer quoted as a plain rectangle. A shape needs its own die or a digital cutter, so it changes the price, and the cut line has to be on its own non-printing layer or it prints on every piece.
How to fix it
If your printer sent the file back saying “The artwork doesn’t fit our dieline,” the fix page has the step-by-step way to do it yourself, and a fixed price if you’d rather have it done.
Where else it comes up
All print terms in the glossary, or run your file through the free print-ready checker.
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