Who doesn’t love stickers? They’re nostalgic and fun, and creating stickers for your brand is a great form of creative expression for you and your customers.

Turn your brand assets into custom stickers and custom labels and level up your branding game while also creating connections with your customers.

Whether you’re creating a new a product that needs a unique label or attending a trade show and want stickers to pass out as swag, there are a few ways to bring your branding to life in a way that sticks.

Custom sticker options

When it comes to custom stickers, there are three types to consider: die cut stickers, kiss cut stickers and clear stickers. (If you enjoy designing using Canva checkout this quick tutorial about exporting print ready files.)

Die cut stickers: Often when people refer to a die cut sticker, they are talking about a sticker cut into a unique shape. Actually, die cut stickers can be almost any kind of sticker and the term is referring to how the stickers are cut. A die cut sticker is cut with a laser and can be either glossy or matte. These are the most popular custom made stickers. Die Cut Stickers are always finished individually, and will have a split backing for easy peeling and applying. This means you won’t have to struggle with the spot where the edge of the backing meets the stickers, just give these stickers a slight fold and the backing will easily peel away.

Custom sticker examples available from Sticker Giant.

Kiss cut stickers: Kiss Cut Stickers have the same great qualities as our Die Cut Stickers, but will be finished with a larger square backing that you can see surrounding your sticker design. The wider backing is ideal for delicate designs, or sticker designs with rounded edges that you know you’ll want to have stacked or propped up for display. Choose from Glossy or Matte laminations for the finish that goes with your sticker designs best!

Clear stickers: Sometimes it’s good to be transparent. By printing your custom stickers on a clear, transparent material that is. With clear stickers, any part of your sticker that is not your design, will be transparent, allowing the surface it’s applied on to show through. Clear Stickers are popular as window stickers, and can be printed with your choice of a back facing or front facing adhesive for versatility in how these stickers get applied.

Custom label examples available from Sticker Giant.

Custom label options

A custom label is a fantastic way to easily create memorable, branded packaging. Check out these five options depending on what you’re packaging.

Glossy labels: These are the most popular labels, and are printed on a white material so your color options are limitless. They are finished with a protective glossy laminate.

Matte labels: Another popular packaging option, these labels are printed on the same material as glossy labels, but finished with a matte lamination.

Clear labels: Boldly go where few labels go and show off your product or packaging through the clear material these labels are printed on.

Glossy paper labels: The least expensive option for custom labels, these look anything but cheap when printed with your designs on a glossy paper material.

Matte recycled paper labels: Printed on a recycled vellum material, these labels have a seriously luxurious look and feel to them.

If you’re going to be using a label application machine to customize your packaging and need your designs to spool off the roll in a specific direction, just let the sticker provider know when you are customizing your labels and they’ll ensure this roll is created correctly.

How Set Up Artwork for Custom Stickers and Labels

Stickers can be printed from both raster and vector images. Vector images are infinitely scalable graphics made up of paths, lines and shapes. Vector graphics are commonly made in Adobe Illustrator and have file extensions .ai, .eps and .svg. Raster images are made up of pixels and are commonly photographic. Raster images need to be 300dpi at print size for high quality printing.

Diagram of how to set up your artwork for custom sticker and label printing

In order for your stickers to print with the best possible quality send your artwork in vector format or raster format at 300dpi CMYK color mode.

Every custom sticker artwork file has three main attributes: safe area, cut line and bleed. All essential information on a sticker like text or logos should stay inside the safe area. The area outside the safety zone is for background color and bleed. Generally, the safe area begins 1/8″ inside the cut line, but this can be as narrow as 1/16″, just let us know.

Any artwork that goes to the edge of the sticker should extend to the bleed line. This creates a tolerance that ensures the background doesn’t get cut off in production. The bleed extends 1/8” out from the cut line.

The cut line is the edge of your finished sticker. The lasers cut along this path during production. In general, the cutline is setup 1/8” out from your artwork, and this can be setup to be 1/16″ out from your artwork. Cut lines should always have rounded corners.

Ready to get started with quality stickers or labels? Craft Industry Alliance members can save 20% on their order at StickGiant.