A box that is beautifully designed and cannot be made is not a design problem. It is an information problem: the designer did not have the shape, or the printer did not have the fonts, or nobody agreed in advance which colours would need their own plate. This page is the checklist we would rather you had before you start than after.
What a dieline is, and why it comes first
A dieline is the flat pattern of your packaging: the cutting lines that cut the board to shape, and the creasing lines that let it fold. It is not a picture of a box. It is the technical drawing that the die is made from, and until it exists, nothing about the design can be settled — not the panel sizes, not where the artwork folds, not how much room a fold takes up.
This is why the order of operations matters so much. Designing a box and then asking for a dieline means discovering, late, that the fold runs through the middle of the headline. Taking the dieline first and designing onto it means the fold positions are already facts you can design around.
We supply the dieline for any structure we are quoting, before any artwork work begins. If you have a dieline from a previous order or another supplier, send it: we will check the fold positions against the structure we intend to make, because a dieline that does not match the intended die produces a box that is wrong in a way nobody notices until the goods are packed.
The file checklist
Six things. If all six are present, most of the ways a print job goes wrong are already closed off.
| File | What it must contain | Why we need it in this form |
|---|---|---|
| Dieline (separate layer or separate file) | The flat cutting and creasing pattern for the structure, at finished size, as vectors. | The dieline is the shape. Artwork placed without a dieline is a picture of a box, and cannot be cut. We supply the dieline for your structure, so you place artwork onto it rather than guessing the fold positions. |
| Artwork on the dieline | Your design placed on the dieline's own layers, with panels aligned to the actual fold lines. | This is what catches a logo that lands on a crease or a fold that runs through the middle of a headline. Neither is visible on a flat image, and both are expensive to find later. |
| Fonts | Outlined / converted to paths, or the font files supplied with the licence to embed them. | A font that is not embedded is substituted on the production machine, and substituted type is the most common way a proof and a print run differ. |
| Images | Placed at the resolution they will actually print at, at final size, in the correct colour mode. | An image that looks sharp on screen can be far below print resolution once it is scaled up to box size. The screen cannot show you this; the resolution at final size can. |
| Colour declaration | Whether each colour is process (CMYK) or a named spot / Pantone, listed per element. | This is a costing decision, not a preference — see the next section. We need it before we can quote the print honestly. |
| Any variable or versioned element | Which panel changes, and the list of variables (names, codes, languages). | Variable data and multiple language versions change how the job is set up and run. Saying so before quoting avoids a re-quote after the artwork is approved. |
Colour: the decision that changes tooling
Colour is where a design decision quietly becomes a manufacturing decision, because in packaging each ink is a plate. That single fact explains most of the surprises in a print quote, and it is worth understanding before the design is finished rather than after.
| Colour approach | What it means on press | When it is the right choice |
|---|---|---|
| Process colour (CMYK) | Four plates, one impression each; colour built from dots. | The cheapest way to print a photographic or full-colour design. Fine gradients and images are only practical this way. |
| Spot colour (Pantone or matched ink) | One extra plate per spot colour. | Used when a brand colour has to be exact and consistent across materials and reprints. The cost is per colour, so a two-colour spot design is a different order from a four-colour process one. |
| Foil (metallic or coloured) | A stamping die, not an ink. A separate tool, and a separate pass. | Metallic effects cannot be mixed from process inks. Foil is the usual answer, and it is tooled per area — which is why a foil logo is cheap and a foil background is not. |
| White ink under print on a dark or clear surface | An extra plate and a separate pass. | On dark board or clear film, colour needs a white base or it reads as a tint of the material. Commonly quoted separately because it behaves like a spot colour. |
| Black, but two kinds of black | Rich black (mixed) versus single-plate black. | Large solid black areas are usually printed as a mix so they do not look washed out; small text is usually single-plate so it does not go blurry from misregistration. Tell us which areas are which and we will set it up that way. |
The question to ask at design stage, not at quote stage: which elements need to be an exact brand colour, and which can be built from process inks? A design with two spot colours plus a foil is three tools; a design that reproduces the same look in four-colour process with no foil is usually one. Both can be the right answer — but only one of them is the right answer for your budget, and the time to find out is before the artwork is finished.
Finishes, and why each one is a separate tool
Finishing is the part of a specification that buyers most often treat as decoration, and it is the part that most often moves the tooling cost. Each of the following is a separate pass or a separate piece of tooling, so the cost depends on the area covered and on how many of them you combine.
Lamination is a film applied over the printed sheet, in gloss, matte or a soft-touch grade. Its effect is as much about feel and scuff resistance as about appearance, and it protects the print underneath on a box that will be handled repeatedly.
Spot UV is a gloss varnish applied only where you want it, usually over a matte laminate so the difference in surface reads as contrast. It is a separate plate, so a logo in spot UV is inexpensive and an all-over spot UV effect is not.
Emboss and deboss are a shaped die pressed into the board to raise or recess an area. These need a sculpted die per design, which makes them the finish to reserve for one element rather than a pattern.
Foil stamping, as above, is a die and a pass, and it is the usual route to genuine metallic effects. Because it is tooled per area, the same logic applies: a mark in foil is standard, a full foil background changes the order.
The five errors that cause a reprint
These are the ones we actually encounter, in roughly the order of how often they cost somebody a reprint. Every one of them is invisible on screen and obvious on board.
| Error | What happens and how to avoid it |
|---|---|
| Fonts not outlined or embedded | The production machine substitutes a default font. The proof looks right and the run does not. This is the single most common cause of a reprint we see. |
| Images placed at screen resolution | The file looks crisp because a screen is low resolution. At box size the same image is soft or pixelated. Judge resolution at the final printed size, not at 100% on screen. |
| Bleed and trim treated as the same line | Design that stops exactly at the trim line will show a hairline of unprinted board wherever cutting drifts. Anything meant to run off the edge has to extend past it. The exact amount is structure-specific — we confirm it on your dieline rather than give you a number that may not apply. |
| Critical content on a fold, a crease or a glue flap | Creases crack ink and glue flaps are hidden once assembled. A QR code, a barcode or a legal line placed on either is invisible or unreadable in the finished box. |
| Dark print with fine reversed-out text | Four-colour dark backgrounds misregister slightly, and thin white type on top fills in. Either open the type weight, give it a single-plate backing, or place it on a lighter panel — decided at artwork stage, not at the press. |
What we check before anything is printed
Artwork checking and the 3D mockup are part of a quote rather than a paid extra, because catching these after a press run is expensive for everybody.
We check that the artwork sits correctly on the dieline and that nothing critical lands on a crease, a glue flap or a cut line. We check that fonts are outlined or embedded, that images resolve at the size they will print, and that the declared colour mode matches the way the job will actually be run. We check that anything meant to run off the edge extends past the trim, at the amount your structure requires rather than a figure copied from a different job. And we flag anything that looks like it will misbehave on press — fine reversed-out type on a four-colour dark, a large solid area next to a delicate detail — while there is still time to change it.
The 3D mockup is the other half of that check, and it is worth being clear about what it is for. It shows you how the design behaves as a three-dimensional object: which panels face the customer, what the fold does to the layout, how the box reads from the angle it will actually be seen from. It is a design approval tool. It is not structure approval — that is what the physical pre-production sample is for, and treating a render as if it approved the structure is the most common way buyers end up with a box that is exactly what they asked for and not what they wanted.
Where to go next
If you have the structure and the quantity, the quote request takes about two minutes and returns an itemised price with a 3D mockup. No design files are needed to start — we will send the dieline once we know which structure you are considering.
Buying
How to verify a packaging supplier
The three things worth verifying, the answers you can check, and the red flags worth acting on.
Process
MOQ and the first-order playbook
Why one-off costs dominate a small run, and how to size a first order you will not be stuck with.
Process
Freight and damage
Why a light box can be billed as heavy, and what actually crushes a carton in transit.
Process
Packaging cost guide
Where the money goes in a custom packaging order, and which levers actually move the total.
Buying from a new supplier? The supplier verification guide sets out what is actually worth checking. Working out how much to order? The MOQ playbook explains why the price curve bends where it does.