Artwork Requirements

Please pay special attention to a couple of things when laying out your artwork:

• Cut Line – The cut line is the exact dimensions of you final printed sticker. All pertinent artwork should fall at least 1/8” inside the cut line. We will make the cut line based on the size you tell us you want your sticker to be.

• Bleed – Designs in which the artwork covers the entire final printed sticker require a bleed. Bleed is extra room outside the cut line to account for a slight margin of error. We require a 1/16” bleed outside the cut line for any design that bleeds.

Custom Sticker Makers specializes in full color graphic stickers, but we can also print any spot color design with the same vibrant graphic quality.

The first light blue line is the guide line for the cut placement, 1/16 to 1/8 inch inside of all edges of the design for bleed.	Here is the second set of guide lines for design placement to be within. An 1/8 inch inside of the cut line.

Crop and size the sticker design.

Supported file formats we can print from:

We can make bumper stickers and custom stickers and decals from any high resolution digital image file!

Our sticker making process produces photographic quality bumper stickers that look like photographs would look on any other high quality photo media. High Resolution Images work the best with our sticker printers, so make sure your custom sticker designs are at least 300dpi.

IMPORTANT: We require/approve only print-ready 300 dpi large image files, please DO NOT SEND 72 dpi images. We cannot reprint web size images, they are too small to create good-looking custom full color stickers.

Here's a quick way to tell if your image is 300 dpi:

It really all depends on the size and detail of your image/design...

If the digital file your are about to send us is under 22 kb... then it's WAY TOO SMALL to print stickers with.
The best-looking custom full color stickers result from files that are at least 1 mb...but, in general, the most important thing is that your design looks good printed at 300 dpi, whatever size it may be.

WATCH OUT for low resolution images nd designs that appear fuzzy or have jagged edges—they will print looking exactly the same on your custom stickers and decals. Images from the Web are generally saved at 72 dpi and generally will do this if you do not resize them. Custom graphics need to be made print size, ideally at 300 dpi or higher.

Lets say we took this actual 72 dpi web image on the left and enlarged it to a size of 5x4 inch at 300 dpi., it would print looking like the image on the right... which is very fuzzy and not so easy to read. (We do ship UPS or USPS, by the way!)

Our custom sticker printers pick up every little detail in your design and you will see every pixel translated onto your custom full color stickers and decals.

Make custom full color bumper stickers that are clean and crisp from bumpers away!

Run a proof of your design from your desktop printer, and make sure it’s the size you want. What does your graphic look like on your printer? That’s exactly what it will look like on your final printed sticker. When you are happy with your proof, send us your files. We will print whatever you send us, but we;re happier when we make stickers from good looking 300dpi images—and you will be, too.

Please call us if you still have questions about preparing your artwork. (Toll Free 1-800-313-5463)

If you need custom graphics created or need to improve or alter existing artwork

please visit our Custom Graphic Design page.

We have a online image editor that can be used to save 300 dpi PDF files of sized images for printing at CSM.

If you need a program to create digital graphics for your custom stickers and decals like Illustrator or Photoshop but simply don’t have it, you can download this great free program

Inkscape. Draw freely… Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw and is fairly easy to use.

OTHER TIPS FOR RESIZING 72 dpi IMAGES

If you have only a low resolution image to print custom full color stickers from you can shrink your 72 dpi image to get it back to 300 dpi to make it printable again, just much smaller.
Say your 72 dpi image is 5 inches:  Multiply  5 in. x 0.24, to equal 1.2 inches ( 0.24 is 24% = 72 dpi divided by 300 dpi ) , which will be the best size to be printable sticker quality from that file.

For clear and crisp sticker printing you should be able to zoom into the image and still have a detailed view of the design.
Vector images have no loss of image detail resolution when zoomed all the way in.
We like vector files to print custom stickers and decals from.
Pixels are fun to and also print stickers perfectly if at a high enough resolution.