When shopping around and designing your new custom boxes, you will hear the term “dieline” shot around quite a bit! To those who are new to this, it might seem like a technical term only a packaging whiz would understand. But the truth is, it’s pretty simple and crucial to the production of your custom packaging.

Here, we’ll cover everything you need to know about dielines and how to read and use them for your own custom packaging projects.

1. What is a Dieline?

In packaging and print, a dieline is a design blueprint that outlines the exact layout of the packaging. It’s a guide for designers and manufacturers to ensure all visual elements such as cut lines, fold lines, bleed lines and safe zone are marked on its flattened form before production. By looking at a dieline you can see all sides of the box through its flat construction, format your artwork to your specific packaging needs and see exactly where and how your artwork will be applied.

2. Why Dielines Are Important

Dielines are the first glimpse of your final packaging design. They play a vital role in every step of the packaging design process from visualizing the final design to detecting errors, refining the layout, die-cutting process, prototyping and mass production.

Error Detection and Proofing

The dieline is a crucial component of packaging design that allows designers to review, identify, and correct any issues with the artwork, structure, typography, or dimensions before finalizing the design. So, to achieve the desired outcome, expect to go through multiple rounds of revisions and refinements. Once the dieline has been finalized, the next step is to preview your design using 3D rendering software.

Visualizing Final Dieline in 3D

Importing your dieline into 3D rendering software like Pacdora or Esko Studio Illustrator Plugin creates a digital mockup that allows you to visualize how the packaging will look in its final, assembled form. This crucial step ensures the correct layout and placement of visual elements while helping identify potential design flaws that might not be visible in a 2D format. The 3D visualization also helps you assess the practicality of your design choices, such as the functionality of fold lines, perforation, accuracy of cut lines, visual impact of colors, and even box sizes or styles. Last but not least, sharing these 3D mockups with stakeholders or clients can facilitate better communication and approval processes, leading to a more efficient and error-free packaging design workflow.

Die Cutting

After the printing phase, your packaging materials undergo a process called die-cutting, where they are cut into their desired shapes. Manufacturers utilize your dielines to create a custom die board. This process involves programming laser engravers to etch the die layout onto the die board, which is then pressed onto the packaging materials to achieve precise cutouts. It’s crucial that your dieline design is finalized at this stage to ensure accuracy. For more detailed information on die cutting, you can visit our blog post here.

Prototyping

Before mass production, request a prototype of your finished packaging based on your dieline to do a final check of the structure and design.

3. Dieline Examples

Here are some dieline examples to show what a dieline looks like for different types of packaging.

4. How to Read Dielines

A dieline serves as the essential blueprint for your custom packaging production, making it a fundamental tool for anyone in the packaging and printing industry. This technical drawing includes several components that guide manufacturers in producing packaging that is precise to your design. While the specific requirements, labeling, colors, and terminology may slightly vary depending on the manufacturer and software being used, the core elements of dieline design remain consistent across the industry. With that said, let’s look at what a dieline should include below:

Cut Lines (Trim Lines) – Shown as solid black lines, indicate where the die-cutting machine will cut. Essentially, these lines outline the exact final size of your packaging design after the trimming process.

Bleed Lines – Shown as solid green lines, define the extra printing space called the bleed area that extends beyond the cut line. This extra space, typically 0.125″ (3mm) past the final cut line, accounts for the slight movement of the packaging material during machine cutting. So, extending your artwork to the bleed line prevents important design elements from being cut off or unwanted white edges appearing in the final product. For quick tip, it’s best to extend less critical elements like background images or graphics to the bleed line, while keeping essential components such as text and logos within the safe zone inside the cut line.

Fold Lines (Crease Lines) – Shown as solid red lines, indicate where your packaging will be creased and folded to construct your packaging into its final 3D form.

Safety Lines (Margin Lines) – Shown as green dotted lines, mark the safe zone for all important graphic elements of your design, like logos and text. Keep these elements inside the safety lines to make sure they aren’t cut off during trimming. This way, even if the die-cutting machine shifts slightly inward past the cut line, everything within the safety lines will remain intact and not be cut off.

Perforation Lines – Shown as black dotted or dashed lines, indicate where the packaging should be punched that makes it easier to fold or torn. They are often used in packaging that requires easy opening or separation.

Glue Tabs (Seal Tabs) – Shown as green criss cross tabs, indicate where glue or adhesive should be applied in the construction of your packaging.

5. How to Create Dielines

If you are working with a packaging designer or manufacturer, you likely won’t need to worry about creating the dieline yourself, as this is the designer’s responsibility. However, as a business owner or someone interested in entering the packaging industry, understanding the software and technical requirements for creating a dieline can be highly beneficial. This knowledge allows you to effectively communicate your vision with the designer or manufacturer, ensuring all elements and settings are correct in your print-ready file without errors. Below, we’ll guide you through the basics and steps to focus on.

Use Structural Design Software

To create a dieline, professional software is essential. ArtiosCAD is an industry-standard tool for structural packaging design, seamlessly integrating with manufacturing and die-cutting processes. It enables designers to create precise and complex packaging structures, taking into account factors like material type, weight, and thickness. This helps detect quality issues and ensures the design is practically possible to construct and can hold the weight of your products.

The ability to create a 3D visualization of your dieline is also important. Tools like ArtiosCAD offer the capability to preview the product and packaging without needing physical samples.

Other widely used vector art software, such as Adobe Illustrator, is better suited for creating artwork, graphics, and visual elements of packaging. It is not recommended for creating dieline structures, as manufacturing machines do not work directly with it and require adjustments or conversions before printing or cutting.

For beginners or those looking for standard packaging designs, online platforms like Pacdora provide a large collection of template libraries to help you create dielines and mockups easily. These tools simplify the process, allowing you to focus on designing eye-catching packaging.

Defining the Flat Size and Layout

Defining the flat size and layout of the packaging to use in your dieline is another important step. This means determining the dimensions and layout of the design elements on one piece of packaging material.

The best way to ensure dielines are accurate to your custom packaging is to provide the packaging designer with existing packaging designs or boxes that are closest to what you have in mind. This way you give the designer a starting point to work from and you can both modify until the final packaging is agreed.

If you are working with a manufacturer, they will likely provide you with a finalized dieline template that includes bleed requirements and manufacturing notes. If you’re using tools like ArtiosCAD or Pacdora, they offer a collection of preset libraries, simplifying the process of creating a dieline. All you need to do is place your artwork onto the dieline and ensure that the colors are correctly matched.

Include Dieline Markers

Creating dieline markers is an essential part of the process. Ensure that these markers are included and clearly labeled, as they indicate where the packaging will be cut, folded, and glued. These guides are crucial for the production team to manufacture and assemble the packaging correctly and efficiently.

Output Format

When preparing your packaging dieline, it’s crucial to save the final output in an editable vector format such as PDF or AI (Adobe Illustrator) file, with the color mode set to CMYK. These formats are considered industry standards because they maintain design precision, ensure print quality, and allow for seamless modifications before and during the production process. If you’re using specialized structural design software like ArtiosCAD, you can easily export your dieline as an AI file. This file can then be imported into vector artwork software like Adobe Illustrator, where you can apply your artwork and make any necessary design adjustments.

For detail step-by-step process of preparing artwork, read our guide here.

6. The Die-Cutting Process

Once your dieline is printed onto the packaging material, it moves to the cutting phase called die-cutting. Think of it like using a giant cookie cutter called the metal die plate, which is custom-made to match your packaging’s dieline design. First, the packaging material passes through the die-cutting machine, where powerful rollers and cutting plates press the metal die through the material with calculated force. This results in clean, precise cuts that perfectly match your dieline’s specifications, ready to be folded into its final 3D shape. To learn more about the die-cutting process, read this article that guides you through the details.

7. Need Help Creating Dieline?

As you can see, dielines play a crucial role in the final look of your packaging. So, it’s important to understand what dielines are and how they are created.

Not a designer or manufacturer? No worries! PakFactory offers full spectrum services for all your custom packaging needs including, design, structural engineering and much more.