How to choose the right custom stickers for your business?

Are you looking to get custom printed stickers or labels? Are you unsure what is best for your application and need some help?

We’re here to help you get the best quality for the lowest price – saving you time & money.

Let’s jump straight in with the most important part – the material.

1. Pick the right paper or plastic material

It’s easy to ‘over-engineer’ your custom stickers. This may sound silly, but paying for extras you don’t need can add up, especially if you’re looking for thousands of stickers.

If your use is only short-term, say a few hours or minutes (think takeaway food or retail packaging), go for paper stickers to reduce costs.

However, if you have a premium brand, or need your sticker to last months, maybe years, go for a plastic (often referred to as vinyl sticker) with a laminate. The laminate will protect the printed image and make it waterproof & scratch-resistant. Lovely!

2. Choose the right print business

Firstly, they need to be able to supply the material you’ve chosen, whether it’s plastic or paper.

There are also other essential factors to consider outside of the obvious. These being; ensuring they can meet your deadline, being happy with the price, and confident their quality meets your standards. 

More specific to printing, check they can print the colors you need. If your supplier cannot print more than CMYK, they will be restricted in their range of colors and may not match yours. Especially if you’ve got bright oranges or greens.

CMYK (cyan, yellow, magenta & black), colors only are limiting. Find a printer that can print orange, violet, green, and whites to hit your desired colors. 

3. Provide high-resolution artwork

The general rule is the higher the resolution of your design, the better the outcome. This is only true to a point, but your printer will scale it down if needed.

You get 2 types of artwork; vector or bitmap. Try to provide vector artwork if possible.

Vectors are made from maths – they can scale and not lose their quality. Bitmap images are made up of hundreds of tiny pixels. When these pixels are scaled up, they become more apparent, making your picture look blurred.

Bitmap images need to be 300 DPI (dots per inch) resolution to print the best and the same size as the final sticker.

4. Keep the shape simple

We regularly see complicated cutlines on stickers – this can give a messy finish. The edges, because they have lots of small bits, pick up over time, making the sticker not so durable. A simple cut leaves a nice clean edge and a better finish.

Clear stickers, where you want the background to be transparent, really benefit from a smooth, simple cut. The image below is a good example:

5. Get the right size!

Getting the right size sounds more straightforward than it is. We see lots of people get it incorrect.

The primary reason is customers zoom in on their computer and view their label design. Make sure you view it at 100% scale. It’s crucial for little stickers (sub-1″) because of small text.

I hope these 5 ideas help you get the best stickers for your new business, product line, or hobby. If you need help or have any questions, please comment below.