Artwork Guidelines for Label Printing

At Abel Labels in Tasmania, our artwork guidelines help you to get the most out of our label printing services. By submitting your artwork within our guidelines, we can ensure the very best results possible.

Our Guidelines

General Artwork Specifications

At Abel Labels, we accept Print Ready PDFs with specific requirements to ensure the highest quality results. All colours must be converted to CMYK for digital printing or PMS for flexographic printing. The file should include a minimum 3mm bleed, and any photos or illustrations should be at a resolution of 300dpi for sharp, clear images. Fonts and links must be either embedded or provided separately, and no printer’s marks, such as trim marks, should be included. Additionally, finishing details or cutting lines should not appear on the print files. These guidelines help us deliver your labels with precision and clarity.

Spot Varnish, Foiling, and Emboss

For any finishing or embellishment areas, such as gold foil, please provide them in a separate PDF. To do this, open your artwork in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign and create a new layer specifically for the finish (e.g., “Gold Foil”). Next, create a new colour swatch and name it “Gold Foil.” Duplicate the elements you wish to enhance and place them on the new layer, ensuring these elements are identical to the original design. Convert all the selected elements to this new spot colour and save the file as a separate PDF. This PDF should be supplied along with your main artwork to ensure accurate finishing.

Forme-cutting

To show the final cut size of your design, please provide us with a cutting line as a separate PDF. On a new layer, use a spot colour named “die-cutter” or “forme cut” to create the shape and dimensions you wish for the cut, using a 1pt stroke. Export and supply this as a PDF alongside your artwork. For rectangular, square, and most unique shapes, it is important to include rounded corners to prevent what the industry refers to as “Dog Ears”—the curling of label corners. Dog Ears can cause labels to fray, peel, or become unstuck. The three most common corner radius sizes are 0.5mm, 1mm, and 2mm.

Considerations

For any updates or changes to designs, we will generally need the original design files. Ideally, this would be a packaged Illustrator or InDesign file. To package a file, simply open your design in Adobe Illustrator or InDesign, then go to the “File” menu and select “Package.” In the options, make sure to specify that all links and fonts are copied to the folder. Once packaged, send the folder to our pre-press team so we can proceed with your updates.

Tips and Tricks

Providing a packaged design file, along with the print-ready PDF, will give us the most flexibility when it comes to producing your design.
We recommend using a qualified graphic designer to set up print-ready files for commercial printing.
Elements are best kept 3mm away from the cutting line (or risk losing them!)
Remove any effects (shadows, gradients, noise, etc.) used to make the design look “real” on screen, but aren’t used in final print production.
Clipping masks do not remove unwanted elements but simply hide them. To avoid the risk of them unexpectedly popping up later on your print, choose to remove elements instead permanently. It’s always good practice to clean up.
Rich black generally provides the best coverage for large solid areas on paper stock. We recommend using a 60 / 40 / 40 / 100 ratio.
A Pantone colour book is a reliable way to pick Pantone and CMYK colours. We have a set on-site which anyone is welcome to use.
To pick colour from your computer, set your screen brightness to 50%, and select something around 10-25% brighter than you are after.
When printing in multicolour (CMYK) keep the amount of ink mixing to a minimum for bright and clean colours.
Avoid online platforms and tools that provide a free design service. Most of the time they are not compatible with our systems and will need to be remade with our Adobe software: costing you even more time and money.