The lines on a dieline
| Line | What the machine does | What to keep off it |
|---|---|---|
| Cut | Cuts clean through the board. | Text and logos: keep a 3 mm margin inside the line. |
| Crease | Presses the board to guide the fold, without cutting it. | Fine text and thin rules: a fold distorts anything that crosses it. |
| Perforation | Alternates short cuts and ties so the section tears off by hand. | Information the customer still needs after opening. |
| Partial cut (half cut) | Cuts part of the way through the board so it can fold backward. | Delicate solid areas: the surface may crack. |
| Bleed | Nothing: it’s a boundary for the printed artwork. | Nothing should stop short of it: the artwork extends all the way to this line. |
Colors and layers
There’s no universal color standard, but one rule is universal: each line type gets its own spot color, on a separate layer, set to overprint and never printed. Cutting software and RIPs recognize these spot colors by name.
On boite.ma, cut lines are red (spot color CutContour), crease lines are dashed blue (Crease) and bleed is green (Bleed). An export option swaps cut and crease for shops that use the opposite convention.
Areas to know
- The safe zone: a few millimeters inside the cuts and folds where you place no text or key elements. The cut can shift slightly from one sheet to the next.
- The glue area: the flap that gets glued to another panel. Keep it free of ink and varnish, or the glue won’t bond properly.
- Flaps and tabs: they tuck inside the box. Their visible side is often the reverse of the board.
- Reading direction: on a folding carton, the top and bottom flaps are often head-to-tail. Text that reads the right way up on the flat dieline can end up upside down once the box is assembled.
Grain and flute direction
Board has a direction. Paperboard folds more cleanly one way than the other; corrugated board is stiffer along the flutes. On a folding carton, the grain usually runs perpendicular to the main folds. The printer takes this into account during imposition, so leave them that flexibility.