The die line for
everything flat you have printed this week
Fourteen parametric templates from boxlab's own catalog — printing items, stationery and point of sale. Give one its finished size and it gives back the cut, the creases where it folds and the number that fits on your sheet. C’est gratuit. Vraiment.
- Fourteen things, not one.
- Leaflets, booklet covers, door hangers, cards, tags, bookmarks, letterheads, pads, folders, envelopes, table tents, shelf talkers, hanging cards and counter standees.
- The finished size is the size.
- You type what the job is quoted at. Bleed grows outside it, the safety margin is drawn inside it, and the flaps are added where a shape has them.
- Folds that close.
- A roll fold shortens each panel that goes inside the one wrapping it — twice over, not once. Cut in equal thirds a leaflet bows open on the shelf.
- Cut, crease and perforation apart.
- Three tools on three layers, in the trade's colors. A crease drawn as a cut is a leaflet that arrives in three pieces.
- How many fit on your sheet.
- Both ways around are tried, the better one is kept, and the sheet is drawn with the marks on it. A leaflet that yields 9-up rather than 8 is a tenth off the paper.
- Millimeters down both edges.
- Rules along the top and the left, zeroed on the corner of the page and marked at a step you can actually read at the zoom you are at.
What it draws
Six things it does that a template pack does not
A pack of PDFs is somebody else's sizes. This is the geometry, so the size is yours.
Printing, stationery, point of sale
- Leaflets, booklet covers, hangers, cards, tags, bookmarks
- Letterheads, pads, presentation folders, envelopes
- Table tents, shelf talkers, hanging cards, standees
- The three shelves boxlab's own catalog is arranged on
The number you were quoted
- The finished size, typed, not chosen from a list
- Bleed outside the trim, safety inside it
- Portrait or landscape without retyping either number
- Every kind opens at the size that kind usually is
Half, roll, zigzag, gate, cross
- Panels sized so the fold actually closes
- The allowance is a number you set, not a guess
- A letterhead gets fold marks, not creases
- Panel widths listed under the drawing
Holes, slots, slits and flaps
- A hanging hole and its slot as one closed contour
- Business-card slits on a folder pocket
- Envelope wings tapered so they lie flat
- Glue areas marked for whoever makes it up
What is in it
The whole of what the tool holds
Written out, because a service that lists its parts is a service you can decide about.
Printing items
- Leaflet, flat or folded five ways
- Booklet cover with a spine from the paper
- Door hanger with a hole and a slot
- Business card, square or rounded
- Hang tag and bookmark with an eyelet
Stationery
- Letterhead with fold marks for its envelope
- Notepad with the glue head marked
- Presentation folder with pockets and card slits
- Envelope, pocket or wallet, wings and flap
Point of sale
- Table tent with a base and a glue tab
- Shelf talker with a lip for the rail
- Hanging card with a euro slot
- Counter standee with an easel strut
Every drawing
- Cut, crease, perforation and glue on their own layers
- Bleed and safety drawn but never exported
- Rules in millimeters down two edges
- SVG and PDF at true size
How it works
Four steps, and none of them is drawing
The geometry is the tool's job. Yours is the numbers.
Pick the thing
Fourteen templates on three shelves, the way the catalog is arranged.
Give it its size
The finished size, the bleed and the safety margin.
Set what only it has
The fold, the hole, the pocket, the flap — each kind shows its own and nothing else.
Take the file
One-up or imposed, as SVG or as PDF with the cut in a spot.
Who it is for
Six jobs it does before lunch
The work nobody keeps a template for, because every one of them is a different size.
A leaflet at an odd size
99 × 210 is as ordinary an order as A5, and no template pack has it.
A folder for a thick block
The spine comes from the paper: leaves times caliper, not a guess.
Tags for a season
Same shape, four sizes, four die lines, four sheets — in a minute.
Point of sale in a hurry
A table tent and a shelf talker that are actually the same job twice.
Checking a quote
How many up on SRA3, before agreeing a price per thousand.
Giving a designer a frame
The die line as an SVG to lay artwork over, with the safety line drawn.
Questions
The ones a printer asks first
Are these standard sizes?
The defaults are the sizes each thing usually is, and every one of them is a field you can type over. Nothing is locked to a standard.
Why is one panel of my roll fold shorter?
Because it goes inside the others. A leaflet cut in equal thirds will not close flat: paper has thickness, and the allowance is taken twice — panel two wraps panel three, and panel one wraps both.
What is in the PDF?
Vector at true size. The cut is a spot named CutContour, the creases and the perforations are spots of their own, and the bleed and safety guides are left out — they are advice to a designer, not instructions to a machine.
Gutter or no gutter?
No gutter means the pieces share one cut, which is right for guillotine work. A gutter gives each piece its own bleed all around, which is what a die-cut job needs, because a die cannot share an edge with the next one.
Does it make a 3D preview?
No. These are flat things: a leaflet has a fold, not a body. The drawing is the die line and the sheet.
Is my drawing sent anywhere?
No. Everything is worked out and written in the page, and there is no account to make.