Contour Cut Stickers
Looking for cut-out texts, logos, etc.? Dr.Sticker is happy to advise you on the right choice of materials or techniques.
What does contour cutting mean?
Contour cut stickers, also often called fully cut or freeform stickers, are stickers where the cutting line of the sticker follows the contours of your design. With all other stickers, you deal with a fixed shape, such as round or square. With a freeform sticker, you determine the shape in which the sticker is cut. Dr.Sticker is happy to advise you on the right choice of materials or techniques. For example, if you want your logo to be fully cut without white space, you choose a contour cut sticker. Would you like to have a cutout in your sticker? That's also possible!
Stickers with an outer contour
Fully cut-out window sticker
What is contour cutting?
Contour cutting a sticker means that our plotter cuts the stickers into any desired shape. This can include any freeform shape, from individual letters to the shape of a logo/image. We use a digital plotter with a separate blade for cutting. The software ensures that all desired shapes can be cut out. Because Dr.Sticker has invested in Zünd cutting plotters, we can cut stickers quickly and affordably. For contour cutting stickers, we charge a small additional fee, which, when compared to the technique using a die-cutter, is up to 85% cheaper!
Through our online design tool, we offer 2 types of contour cutting options:
Contour Cut:
Outer shape cut with a 3-millimeter border all around.
Fully Cut:
Everything fully cut out, often chosen for freestanding letters, numbers, logos, etc.
From sticker sheet to individually cut contour letters
The great diversity that contour cutting brings allows for endless possibilities. We can create sticker sheets with various shaped stickers printed on them (and also print other parts along with it). But we can also cut out completely freestanding letters. The sticker is cut into the desired shape using a technique called half-cut. The backing sheet on which the sticker rests will be rectangularly cut out. These individual letters or freeform shapes are further finished with an application layer. This is a kind of application layer that allows you to apply the sticker easily in one piece.
Applying an application layer to the contour cut sticker
Tips for setting up files
For our stickers with an outer contour, we automatically generate a 3-millimeter border around the uploaded image.
For fully cut stickers, it's important that the uploaded file is a vector file. With these files, we can directly generate a cutting line that precisely follows the lines of the design.
Creating a cutting line yourself?
Use programs like Adobe Illustrator or InDesign. Use an overlap of +/- 3 mm, indicate the contour cutting line in a different color (e.g., magenta). This line will not be printed but used as a cutting line (also indicate this extra in the order process in the comments field). To fully contour cut, we can only work with vector files.