Regardless of which tool you choose, these six principles will help you create stickers that look professional and print beautifully.
- Design at actual print size. Set your canvas to the exact dimensions your sticker will be printed. A sticker designed at 3 inches wide should be a 3-inch wide canvas at 300 DPI. Scaling designs up from small sizes loses quality; scaling down from large sizes risks shrinking important details into illegibility.
- Use CMYK colors whenever possible. RGB colors on screen can shift significantly when converted for print. If your tool supports CMYK (Adobe Express does, free), design in CMYK from the start. If not, test print your design before ordering a large quantity.
- Keep it bold and simple. Stickers are typically viewed at small scale. Fine details, thin text, and subtle color gradients are often lost. Bold shapes, high-contrast colors, and clear, readable fonts hold up better at actual sticker size.
- Include bleed on die-cut stickers. Die-cut stickers are cut to the shape of your design. Adding 1–2mm of bleed beyond the visible design area prevents white edges from appearing if the cut is slightly off. Adobe Express handles this automatically on sticker templates.
- Test legibility at actual size. Open your design, zoom your browser to simulate actual print size, and check that all text is still readable. If you cannot comfortably read text at 3 inches, it will be difficult or impossible on the physical sticker.
- Export with transparent background for die-cut designs. For stickers that will be die-cut to a custom shape, export with a transparent background (PNG format). This allows the printer to see exactly where the design ends and where cutting should occur.