A dieline is a flat vector template drawn at full scale that maps every cut, crease, fold and glue area of a package before printing. Artwork sits on top of it. Solid lines mark where the blade cuts, dashed lines mark where the board folds, and a bleed margin runs art past the trim so no white edge shows after cutting.
Questions or ready for a quote? Contact Teal Packaging at info@tealpackaging.com or (224) 546-8325.
Dieline: The Flat Template Behind Every Custom Box from Teal Packaging: 50-unit standard MOQ (100+ units for specialty rigid boxes), 2-5 business day delivery in the US (express and economy options available), free design help included on every order, free generic sample kit ($19.99 shipping, credited toward your first order). Standard production runs from about 7 business days after digital proof approval; complex or high-volume orders take longer.
Materials and certifications: FSC-certified paper stock, soy-based inks, kraft / corrugated / rigid paperboard / mylar / tin / vinyl substrates.
Contact Teal Packaging: Call (224) 546-8325, email info@tealpackaging.com, or request a free quote at tealpackaging.com/contact-us. We reply within one business day.
Updated August 25, 2026 · Teal Packaging operates a US facility in West Chicago, Illinois.
The blueprint your artwork is built on
Unfold a cereal carton and flatten it. That shape, with its tabs, notches, flaps and score lines, is what the die cut out of a big sheet of board. A dieline is the vector drawing of that shape, produced before anything prints, at exactly the size the finished piece will be. Every panel, every fold and every glue flap has a position on it, and the graphic designer works on a layer above the drawing rather than guessing at panel sizes from a photo of a similar box.
Two audiences read the same file. The designer reads it to know where the front panel ends and the side panel begins. The tooling shop reads it to bend and mount steel rule into a wooden die block. Because both depend on it, a dieline is drawn in vector paths at 100 percent scale, never as a raster image and never scaled to fit a page.
Reading the line types
| Line | Usual appearance | What the press does |
|---|---|---|
| Cut | Solid, often magenta or black | Blade severs the board along the path |
| Crease or score | Dashed, often blue or green | Rule presses a channel so the panel folds cleanly |
| Perforation | Dash and dot alternating | Intermittent blade for a tear strip or hang tab |
| Glue area | Hatched or tinted block | Kept free of varnish and heavy ink coverage |
| Bleed | Outer boundary, 0.125 in past cut | Extra art trimmed away, prevents white slivers |
| Safety | Inner boundary, 0.125 to 0.25 in inside cut | Zone that keeps type away from the blade |
Line colors are a convention rather than a law, and shops differ. What matters is that each function sits on its own named layer and that a legend on the file states which color means what. A dieline delivered as one flattened black path forces the prepress operator to guess what cuts and what folds, and a wrong guess produces a box with a slit where a hinge should be.
Setting artwork on the template
Place the dieline layer above everything else, lock it, and design underneath. Extend every background color and image past the cut path by at least an eighth of an inch, because cutting tolerance means the blade lands slightly off the drawn path on some sheets. That margin is the bleed, and it is the first thing prepress checks.
Panel orientation trips up more first-time buyers than bleed does. On a flat template, the back panel or the bottom often appears upside down relative to the front, because those panels rotate into position when the blank folds. Artwork placed the same way up on every panel produces an inverted logo on the finished carton. Fold a paper printout of the template before approving anything. Two minutes with scissors catches errors no screen preview will show.
Keep live type inside the safety margin, keep barcodes off creases and away from glue flaps, and leave the glue area clear of heavy ink and any coating, since adhesive bonds to fiber rather than to a varnish film.
File formats that actually work
Adobe Illustrator and layered PDF are the two standard delivery formats for artwork on a dieline. The die shop may also want CF2 or DXF, which are machine formats describing rule positions rather than visual layers. Convert type to outlines before sending, embed rather than link any placed images, and keep the color mode consistent with the print method the job will run on. A file built in RGB will shift when it is converted for a CMYK printing press, and the shift usually shows up first in deep blues and bright oranges.
Where dielines come from
Three sources exist. Generic templates downloaded from a template library fit a standard style and a standard size, and they work when the product happens to match. A structural designer draws a custom one when the product does not match, when an insert has to hold something in place, or when the closure has to survive shipping. The third source is reverse engineering, where an existing sample is taken apart and traced.
Teal draws the dieline as part of the quoting process at no charge, including the custom cases, and returns it with a digital proof so the artwork can be checked in position before tooling is cut. That drawing then feeds the steel rule die described on our die cutting page.
From template to finished box
A finished dieline settles three things at once: how much board each unit consumes, whether the structure holds the product, and what the packed carton measures for freight. Changing panel dimensions after tooling is cut means new tooling, so the flat drawing is the cheapest place to change your mind. Proven templates already cover formats like tuck boxes and mailer boxes, adjusted to whatever you measured, while a fully bespoke structure begins with a blank sheet.
Send product dimensions, a target quantity and any artwork you already have. Where the work qualifies to run in-house, about 7 business days is a reasonable plan, and imported specialty jobs can take up to roughly 12 weeks. Both numbers are planning figures only. Order quantities open at 50 units, or 100 when the build is specialty rigid.
