Sticker Graphics

Sticker clipart and PNG: the look, the cut line and the difference between them

Sticker artwork is one of the few categories where the style and the manufacturing are the same thing. The white outline and the soft shadow both come from how stickers are physically made, which is useful to know before a printer asks you for something your file does not have.

The object itself is not very old. Until the mid-1930s, a label had to be moistened like a postage stamp. In 1935 Stan Avery borrowed a hundred dollars from his fiancée, put together a die-cutting machine from a washing machine motor, some sewing machine parts and a saber saw, and started selling round price labels by post at a thousand for a dollar. He called them Kum Kleen, since the selling point was that they lifted off without leaving a mark. The company eventually became Avery Dennison.

The white border is a direct consequence of that machine. A cutter cannot follow a drawn edge precisely, so the artwork is given a margin of blank material to absorb the error and the die runs through that so it doesn't through the picture. At some point people noticed the margin looked good on its own, and now it gets drawn deliberately onto things that will never be cut out of anything — which covers most of what this category is used for.

Sticker graphics, printed and otherwise

• Die-cut sticker sheets and packs sold as products in their own right.
• Packaging seals, promotional labels and limited-run product marks.
• Laptop, bottle and helmet stickers for merchandise and giveaways.
• Social layouts and campaign graphics using the sticker look with nothing physically cut.
• Messaging app packs and digital planner sets.
• Event and conference material: badges, welcome packs, freebies.

Sticker artwork, before and after it meets a cutter

Decide early whether anything is actually being cut. For a layout or a social post, the white border and the shadow are just a look, and you can do what you like with them. If a producer is involved, you need a die line on its own layer, named as they ask, in a spot color they recognize, with the artwork bleeding past it.

Leave more room between shapes on the sheet than looks necessary. Cutting tolerance means two stickers placed close together can clip each other, and anything near the sheet edge loses part of its border. Lay it out at final size and ask the producer what gutter they want.

For anything going outdoors, specify vinyl with a UV laminate when you order. Paper stock is for packaging seals and events, and it breaks down outside within weeks. Saturated reds and fluorescents fade first, whatever the material, so if the client expects it to look the same in a year, either steer clear of them or tell them what'll happen.

Sticker sets by what they imitate

• Badges and crests. Circular and shield lockups with arc text, drawn as if they were embroidered or enamelled.
• Retail and price labels. Sale tags, stock markings and shop stickers, complete with the printing faults of the originals.
• Worn and used stickers. Peeled corners, scuffs, torn edges and sun fading, made for putting on something that is meant to look old.
• Holographic and Y2K. Foil, chrome and rainbow shift, supplied as raster because the effect lives in the reflection.
• Inflated 3D. Rendered puffy objects with the highlight and shadow baked in, at one fixed angle.
• Loose sticker sheets. Themed sets of small drawings, like food, music, summer, where the sticker treatment is applied to everything in the pack.