Nothing makes us happier than receiving print-ready art files. This saves you time from having to redesign files, saves us time from emailing you a list of issues, and it gets your album or artwork out the door and in your hands quicker. You may be wondering what’s the best way to prepare double-sided or multi-page artwork files for print. Great question, here’s a quick summary:
1) Download the correct templates
This will always be the first step for any artwork tutorial. Download the templates off of our site, as they are sized to our printing standards and products. Make sure you download the latest template, not just the one that’s been sitting in your Documents folder for two years!
2) Add art in a separate layer
Most templates will have two visible layers: one that’s marked for Templates, and one that’s marked for Art. Please design using the Art layer in CMYK. If you don’t see an Art layer, create a new layer.
You can begin designing your artwork. Some templates, like our cassette J-cards, will have a file for the front cover and another file for the back cover. The template may also include a file specifically for Adobe Illustrator users where front and back covers are spread across two pages.
3) Save files twice, with and without the template lines
You’ll have to hit Save As two times per page. Once with the template layer visible, and once with the template layer disabled.
STEPS 4 AND 5 APPLY TO ADOBE PHOTOSHOP USERS, ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR USERS CAN SKIP TO STEP 6
4) Open PDF Presentation
Have your front cover or first page file open. Click on File -> Automate -> PDF Presentation.
5) Add files
Here you can add files that are currently open in Photoshop, or browse to search for saved files. Make sure you’ve selected Multi-Page Document under the ‘Save As’ option.
Click ‘Save’. You’ll again have to do this twice: once with all the files that have template lines enabled, and once with the files that have template lines disabled.
6) Save as a PDF/X-1a:2001
The final step! Just use the settings you see above. Most important is that the Adobe Preset is set to PDF/X-1a:2001.
That’s all you need to prepare your artwork! Leave the rest to us, and soon you’ll have high-quality artwork or packaging for your new album. We use digital press for small runs and super high-quality offset press for larger runs and by request. You can find all of our printed products in our online shop.
The online shop offers everything you need for a 12” vinyl release, from innersleeves to mailers to even vinyl pressing itself. One of our biggest sellers are digitally printed 12” vinyl jackets, done in stunning full-color CMYK with spine. As tour season approaches, we understand you may be pressed for time, so we’re now offering 3-week and 4-week rush orders!
Our vinyl jackets were previously only available with economy turntime. This would allow us to gang-up orders as to keep costs low, with a turntime of 6 to 8 weeks before shipping. While the price was right, this isn’t always an ideal scenario for musicians, thus we’ve included easy-to-add rush options for either 3-week or 4-week turnaround before shipping. No need to contact a sales rep, just select your turnaround time and you’re good to go.
Turntime only begins once print-ready files are received. A print-ready file needs to be submitted using our template, with artwork layers merged and proper bleed. For even more stunning print jobs you can upgrade to our offset press.
Need more than just the vinyl jacket? Need the whole vinyl pressing package? Get everything in one swoop with our vinyl pressing combo deals! These include the vinyl color of your choice, printed jacket, innersleeve, insert, and shrinkwrapped assembly. We have two different pressing methods: the standard packages used with a 2-step stamper and lacquer, and our Quick 1-Step packages which are done with MVM pressing and a 1-step stamper. The latter gives you lightning quick turnaround— an estimated 6 to 8 weeks before shipping— with a minimum order of just 50 copies!
If you release your cassettes DIY style, then you’re surely no stranger to our blank printed material. From sticker labels to blank J-cards, Duplication.ca provides you with the sheets and templates needed to turn your home setup into a printing press.
Every now and then we receive a question on our live chat service asking for help with printing at home. We thought it would be a good idea to run through a short list of helpful tips to make your DIY experience a smoother process!
When designing or readying for print, do not crop or resize the template, or stretch the template to fit your artwork. It’s important that the template is printed as is, so that includes the settings in your printing options.
You will want to make sure that the scale is set to 100% under ‘Scaled Print Size’, and ‘Scale to Fit Media’ is unchecked.
Add Bleed and Title Safety to Your Image
Consumer printers are prone to misalignment and movement. The cheaper the price and build of a printer the more it will shake when printing, meaning precise down-to-the-millimeter print alignment may not always be possible. This is why you add bleed to your image, so if there is slight movement you won’t be treated to an ugly white line of empty space. A hairline of empty space may go unnoticed by a good number of your fans but it will absolutely drive you crazy knowing it’s there! The standard bleed amount is an extra .125” of image from the template line.
Same goes with a title safety area. You shouldn’t be placing text right at the edge of the template lines, because if there’s any movement you’re risking the text being partially cut off. Suddenly your solo noise project RAT LOTION reads as AT LOTION, and your labels are ruined!
My Printer is a Hunk of Junk and it’s Not Working!
If you still find that there’s significant misalignment, one trick is to move the artwork in your photo editing software to make up for the shifting. That may be tricky and take a few tries, which is why we recommend ordering extra sheets for tests and contingency.
Your local print shop is surrounded by printer issues day and night, so they will likely understand what you’re trying to accomplish. Drop off your sheets and your files on USB and they can give it a shot.
Duplication.ca’s pressing plant is working around the clock to get your print orders looking bright and gorgeous. If you want to keep it DIY, hit us up on our live chat (the green bubble on the bottom right corner of the Duplication.ca website) and let us know your issues, we’ll do our best to help. If you want high quality printed products without the pain and anguish of your 12 year old Canon printer spouting errors, we can print your J-cards, stickers, and all other material using our high quality digital press (or ultra high-quality offset press) with thick and durable cardstock.
Do you want even more affordable printed J-cards, faster to your door, without having to skimp on quality? Unbelievably, Duplication.ca can provide that for you! Introducing our Automated Print products:
The Automated Print items work similarly to the standard online shop system, but instead the artwork is uploaded through our Online Designer. This allows you to design your artwork in-browser without the use for an expensive graphic design suite, or simply drag ‘n drop your pre-existing artwork into the Online Designer. After checkout your artwork is automatically sent to the printer queue, with zero hassle in between! Not only does this mean your J-cards will be printed, scored, and shipped quicker, but it also saves pre-press time on our end. We pass those savings on to you, making the J-cards even cheaper than our regular print pricing.
Using the online designer is remarkably simple, you can review the guide we wrote up a couple of weeks ago. Just remember to extended the artwork past the template lines, and to double-check your work as to ensure your artwork appears as intended! You will need to approve your artwork once more after checkout, which serves as a final opportunity for a quick inspection.
All these benefits without having to compromise on quality! The J-cards are professionally printed using Cougar™ Super Smooth stock— 80lb smooth cover at 216 GSM. Double-sided printing is included in the price, with bright and vibrant colours on durable paper.
UV print has totally revolutionized how you can design your cassette releases. You no longer need to limit yourself to one or two colours, you have the entire CMYK spectrum to choose from when designing your masterpiece. Even better, with Full Body UV print you can design artwork on the raised edges and bottom hub area of the cassette shell, doing away with the constraints found in sticker labels and pad print! Our template includes knockout layers for the hubs and window, that way ink will not seep inside of the shell.
What makes UV print pop on cassette is the white base coating applied before your artwork, which stops the ink from being absorbed by the plastic shell, especially with darker shell colours. However, when you don’t apply the white base, you instead get a semi-transparent effect, wherein you can see the artwork but light can still shine through with transparent shells – very similar to stained glass!
With transparent shells you can sidestep the white base coating to also achieve a visible reverse print. Here’s an example by Monster Piece, released by Sly Vinyl Records, where you can see the reverse image of the Side B artwork by looking through Side A. This gives a sense of perspective and distance, as if the moon is in the background and the howling werewolf in the foreground. The B-side will show the artwork in its correct orientation as provided by the artist.
Omitting the white base coating for a stained glass effect or reverse print is available by request! Just add UV Full Body print to your cassette order and let us know your desired effect in the ‘notes’ section of your order.
When you put in a cassette order you want the finished product to look its absolute best. Following these steps not only makes our job easier, but it will ensure that your pad print will look just as gorgeous as intended. First you’ll need to place your order on our cassette duplication calculator, then we can get started!
DESIGNING YOUR ARTWORK
1) Download our latest template
There are a few things to consider when designing pad print artwork for your order. First, what kind of shell have you chosen? Our templates have layers for opaque tapes, clear/windowless, and shells with square hub windows.
Each template has useful information about designing artwork that is unique to each type of cassette shell chosen, so be sure to check if we have updated templates available with every order and follow the directions contained in the file!
2) Applications
First and foremost, we highly recommend you send us vector artwork, so you should be using applications such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw to design vector logos and line text. Graphic design applications such as Adobe Photoshop or GiMP can be used, but bitmapped images will be subject to additional fees.
MEET THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS
1) Vector Artwork
We now require vector artwork for pad print. It helps us achieve finer lines with a fraction of the platemaking time. It’s best to create artwork as a vector image, but we recognize that sometimes images are sourced from bitmap files or hand drawings. Outside of CorelDraw and Illustrator, there are freeware websites that allow you to upload your image and they will trace the outlines to convert to a vector file. The results will vary and often depend on the complexity and quality of your source material. Some websites have more options than others, so be prepared for trial and error tweaking until you’re satisfied. Further tweaking can be done in programs like Illustrator, PhotoPea, or even Photoshop.
Difference in quality between bitmap (left) and vector (right)
If you cannot retrace your images or convert to vector, we will be able to do it for a small fee. Bitmap images are also subject to a fee as they can take up to 20x as long to print the plate.
2) Grayscale
Regardless of your chosen ink colour, make sure your artwork is done in black. If you requested 2-colour pad print you’ll need to have each colour artwork in its own layer. The layers should be properly titled with their colour name (ex. one layer would be titled ‘Red’ and the other ‘Blue’). Again, regardless of the desired ink colour, each layer artwork must appear black.
3) Resolution
A low resolution can cause the finished product to look pixelated and of poor quality. If you are using Photoshop or your own template, ensure the dimensions and resolution are 4331 x 4331 pixels wide at 1000 ppi. Please note that resolution isn’t applicable when working with vector art.
4) Creating Outlines for Text
Often times we will receive a file with missing fonts, which means your meticulously curated typeface design will revert to a basic font style when we open the artwork file. But there’s an easy solution to this– simply Create Outlines for your text!
All you need to do is select your text, then navigate to the Type menu and select Create Outlines. The same can be done in Photoshop by selecting your text with the Direct Selection Tool and clicking on Convert to Shape in the Type menu. Avoid using faux font styling as it may not convert properly.
Another method is to ‘Expand’ your text. This video gives a quick explanation on how to do so:
5) Line Thickness
When you’re designing your artwork, you’ll want to keep an eye on line thickness. In order to ensure that your art will be visible when printed you’ll want your artwork lines to be at least 0.15 points thick. This is about the equivalent thickness of very fine hair. Anything less than 0.15 points risks not being visible on the final printed cassette. This applies to text as well.
Moreover, the knockout, gaps, or empty space between artwork also has to be a minimum of 0.5 points thick to properly print, otherwise there is the risk of ink running and filling up the empty space. Please make sure all empty space is at least 0.5 points thick to avoid spreading ink.
Zooming in shows that the select horizontal area is 0.1 points thick.
An illustrated breakdown of line thickness.
6) Mind the Gap
Depending on the type of shell you have chosen, there are areas you cannot print on. For example, there are two holes in every cassette shell which obviously cannot be printed on! Solid coloured shells, certain select clear shells, and square window shells have a recessed window in the center which can distort artwork, especially text. If you are uncertain about the type of shell you have chosen for your artwork, contact your sales representative!
An example of areas where the artwork will not print.
7) Tell Your Sales Representative
Make sure that your sales representative knows exactly what your order needs, as there may be a price difference. If you want the A and B sides printed, it is “pad print two sides” on the cassette duplication calculator. If you just want the A side printed, it is “pad print one side.” If you’d like the exact same art on both sides, it is “pad print same art both sides.“
Once your artwork is complete and uploaded, let your sales representative know! They will double check your artwork to make sure it is compatible before sending it through to our pad print department. If you have any questions, be sure to reach out to them! They are happy to help!
Our printed slipcases are an excellent packaging method for box sets and multi-cassette releases. Cassettes fit snuggly inside, safe from accidentally slipping out when pulling the slipcase off the shelf. We have developed template variations for each slipcase, one in which the cassette is removed from the left of the slipcase and one from the right. Here’s a breakdown:
Left Loading
This design is the one most often seen with multi-book slipcases. When looking at the slipcase over, the cassettes are removed from the left side. This way the front of the J-Card is seen immediately.
Right Loading
With ‘right loading’ slipcases, everything is basically the opposite. When looking at the front slipcase cover the cassettes will be removed from the right-hand spine area. When you remove the closest cassette you will see the back of the top cassette. This design works best when paired with striking pad print or laser engraving designs on the tapes!
Need some more clarification? Check out this video for a visual explanation!
We’ve been pad printing cassette shells since the 1990s, so we know the ins and outs of providing a quality print job just like you intended in your design. We use opaque ink for pad print, unlike offset pad printers which use a type of paste that is thinner and appears more transparent. Our pad print jobs are done individually by hand, allowing us to see the result of every print. This gives us a huge advantage in maintaining great quality assurance. Check out our pad print machine in action on YouTube.
Our selection of pad print colours
That said, certain ink colours look better on certain shells. Black or dark ink will appear striking and vibrant on white or lighter colour shells, while the inverse not so much. The ink is opaque, but the plastic shell will still absorb some of the colouring. Take a look at this colour mixing diagram:
Notice the color changes on the overlapped sections. Blue ink on a red shell may appear more purple, and will thus be a bit more difficult to read. Similarly, yellow is a lighter colour than red, so it may be absorbed by the red shell and appear more orange. It’ll look cool, but not exactly what you had in mind when designing.
If you insist on continuing with unconventional colour schemes like blue on red, there are a few solutions—
Request double-hit with your pad print. This will give your colour a little extra oomph and emphasis against a darker shell colour. It may not solve the problem of a particularly light ink colour against a dark shell, but it will certainly look better than single-hit pad print.
Upgrade to 2-colour pad print and use the bottom layer as a white base. Locking the shell into place for two separate ink stamps is extremely difficult and won’t always work, so you will want to make the white base larger than your design (like a stroke or outline filter), or slightly smaller than your design, that way it’s not off-register.
Request a custom colour ink. We can add white ink to an ink colour for an extra fee to make it a bit more vibrant when placed against a darker colour shell.
If you’re not sure if a colour combination will be as vibrant as your design, ask your sales rep for their thoughts, we’ve seen it all over the years! You can add pad print to your cassette package through our cassette duplication calculator and receive free shipping to the United States and Canada.
The cassette duplication calculator is an incredibly handy order form that allows you to customize your cassette packages while updating you on the price in real-time. However, as our option list grows, we understand newcomers may feel the calculator is a bit overwhelming. We’re always here to help, but this step-by-step guide should answer any questions you may have!
A Step-By-Step Guide to the Cassette Duplication Order Form
Duplication Speed
The duplication speed determines the recording quality of your cassette. Real-time is recorded at, well, real-time speed with your master. This is the higher quality option, with a frequency range of 20Hz to 20kHz. Even so, high-speed duplication sounds wonderful, capable of audio from 20Hz to 17kHz.
Length Per Side
Length per side is for you to let us know the length of the longest side of your master. So that is to say that if your sequence of tracks has a total length of 14:28 for side A, and 15:30 for side B, you’d round up to 16 minutes for the length per side.
But don’t fret, we won’t be adding 30 seconds of silence to Side B, we’ll actually be loading the cassette exactly to the length of your master (with a few additional seconds of lead-in time to avoid cutoffs.)
Copy
Let us know if there’s different audio on each side of the tape, audio on side A only, or if both sides have identical audio.
Tape Type
Like ‘Duplication Speed’, the tape type determines the quality of your audio. Our standard is super-ferro normal bias, which has excellent volume and fidelity. However, if you want even crisper bass and louder volume, our high-bias Maxell XLII-S is the choice for audiophiles. BASF 120 is needed for cassettes that are 120 minutes or longer in total length. Maxell XLII-S and BASF 120 are only available with real-time duplication.
Cassette Colour
Now we’re getting to the fun parts. We have dozens of shell colours for you to choose from, so you’re faced with the decision on which colour suits your music and artwork best. This list is divided into five sections: opaque, metallic foil, tinted and transparent, glitter shells, and chrome cassettes to pair with Maxell XLII-S tape.
If you want to quickly run through all our cassette shell options, pull up the cassette selection guide to see what we currently have in stock!
Packaging
Here you can choose the type and colour of your cassette case. We have tons of Norelco cassette case colours in stock, so you can match them with your cassette shell colour if you so desire. We can also add special packaging to your Norelco cases, such as laser engraving designs to the case, or an outer O-Card which wraps around the cassette case, giving you an extra layer of artwork.
If you’re searching for deluxe packages, check out our cassette vinyl albums. They open like an audio book with enough additional space for a booklet, pins, or patches.
Cover Type
Here is where you’ll choose the format for your printed artwork. JP0 J-cards are standard three panels (front, spine, back), and you can add additional panels for liner notes, lyrics, or artwork. You may also choose between single or double-sided printing.
You can also choose your printed trapsheet artwork for cassette vinyl albums. 4/0 refers to single-sided printing, and 4/4 would be double-sided printing, though you’d want to combine the 4/4 trapsheets with our transparent cassette vinyl albums for the sake of visibility. You can add panel foldovers as inserts for your trapsheets as well.
Label Type
Now we’re at the customization stage! The label type is how you’d like to decorate the cassette itself. Paper labels are printed stickers that we place on the cassette, whereas pad print is an ink design that we stamp directly to the cassette and cannot be peeled off. Finally, laser etching is a laser-created engraving to the face of the cassette, permanently carving in your design. You can choose to have these label types on either one side or both sides of the cassette.
Pad print will ask you which colour you’d like. Pad print is one colour only, though by special request we can print up to two colours on the cassette. ‘Pad print type’ depends on the size of your artwork. For simple text and a small logo choose ‘standard design’, but for halftone artwork, large solid areas, or extended print areas, choose ‘floods or halftones’. Finally, ‘single or double hit’ depends on how vibrant you’d like your pad print. If you’re printing a black image on a white shell, single hit will do. However, if you’re printing a light colour on a dark shell (such as yellow ink on a black cassette), we highly recommend double hit.
Download Codes
Download codes are absolutely essential for when you want the benefits and tangibility of physical media and not lose the convenience of digital files. We can host the album for you (max 250MB) and print digital download codes. Alternatively, you can supply us with codes to print if you have your own hosting, or even a list of Bandcamp download codes!
Obi-Strips
Obi-strips follow the Japanese aesthetic of album packaging, adding a printed strip of artwork and text to your case. Traditionally these included album descriptions and prices, but it’s your design, you do whatever you want with it! Choose between vertical or horizontal obi-strip orientations.
Test Tape
We sent you a newsletter about test tapes just last week, but to summarize, if you want to approve the audio quality of your cassette before mass production then you can add a test tape to your order. Keep in mind that it does not include printing and packaging, and it adds another 1 to 2 weeks to your order turntime.
Overwrap
If you want your cassette to arrive in mint condition, or if you’re planning on selling them in-store, we suggest adding overwrap to your order. An alternative option is our resealable clear bags which have an adhesive strip for multi-use and keeping your cassette immaculate.
Rush
We recently reinstated rush options! Our turntime is currently 5 to 8 weeks, but if you need your album with the quickness you can turn your quote into a rush order. Please note rush orders are measured in business days.
Quantity
This one’s easy. How many copies do you want?
UPS Shipping Option
UPS Standard Shipping is the default shipping method to the United States and Canada! If you need your album immediately, we’d recommend the 2-day or overnight shipping options.
UPS Signature Delivery
We highly recommend choosing this option. This will ensure that your package arrives not just to your door, but to your hands. That way no mail carrier will leave it on your front porch for it to be stolen, or hand it over to negligent neighbours who immediately leave for vacation.
And that’s it!
Oh my God, did you read all of that? Well if you did, by now you surely know your way around our cassette duplication order form. All you have to do is ready your audio and artwork for upload (artwork templates here!), and visualize which packaging combination will look best on your merch table and checkout page.
In the past couple of months we began experimenting with creating pad print plates using vector artwork. The results were astounding! Sharper text and images with an even quicker workflow. It’s time we got the word out— send us vector artwork for pad print!
How can you do that? When you’re designing pad print artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator and you’re entering a line of text, don’t rasterize said text, and don’t flatten the file. Turn the text and objects into work paths when using Photoshop, or turn them into outlines in Adobe Illustrator. This way when we print we won’t be using a bitmapped layer with resolution loss. Instead we’ll have sharp lines without the fuzziness you’d find in bitmap text. It will also help us print thinner lines that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, as our new laser engraver has 10x finer resolution, equal in quality to lithograph film.
If you don’t have the graphic design savvy to turn into work paths or outlines, another thing you could do is to keep the text layer as a text layer. That is to say do not rasterize the text, and do not flatten the file. We’ll do our best to turn the text into outlines on our end. Once you see the final results, you’ll be happy we did!
You can still submit the pad print files the old fashioned way, with rasterized text or bitmapped images. We have always prided ourselves in our excellent pad print quality, but that doesn’t mean we can’t strive for even greater resolution. Just make sure to supply using the proper template based on your cassette shell. Vector artwork should be submitted using PDF, whereas bitmapped resolution can be supplied in PSD, PDF, TIFF, or PNG.
Pad print is available using our cassette duplication quote calculator. This is where you get your fully packaged album on cassette in one simple order. You’ll receive an instant quote on the page, so you can play around with the print and packaging options until you find the perfect package at a great price.
