We have integrated the online shop address book into our popular duplication calculators! Now, when you’re entering a duplication or pressing order, sign in to get access to your address book. Here’s a few pictures showing how it works. First, sign in or register:
When you’re on the 2nd step, your addresses will be pulled from the online shop. You can also click on View Address Book where you can maintain your addresses.
When you’re looking at your account in the online shop, there’s a tab to view your duplication orders under Quotes Orders. Only new orders will show up here.
Currently, only 1 shipping address can be chosen per order.
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!
Who can forget the feeling of walking through the video store, strolling from aisle to aisle, trying to find the perfect VHS tape to watch that night? Sure, streaming services offer us thousands of options, but gone is the ritual of popping in a physically tactile VHS, an object which gives a film respect and purpose not unlike what an audio cassette or vinyl does for music.At Duplication.ca you can get your film or video project duplicated on VHS with full packaging, thus giving your work the attention it deserves!
Modern VHS releases are a wonderful medium because they aren’t just limited to feature-length releases, but a whole gamut of audio/visual projects. Music video compilations, short films, vaporwave visuals, live gigs, just to name a few. As a filmmaker or a musician you can sell your work online or at the merch table at a screening or performance, rather than navigate the film festival or streaming distribution circuit.
Not only do our dubbed VHS tapes look excellent, our print and packaging are of superb quality. Printed cardboard sleeves are in full colour CMYK with your choice of digital or offset press. The sleeves snuggly fit the video cassette without being too tight or loose. You can even add glossy AQ coating for an additional fee if you want it to feel silky smooth and shine against the light.
Another packaging option are our clear plastic library cases, which contain an overlay film so you can add a printed wraparound sheet for artwork. Since the cases are clear, you can even request double-sided printing for extra artwork or notes! Sticker face labels and spine labels can be added to both the library cases and printed cardboard sleeves.
Do you have the equipment to duplicate your own VHS tapes? Then we have everything you need to DIY analog style! We received a restock of blank VHS tapes, with a wide variety of lengths and brands to fit your needs, including some superb quality S-VHS tapes and economy one-pass tapes. You can also find blank labels, library cases, and custom-printed products in the online store.
Get audio duplication on our pre-loaded blank tapes!
We have great news for those who want high-quality cassette duplication while maintaining a cheap bottom line. You can now order cassette duplication with our selection of surplus pre-loaded tapes!
Pre-loaded tapes are blank cassettes which already have a certain length of audio tape loaded. These are often the result of human error on our part— every now and then when we duplicate cassettes we’ll load a batch of cassettes to the wrong length. However, our mistake becomes your bounty, since that means we can throw these tapes in the shop at a discounted price!
Now you no longer have to duplicate these cassettes from home, we can take care of the recording process for you. We use our real-time duplication process which allows for a frequency range of 20Hz to 20kHz. Simply add the duplication product during checkout, along with your desired pre-loaded cassettes. You’ll receive a link to upload your audio after checkout. If you ordered pre-loaded tapes marked “c20”, that would mean they’re 10 minutes in length per side.
Please keep in mind that pre-loaded cassettes consist of old unused clearance stock, and thus some cassettes may have scratches or scuffs. This is considered clearance stock which is sold as-is and are final sale.
Once upon a time we had the ability to design J-cards and sticker labels through the browser on the online store. Due to a software update we had to temporarily disable the feature, but thanks to some elbow grease and coding we’re happy to announce that the online designer has returned. No need to use expensive graphic design software, you can now create your J-cards and sticker labels online and absolutely free!
Creating and ordering J-cards and sticker labels couldn’t be easier. First off, head to the product of your choice. For the sake of an example, let’s say you wanted to order double-sided J-cards.
You’ll notice that above the product description there’s a button that reads ‘Add Your Design’. Click on that to start designing!
Right off the bat you’ll see that our JP0 template has already loaded. From here you can use the icons on the top and the bottom to do simple design functions, like add a background colour, upload images, and add text. You can even import images from your Instagram account!
Here’s what I whipped together in a matter of minutes. I simply made the background black, and then I added two images for the left and right panels, making sure the art bleeds past the red template lines. I threw on some text, stylized the angle and added a black stroke for the sake of legibility. Just like that, I have the front cover of my cassette ready to go. To work on the reverse side you need to click on the icon below the template.
Once you’re done, click ‘Download’ on the top right corner and save the file as a PDF. This way you have a copy of your own for safety and posterity. After that you can smash that big red ‘Submit’ button.
Now you’ll see that your artwork has been added to the order page! Don’t forget to give your order a ‘Project Title’, that’ll help with organizing files in the event you’re ordering more than one batch of printed goods. Click ‘Add to cart’ and you’re good to go!
All this applies to sticker labels as well, our online designer is ready to go with the proper template set for your masterpiece. No cloud subscription services, and no sketchy cracked software needed. Start designing today!
While audio cassettes were replaced by new formats and technologies only to return to the underground music scene, there is one institution where they never went out of style: prisons. In fact, in many penitentiaries the only way to listen to music is through a cassette tape.
CDs have been deemed dangerous as they can easily break and become weaponized, and while some prisons allow MP3 players they’re not of much use without an internet connection to load files. Thus the cassette tape is the reigning audio format for inmates, but with certain regulations. They need to adhere to the ‘Prison Tape’ model, which is to say completely transparent and sonic welded, as to avoid smuggling contraband. The packaging also needs to be completely transparent to minimize the time spent for inspection before the product enters prisons.
Clients have been ordering prison tapes from Duplication.ca for decades, sending cassettes to friends, loved ones, or customers. They’re the ideal format if you’d like to pass around mixtapes, song demos, sermons, or other voice recordings. We’ve created a shop page to make the process even simpler— just choose your audio length and we’ll load it to a Prison Tape which meets the standard requirements.
If you’d like us to duplicate audio, we can do that as well! Simply choose ‘Transparent w/ Black Hubs’ from the shell colour menu of our cassette duplication page. Cassette case packaging regulations may differ depending on the penitentiary, so please be sure to do research before ordering.
For the highest quality printed CDs, DVDs, or Blu-Rays, you will undoubtedly want to choose silkscreen printing. We can print up to four solid colours, or full colour CMYK if you wish to print a photograph or gradients. Designing silkscreen print artwork is a little different from designing album artwork, as colours will have to be separated for us to use the proper ink. Here are some tips for designing silkscreen disc artwork!
An example of 2-colour silkscreen printing
Don’t Use Photoshop
While many of us who have dabbled in graphic design are most comfortable using Photoshop, we do not recommend it in the case of silkscreen disc design. You should be using Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, or CorelDraw. The main reason is that instead of using layers or colour fills like you would in Photoshop, you’ll want to instead use Pantone swatches. Which brings us to our next point…
Start Using Pantone Colours
Pantone is an organization system for a wide range of colours. Each pigment or tint is assigned an alpha-numerical identifier, so for example Electric Blue would be Pantone 2727c. Ideally, as a graphic designer you would refer to a Pantone swatch booklet which would have every colour number, that way you’re not reliant on a computer monitor whose colour calibration may be a little bit off.
By using Pantone swatches in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, or CorelDraw, we know exactly which ink colour to use. Your desired hue of blue won’t be too bright or dull, for we know to use the 2727c ink. If you don’t use Pantone swatches, you will need to tell us which pantone number to use for each colour.
How to find Pantone swatches in Adobe Illustrator
Separate the Colours
Let’s say you chose 2-colour silkscreen as your disc print option, and you’d like a red design against a black background. You can’t simply send us a rasterized or flattened jpeg with your artwork, these two colours need to be separated from one another. Simply having each desired colour on a separate layer will not suffice, we must be able to remove colour channels for the whole file like in the video below. Please note that white counts as a colour, empty space in artwork will reveal the silver disc.
High Resolution Text
We recommend adding the text through InDesign, which will give it the sharpest quality and highest resolution possible. If your text is stylized (stretched, bent in a circle, etc.), we recommend Adobe Illustrator as that is the ideal program for vector graphics.
CMYK Printing is a Different Story
If you have a photograph you’d like to use for the disc artwork, maybe a picture of the band or a broken down Chevy, you’ll want to use full-colour CMYK. The approach to CMYK printing is much simpler, it doesn’t require any colour separation or Pantone matching. Simply place the high resolution image in the template and that should suffice.
An example of full CMYK printing
Use Our Templates and Hire a Designer
If this is your first rodeo to graphic design, you may want to look for outside help. A professional designer will have all the tools and knowledge to complete the job. We also offer graphic design services, and since we’ll be the ones printing the discs we’re going to get it right on our first try. Don’t forget to supply your artwork using the Duplication.ca templates!
You may find this guide to be a bit overwhelming, but it’s the road you need to take for brilliant and beautiful silkscreen disc printing. All of the above are industry standard guidelines, which allows us to provide you with the highest quality printed silkscreen so your album artwork is as loud as your music.
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.
Printed VHS sticker labels
An example of 2-colour silkscreen printing
