File Check! Common Issues that Delay Production

Our Production team is committed to launching your designs as quickly as possible while remaining true to your design vision.

There are a few limitations to our customizer and production process, and some common file setup issues that can cause delays as a result. 

Note: If a design file includes one of the below common issues, our production team is required to make these minor changes that will allow a design to print and display correctly. 

Our team will make these minor adjustments without sending a design change notification to launch your design as quickly as possible. Please familiarize yourself with these common issues to avoid the need for additional work on our production team's side. This will help us launch your designs even more quickly and with your original, exact design intention. 

• The border minimum is 0.3” from the edge of the card. This is especially important for digital items, like textboxes.  
• Our customizer only recognizes standard glyphs. Please make sure the special glyphs and ligatures options in the OpenType Panel are turned off. 
• Our customizer does not recognize adjustments to the casing of a textbox via the Character Panel. Please make sure the small caps, all caps, and superscript/subscript options in the Character Panel are turned off. 
• When in doubt, make your foil a bit thicker! We require that all foil elements be at least 1pt in width at the narrowest portion, and small gaps need to be filled in. 

If you ever notice an issue after launch, please contact [e-mail] and we'll be happy to explore potential solutions with you. 

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In depth

The sections below provide additional context on each production consideration, including why these guidelines exist and how they help ensure your designs print beautifully and launch smoothly.

Border Minimums

• Our artboards are set up to include a 0.1” bleed on each side. We ask you to extend your artwork to the very edge of the artboard to make sure that your art extends from edge to edge of the paper when your cards are trimmed at our printing facilities. 
  • This means that the artboards provided in your templates will be 0.2” larger than your finished card. For example, an A7 card is 5”x7” when printed and trimmed, so you can expect to see 5.2”x7.2” artboards in the provided templates. 
• Because our cards are cut by hand, we expect a small amount of shifting when they’re trimmed (up to 0.125”). To account for any potential shifting in the trimming process, we ask that you keep all digital elements that you do not want to bleed off the card, most importantly text, at least 0.3” away from the edge of the artboard. 

Left: text set a bit too close to the edge of the artboard, Right: text with the correct amount of safety 

Typesetting

• Our customizer has a few limitations on recognizable attributes from the OpenType and Character panels. Please make sure the special characters and ligatures options in the OpenType panel, and the small caps, all caps, superscript, and subscript options in the Character Panel are turned off in your final files. 

• OpenType

  • Our customizer currently only recognizes the standard glyph set from any given font. Any special characters or ligatures will not display in our customizer. 
  • If a particular special character or ligature is important to your design, please let us know! Leave an outlined version of the textbox off the artboard, along with a note, and our font team will do everything they can to ensure your launched design matches your winning submission as closely as possible. 

• Character Panel

  • The small caps, all caps, superscript, and subscript options in the Character panel change the appearance of a textbox only; they don’t change anything about the characters themselves. Our customizer can’t read these appearance attributes, and won’t display them in our customizer. While these attributes can be helpful for quickly changing the way a textbox displays, we ask that you please turn them off in your final files. 
  • If you’d like to change the casing of a whole text box, please do so using Type > Change Case > desired casing. This changes the contents of the textbox and will be honored by our customizer. 

Foil Minimums

• To ensure that your foil design presses perfectly on each customer’s order, we ask that you keep a few foil minimums in mind while designing. 
• To avoid foil registration concerns, please ensure there’s a 0.125” foil safety buffer between foil and digital elements that aren’t intended to overlap. 
• Please ensure the foil border around the photo or text area is at least a 5-7pt stroke thickness to hide any obvious foil shift.

Left: the foil border is too thin and risks the green or white showing through to the other side, Right: foil border made a bit thicker to match our minimums 

• To avoid flaking off, please ensure the thin foil elements are at least a 1pt stroke thickness. 
  • Note: thin foil elements are more likely to "disappear" when they are coupled with heavy/thick foil elements, as different thicknesses require different pressure and heat for the foil to adhere properly. If you have a few thin elements and many really thick ones, consider making your thin elements thicker than the recommended 1pt.

Left: the foiled text is too thin and risks pressing unevenly, Right: foil is made a bit thicker to match our minimums

• To avoid foil from filling in, please ensure the negative space in the foil is set to at least a 1.5-2pt stroke opening.
  • If making the opening this large negatively impacts the aesthetic of your design, consider proactively filling in those spaces instead

Black lines in this example are equal to 1.5pt 

Left: the gaps in foiled text are too small and risks pressing unevenly, Right: gaps have been made a bit thicker match our minimums

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Our goal is always to bring your design to life in a way that stays true to your creative vision while ensuring a high-quality final product. To help keep designs moving through production efficiently, our team may make minor adjustments like those outlined above as part of our standard production process. Keeping these guidelines in mind can help reduce the need for edits and support a smoother path to launch.

If you'd like to learn more about how winning submissions become launched products, check out our guide to the Minted production process, including production considerations and tips from our Operations team.