Designing your label

The classic sizes (330, 440, 500 and 568 ml) share one diameter, so their labels are all 207 mm wide and wrap horizontally around the can — only the height changes: 85 / 120 / 138 / 158 mm respectively. The slimmer 330 ml sleek can uses a 181 × 119 mm label. The long edge wraps the circumference; the short edge is the visible height. Most of the label is your artwork; the right 40 mm is the producer info panel.

The producer info panel — ingredients, nutrition, allergens, barcode — is generated automatically from your order details and added to the right edge of the printed label. You don't include it in your file. Your file is just the artwork; we add the panel beside it on press (see section 08).

What you upload

Upload at your can size's artwork dimensions (167 mm wide × 85 / 120 / 138 / 158 mm for the classic sizes; 141 × 119 mm for the sleek). What you upload is exactly what gets printed in the artwork region — no separate oversized version, nothing reserved or overlaid. The right edge of your file is the seam where the info panel attaches.

Let your background run all the way out to the edge of the file, and keep anything you actually want read — text, logos, codes — 3 mm in from it. Nothing goes around the outside: we extend your edge colours a hair past the cut ourselves, for print tolerance.

Cutting a printed label is precise but never perfectly so. The blade can shift by a fraction of a millimetre between cuts. The safe zone is how we keep your important content clear of that movement.

You upload your artwork at its exact printed size — 167 × 85 mm for a 330 ml can (167 × 120 / 138 / 158 for 440 / 500 / 568 ml; 141 × 119 for the sleek). The edge of your file is the cut line — there is no extra border to build around it. We extend your edge colours a hair past that cut on our side, from the pixels you upload, so a slightly off-target blade never exposes an unprinted strip.

Keep important content off the edge

Leave a 3 mm margin inside every edge and keep text, logos, faces, and key graphics within it — the 161 × 79 mm safe zone on a 330 ml label (proportionally larger on the taller sizes, 135 × 113 on the sleek). If the cut shifts inward, anything sitting right on the edge can get clipped; content inside the safe zone always survives.

Four formats are accepted, in order of preference:

Exporting from working files

If you're working in Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, or Affinity, export to PDF before uploading. PDF/X-4 is the safest target. In Illustrator: File → Save As → Adobe PDF → PDF/X-4. In Photoshop: File → Save As → Photoshop PDF.

Resolution determines how much detail survives the trip from your screen to the printed label. Too low, and edges go fuzzy. Too high, and you're just making bigger files for no gain.

We'll print whatever resolution you upload — this section is about what to expect from each.

There's no benefit to uploading higher than 600 DPI — beyond that, file size grows but visible quality doesn't.

Your screen makes colour by mixing red, green, and blue light — that's RGB. Our printer makes colour by mixing cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink — that's CMYK. The two don't perfectly match.

RGB has a wider colour range than CMYK, which means some bright, saturated colours you see on screen — neon greens, electric blues, pure reds — simply cannot be produced with ink. If you submit an RGB file, we'll convert it to CMYK during print prep, and those out-of-range colours get pulled toward the closest printable equivalent. The result is usually a slightly muted version of what you saw on screen.

What to do

• Best: design and export in CMYK from the start. In Illustrator, File → Document Color Mode → CMYK. In Photoshop, Image → Mode → CMYK.
• Acceptable: design in RGB, soft-proof to CMYK before exporting (Photoshop: View → Proof Colors) so you can see what to expect.
• Risky: design in RGB and ignore the conversion. The colours you see on your monitor are not what will print.

If your brand depends on an exact colour match, send us the Pantone reference and we'll find the closest CMYK build during our manual review.

“Black” is two different things in print, and using the wrong one is one of the most common rookie mistakes.

Use 100 % K for body text, thin lines, and barcodes — a single ink prints crisper. Use Rich Black (C 60 · M 40 · Y 40 · K 100) for large dark fills, where 100 % K alone tends to look thin and brownish.

Printing on PP label stock is sharp, but it has its limits. Tiny text, hairline strokes, and over-thin fonts can break down at the press.

Rules of thumb

• 6 pt or larger for any text you actually want people to read. Below that, characters lose integrity at the press.
• 4 pt absolute floor for fine print in monochrome — and only if the typeface is robust (no hairline serifs).
• 8 pt or larger for ingredients, instructions, and anything where readability matters.
• Avoid extra-thin or hairline weights. The strokes can drop out at small sizes. Stick to regular or medium weights for body copy.
• Outline or embed your fonts when exporting PDF. PDF/X-4 does this automatically.

Every can of food or drink sold in the EU is required by law to display certain information: the producer, the ingredients, allergens, nutrition facts, country of origin, net volume, and a barcode. Together, these form the producer panel.

.Portal generates the panel for you, automatically — built from the order details you provide at checkout. You don't include it in your file, you don't draw it, and you don't leave space for it. You upload your artwork at 167 mm × your can size's label height; we add the panel to the right edge of your artwork on press; the two are printed and die-cut as a single 207 mm-wide label.

The panel is a fixed 40 mm strip, always on the right edge of the assembled label. Because we add it after your upload, your file is just the artwork — there is nothing to design around.

Position, width, and content are fixed

The panel is always 40 mm wide, always on the right edge, and you cannot edit anything inside it: not the order of fields, not the typography, not the barcode placement. These are constrained by EU food law and we keep them locked so the result is guaranteed compliant.

The fastest way to get your file dimensions right is to start from the artwork template for your can size. Each is sized to exactly what we expect — 167 mm × the label height, the finished cut label. The dashed outline is the cut line and sits right on the file edge; the yellow ring just inside it is the 3 mm keep-clear margin, and the green area is the safe zone for text, logos and codes. The right edge is the panel seam — no info panel content for you to design around. Open it, run your background out to all four edges, hide the guide layer, export at the same size.

Every design is reviewed manually by our team before it goes to the press. The review isn't there to second-guess your design choices — we'll print whatever file you give us. It's there to catch the small handful of issues we genuinely can't print, and to flag potential quality concerns so you can decide whether to fix them or proceed.

What happens after you upload

1. You upload and order. Your file goes into the review queue.
2. We review (typically within 24 hours). We open your file, check it against our compliance checklist, and prepare a digital proof.
3. One of three things happens:
   • All clear — we send you the proof. You confirm, we go to print.
   • Quality concern — we email you with what we noticed (e.g. low resolution, vivid RGB colours likely to shift, text close to the cut line). You can fix and re-upload, or accept and proceed. Your call.
   • Hard issue — if something genuinely can't be printed, we explain why and ask for a new file. No charge for re-uploads.
4. You sign off on the proof. No design goes to print without your written approval.

What we'll always print

If you've seen the proof, signed off, and your design isn't on the list below, we'll print it — even if we'd have made different choices ourselves. Resolution, colour vibrancy, font sizes, contrast, layout — these are stylistic decisions, and they're yours to make.

What we won't print

• Illegal content — anything that violates EU or Estonian law.
• Infringing content — third-party logos, copyrighted characters, trademarks, or designs you don't have the rights to use.
• Customer-drawn compliance content — ingredient lists, nutrition tables and barcodes have to come from the auto info panel.
• Technically unprocessable files — corrupt PDFs, files we can't open, or dimensions so far off we can't make them fit.
• Total ink coverage above 300 % — this isn't a stylistic choice, it physically damages the print. We'll suggest a small CMYK adjustment.

Outside of the above, the choice is yours. We'd rather you make an informed decision than have us gatekeep your design.

These are the issues we see most often. None of them stops us from printing — but each one will visibly hurt the result. Worth checking your file against this list before you order.

Each of these can be fixed in minutes once you know what to look for. The templates above prevent most of them automatically. And if you upload one anyway — we'll mention it during review, but the call is yours.