Free vector design programs for sticker printing

Free online sticker printing design programs are actually pretty good – we recommend a few of them for your sticker printing and sticker making needs. The beauty of the internet means despite being located in any part of little old New Zealand – designing and laying out stickers to be printed from our Auckland sticker headquarters, and ordering online has never been easier!  You just need to know what tools to use in order to get the job done well.

This is where online sticker design programs come in, many of which are free.  These have a lot of the tools of quality programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, but without the hefty price tag. Which means you can get more stickers for your $!

These are all vector design programs – and we recommend them for your sticker designs.

Why do you use vector files for sticker printing?

Vector is good for printing stickers because it works in lines and points, not pixels – which means that you can increase and decrease the size of your designs without distortion. We like them for our Vinyl Die Cut Stickers, as they show the exact path that our cutter will take. When digitally printing our stickers, a vector design means that the final print quality will be outstanding – and a single cut path from a vector file can be used to cut a custom shape around your printed sticker if needed (aka kiss cut).

#1 INKSCAPE – ideal for designing for printing stickers, and die cut stickers

In this post we cover INKSCAPE. Future posts will cover other programs that we like in regards to sticker printing design.

What is Inkscape?

Inkscape is an open source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development. Check them out at www.inkscape.org

Want to know more about sticker design?

Keep an eye on our blog, facebook, insta or twitter for more info on other free vector programs.  You can also subscribe to our youtube channel for tutorials and tips on sticker design.

For general advice on our file requirements for sticker printing you can check out our artwork guidelines page or simply get in touch.  We’d love to hear from you and we’re always happy to help!