The Print-Ready Wrap File Checklist: What Production Needs From Designers

Every production manager has the same folder of horror stories: the gorgeous design delivered at 72dpi web resolution, the "vector" file that's one giant embedded JPEG, the cut line built as a regular stroke that printed magenta across a hood. This checklist is the contract between wrap designers and the print room — run it before every handoff and reprints mostly stop existing.

Scale and resolution

• •Work at a declared scale. 1:10 is the trade convention (1" in the file = 10" on the vehicle); 1:20 appears on large fleet work. State the scale IN the filename and on a slug outside the artwork: `transit-250-driver_1-10.pdf`.
• •Resolution at full size: 72–100 dpi effective. At 1:10 scale that means 720–1000 dpi in-file for raster elements. Nobody needs 300dpi at vehicle scale — files balloon and RIPs choke.
• •Verify against the real vehicle, not just the template. Templates drift from trim levels and model years — the honest accuracy conversation is in the template comparison. One field measurement (wheelbase or body line) calibrates everything.

Bleed and panel logic

• •3" of bleed at vehicle scale beyond every trim edge, minimum. Installers pull, stretch, and re-position; edge-exact art guarantees a colored gap.
• •Design across panel seams, don't ignore them. Media prints at 54–60"; a box truck side is 3+ panels. Put panel breaks where the artwork forgives them (solid fields, not across a face or fine lettering), and include 0.5–1" overlap per seam.
• •Respect the hazard zones: door handles, recesses, body lines distort art — critical text dies there. The full layout discipline is in bleed, seams, and panel layout.

Cut lines: the CutContour convention

Contour cuts are driven by a named spot color, almost universally called `CutContour`, applied to a stroke on its own layer, set to overprint. The RIP separates that spot into a cut path instead of printing it. The three classic failures:

• •The path is a plain colored stroke, not the named spot → it PRINTS.
• •Two subtly different spot names (`CutContour` and `Cut Contour`) → half the shapes cut, half print.
• •The cut layer is flattened into the art during a save-as → nothing cuts.

Deliver cut paths as clean single-path vectors — no open segments, no doubled nodes. The mechanics and RIP-side behavior are covered in contour cut files, explained, and files exported from Overlam Studio write true named CutContour separations automatically.

Color that survives the RIP

• •Build in CMYK (or tag everything with profiles and say so loudly). Untagged RGB is the top source of "that's not our blue" reprints.
• •Brand colors: specify Pantone references and let the print room match with their device profiles. Don't hand-convert Pantone to CMYK values yourself — their printer, their conversion.
• •Rich black for fields (60/40/40/100 is a safe default), 100K only for small text.
• •Ask for a printed proof swatch on the actual media for color-critical fleet work. One 12" square saves a 300 sq ft argument.

Fonts and delivery

• •Outline every font in the delivery file. Keep a live-text working file yourself for revisions.
• •Deliver layered PDF (preferred) or AI, packaged with links embedded, plus a flattened JPEG visual reference the installer can hold.
• •Include a layout sheet: vehicle views with panel numbers, scale note, media and laminate spec, and total square footage — the installer's map and the print room's sanity check.
• •Name files like production reads them: `client_vehicle_side_scale_version`. "final_FINAL_v3(2).ai" is how wrong versions print.

The 60-second preflight

Scale declared → bleed present → seams planned → CutContour named/spot/overprint → CMYK or profiled → fonts outlined → layout sheet included. Seven checks, one reprint budget saved. Print shops remember designers whose files just run — it's the quiet reputation that fills a freelance book, and it's half of what pricing design work with confidence rests on.