Branded Tissue Paper Artwork Design Guide Singapore — Logo Placement, File Prep, Bleed, Pantone & Approval Workflow

The difference between a branded tissue paper pack that looks like it was designed and one that looks like it was hastily assembled is almost entirely upstream of the press run — it is in the artwork file. Singapore designers and marketing-ops leads brief tissue artwork to us every week, and the jobs that land print-ready on the first pass share a short list of technical choices: vector logo, CMYK colour build, 3 mm bleed, 300 dpi raster fallback, and a pack-specific safe-zone layout. Get those right and the first press proof matches the design. Get any one of them wrong and the pack either rejects on QC or runs in a subtly off brand colour the reader will never understand why they dislike. This is the file-prep reference companion to tissue printing.

File format — vector first, raster as fallback

Submit tissue artwork as an Adobe Illustrator (.AI) file or a PDF with all fonts outlined. Every logo element must be vector — which means if the original logo was drawn as a raster PNG or JPG, it has to be rebuilt in a vector tool before the artwork goes to print. A vector logo can be scaled to any pack size without loss of edge fidelity; a raster logo upsized to fit a cube-box face will pixelate or soften visibly at print resolution.

Where raster images are unavoidable — for instance a photograph of a menu item on an F&B square pack — supply them at a minimum of 300 dpi at the final printed size. A photograph that measures 85 mm across on a square pack needs to be at least 1,003 pixels wide. Anything lower than that reads as grainy at arm’s length, which is exactly the reading distance a tissue pack sits at on a dining table.

Accepted file formats, ranked

• .AI (Adobe Illustrator) — the default. All fonts outlined, all linked images embedded, one artwork per face.
• .PDF (PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-4) — acceptable if exported from Illustrator or InDesign with fonts outlined and bleed included.
• .EPS — acceptable but increasingly legacy; only use if you don’t have access to Illustrator.
• .PSD / .TIFF — only for raster elements embedded inside an .AI master; never as a standalone artwork file.
• .PNG / .JPG — not accepted as primary artwork. Fine as reference or mood-board only.

Colour mode — CMYK for build, Pantone for match

Tissue pack print is CMYK process — four-colour build using cyan, magenta, yellow and black dot patterns. Supply the artwork in CMYK colour mode, not RGB. RGB artwork converted to CMYK at the prepress stage loses saturation and shifts hue unpredictably — reds go slightly orange, blues go slightly purple, and bright greens in particular lose their punch. Convert inside Illustrator with an eye on each colour, rather than letting the supplier convert at press time.

For brand-critical colours — the exact brand red, the exact corporate navy — specify a Pantone reference alongside the CMYK build. Pantone colours are mixed-ink spot colours with a physical swatch book reference, which means the press can colour-match to a fixed target rather than reproducing a process approximation. Pantone matching adds S$60–S$120 per spot colour per artwork at prepress; for a luxury brand where colour integrity matters, it is cheap. For a volume MRT handout where 2% hue drift is invisible, skip it.

Colour decision shortcuts

• Brand guideline specifies a Pantone colour? → Pantone match, CMYK as documentation only.
• Brand uses standard web colours (#D35400 type)? → CMYK process is fine, skip Pantone.
• Photographic artwork? → CMYK process always; Pantone cannot reproduce continuous-tone imagery.
• Black-only single-colour design? → Specify 100% K, not rich black. Rich black on tissue wrappers bleeds and offsets.

Bleed, safe zone and trim — per pack format

Every tissue pack artwork needs three defined zones: the trim line (where the wrapper is cut), the bleed (artwork extended 3 mm beyond the trim so the cut never shows a white edge), and the safe zone (critical content — logo, copy, QR code — kept 3 mm inside the trim so it is never clipped). Miss any of the three and the pack either shows a white hairline at the edge or amputates part of the logo at the fold.

Cube boxes and cardboard packs are dielines, not simple rectangles — the artwork is supplied as a flat unfolded net with fold lines, glue tabs and dust flaps marked. The supplier provides the dieline template as a layered .AI file; the designer fills the printable faces and leaves the fold / glue / dust-flap layers alone. For the full pack-by-pack print-area map see the pack size print areas breakdown.

Logo placement — per pack, per use case

Logo placement on a tissue pack is not a free choice. Each format has a natural “primary face” — the face the recipient sees first — and the logo should either sit on that face or sit at the centre of a wraparound design that the primary face frames. Here is the pattern most Singapore brands converge on after one or two iterations.

• Namecard pack — logo centred on the front face, size 25–30% of the face area, with a single-line tagline or URL below. Back face left clean or with a secondary mark.
• Standard pocket — logo top-left on the front face, full-colour illustration or flat field occupying the remaining area. Back face carries the URL, QR code, and one-line offer copy.
• Plastic wallet — logo on the back face upper third (the front is transparent). Artwork insert behind the tissue can carry additional copy.
• Square pack — logo bottom-right, small, acting as a signature. The main face is for an illustration, a photograph, or a pattern.
• Cardboard sleeve — logo embossed or foil-stamped on the front face, small and elegant. The sleeve is the hero; don’t clutter it.
• Cube box — logo on one face only, not all six. The other five faces carry brand pattern, a product shot, or menu copy. Six-logo cubes look like low-cost packaging and lose the table-top premium effect.

Typography that survives the press

Tissue wrappers are printed on thin polyethylene (plastic pockets) or paper (square, cardboard, cube) and every material has a minimum legible type size. Anything below the minimum goes muddy, especially in light-on-dark configurations. Use these floors.

The five-stage approval workflow

Every tissue artwork moves through five gates between first brief and signed press proof. Skipping any one of them adds days at the press stage — a design approved without a hard-copy colour proof, for example, will go to press in colours the designer has never actually seen on substrate. Treat each gate as a checklist item and the project ships on calendar.

1. Gate 1 — Design lock. Internal creative and brand team sign off the concept on screen. Typography, colour, logo placement, copy fixed. No further internal revisions after this gate.
2. Gate 2 — Technical pre-check. Supplier prepress reviews the file for bleed, safe zone, colour mode, font outlining, embedded links. Any file-level issue bounces back here; this is the cheapest gate to fail at because the fix is a re-export not a reprint.
3. Gate 3 — Soft proof. Supplier returns a PDF soft proof with trim lines and bleed marks visible. Client confirms layout, copy, trim alignment. Colour is not approved at this gate — a screen-only proof is for structural sign-off only.
4. Gate 4 — Hard-copy colour proof. Supplier prints a single-pack sample on the actual substrate at press-quality colour. Client physically holds the sample, compares to Pantone swatches under D50 lighting if precision is required, signs off on colour. This is the gate most buyers skip — don’t.
5. Gate 5 — Press sign-off. A small first run (100–300 packs) is produced and signed off on site or via a photographed press proof, before the main run starts. Any systemic issue (plate misalignment, dot gain, colour drift) surfaces here while it is still cheap to stop.

The full calendar from Gate 1 to Gate 5 is 7–12 working days for a standard pocket pack, 10–15 for a square or cardboard pack, and 12–18 for a cube box with a dieline. These days sit inside the total production timeline covered in the lead times and pricing bands reference.

The five most common artwork mistakes

1. Raster logo on a cube box face. A 72 dpi PNG logo upscaled to fill a 110 mm face pixelates at the outline. Always rebuild the logo as vector before starting pack artwork.
2. RGB colour mode left in the file. Bright brand colours lose 10–20% saturation when converted to CMYK at the press. Always convert inside Illustrator and eyeball each conversion.
3. Text in the bleed zone. A URL or tagline positioned within 3 mm of the trim gets clipped when the pack is cut. Keep all critical content inside the safe zone.
4. Fonts not outlined. Supplier opens the file, sees a missing-font warning, substitutes a default — and the design ships in Helvetica instead of the brand typeface. Outline all fonts before export.
5. No hard-copy colour proof. Screen colour is not substrate colour. Skipping Gate 4 is the single biggest source of “the pack doesn’t look like the design” complaints at delivery.

For the matched use-case context — which campaigns demand which level of artwork precision — the launch-event distribution playbook maps campaign tiers to creative treatments, so the artwork budget matches the campaign stakes.

Frequently asked artwork questions

Can the supplier redraw our raster logo as vector?

Yes — vector redraw is a chargeable artwork service at S$80–S$150 depending on logo complexity, with 2–3 working days turnaround. For simple two-colour marks this usually costs less than an hour of an internal designer’s time.

Do we need to supply a separate artwork per pack size if we run multiple formats?

Yes. A pocket pack artwork cannot be stretched to fit a cube-box dieline because the aspect ratios and safe zones differ. Supply one print-ready file per pack format. Artwork fees are per format, not per run.

Can we print metallic gold or silver?

On cardboard sleeves and cube boxes yes — as a foil-stamp (hot foil) or as a Pantone metallic spot. Foil stamping adds S$150–S$300 per artwork setup plus a per-unit surcharge. Not available on polyethylene wrappers (pocket, namecard, wallet).

Is there a standard template the designer can start from?

Yes — the supplier provides layered .AI dieline templates for every pack format on request. The template has trim, bleed, safe zone and fold lines pre-set. The designer only has to fill the artwork layer and leave the technical layers untouched.