Corflute doesn't have to be a rectangle

Almost every corflute sign you have ever seen is a rectangle. That is not a limitation of the material — it is a limitation of how it is usually cut. The board comes off the press as a flat sheet and a guillotine trims it square because square is fast. Put the same sheet through a router with a cut path and it can become almost any outline you can draw.

We call it a custom shape cut in the builder. It is the same idea as a die-cut sticker, at signage scale: we print your artwork in full colour and cut the board to the edge of the art, so what you get is the shape of the thing rather than a box with the thing printed on it.

What people actually order

The split is roughly half business, half occasion, and the two want different things from it.

On the business side it is mostly logo cutouts for a shopfront or a trade stand, product-shaped displays (a giant version of a bottle, a packet, a tool), directional and wayfinding signs shaped like arrows or hands, menu and pricing boards cut to a shape that matches the branding, and real estate signage that breaks out of the standard agent board. A cutout on a footpath gets looked at in a way a rectangle on a stand does not, which is the entire commercial argument for it.

On the occasion side: life-size person cutouts for birthdays, weddings, graduations and sports teams; oversized head cutouts, which are reliably the funniest thing at any party; character and mascot cutouts; photo booth props; social media frames; and event and party decorations generally. Cheap enough to be disposable, sturdy enough to survive a weekend outdoors, light enough to post.

How big it goes

A straight cut runs to the full sheet — 2.4 × 1.2 m. A contour cut runs on a smaller bed, so 1200 mm is the ceiling per piece in the builder — anything bigger is priced by hand, so contact us for pricing. That is not a ceiling on the finished thing, only on each piece of it: a life-size standing adult is taller than 1200 mm, so it comes as two pieces that join, and we set the artwork up so the join falls somewhere that reads as deliberate rather than as a mistake.

Thickness matters more on a cutout than on a flat sign. A rectangle is stiff because it is a rectangle; an outline with thin limbs sticking out of it is not. For anything with narrow projections — arms, arrows, letters standing proud, thin necks — take the 5 mm board. On a compact shape like a logo blob or a circle, 3 mm is fine.

What it costs

A custom shape cut prices at half again on top of the same board straight-cut. That covers the second pass on the router and the weeding — pulling the offcut away from the piece by hand, which is the slow part on a complicated outline. The print itself costs exactly the same either way, because it is the same ink on the same area of board.

It shows as its own line in the price breakdown in the builder, before you pay. Cut-line setup, the proof and any revisions are included, same as everything else we print — see how quantity affects price if you are ordering more than one.

Artwork the router can follow

This is where cutout jobs go wrong, and it is worth two minutes before you upload.

The cut line is traced from the edge of your art. That means the file has to have an edge. A transparent PNG or a vector — SVG, PDF, AI — gives us one directly. A photo on a white background does not: to the software, the white is part of the image, and you would get a rectangle. If your file is a photo, the background needs removing first. Send it anyway if you are not sure; we will tell you which one you have.

Keep important detail about 5 mm inside the edge. A router has real tolerance, the same way a plotter does on stickers. Artwork that runs right up to the cut line is artwork that sometimes gets clipped. Our artwork guide covers the same rule for stickers, and it applies harder here because the board is thicker.

Resolution is more forgiving than you would think. Corflute is read from across a street, not held in the hand, so 100–150 DPI at final size is plenty. The exception is a life-size person: at that scale a phone screenshot will look like a phone screenshot. Send the largest original you have.

Watch the thin bits. Anything narrower than about 15 mm on the finished piece is fragile in corflute — it flexes along the flutes and snaps. If your shape has a hairline element, we will usually suggest thickening it or absorbing it into the body of the cut, and we will show you that on the proof rather than just doing it.

Standing it up

Corflute is light. That is why it is good for this, and it is also why a tall cutout blows over the first time someone opens a door. Plan for it:

For indoor freestanding pieces we can cut a matching corflute foot, or you can back it with a cardboard easel strut. For anything outdoors, fix it — corner eyelets and cable ties to a fence or frame, and run the ties through the eyelet rather than straight through the board, or the tie will slowly saw its way out. For a shopfront, double-sided tape to glass works better than anything freestanding.

Tell us in the notes how it is going to stand. It costs nothing to mention and it is the single thing most likely to save a job.

Where to start

Open the corflute builder, choose Custom shape cut, and drop your art in. The preview traces the cut line live, and the border slider sets how much board sits outside your artwork — thicker for a chunkier, sturdier outline, thinner to hug the shape. What you see is what goes on the proof.

If you have an idea rather than a file, that is fine too. Send it through the quote page and describe what you are picturing. Working out the shape is the part we enjoy.