AI Mailer Box Design Generator

Most printed mailers are one style: a single sheet of corrugated board whose side walls roll inward and whose lid tucks into the front. Printers call it a roll end tuck front (RETF) mailer, and the European FEFCO code is 0427 (Packwire). It locks with tabs, so it closes without glue (Packola).

A 10 by 8 by 4 inch mailer is a standard size at box printers such as Packlane and Arka, so the panels here start there: the lid top and its inside at 10 by 8 inches and the front wall at 10 by 4. Type your own size if your box differs; sizes are inside measurements, and the outside panel is a little bigger by the board’s thickness.

The board is usually E flute, about 1/16 inch thick, or the thicker B flute at about 1/8 inch (Packlane). This generator makes the artwork for each panel, not the box structure: our free dieline generator draws tuck end, lid and drawer boxes, not the rolled mailer, so ask your printer for their mailer dieline in your size and place each panel on it.

Kraft board is brown, and standard printing has no white ink. White areas in your artwork are simply left unprinted, so the brown shows through, and light colors look muted because the ink is slightly see-through (Jukebox Print). Some printers sell white ink on kraft as an extra.

So for a kraft mailer, ask for one or two dark colors and bold line art, and let the brown act as a color, as in this one ink plant club lid. The brown in the image is a preview of the board: for print, the background should be left unprinted, so ask your printer or a designer to drop it, or choose white board for bright full color.

Ink count matters on big runs. Flexo presses, common for long corrugated runs, need a separate plate for each color (President Container Group), while digital presses print full color even for a single box (Northern Container). A one or two color mailer box design keeps both options open.

The underside of the lid is the first thing seen when the box opens, and the moment people film. A short message, a pattern that runs to the edges or a social handle works there; Packlane suggests messages, instructions and ingredient lists, or a full bleed pattern (Packlane).

Pick Inside the lid and the design is laid out for the open box: it reads upright when the lid stands up behind the box, so the top of the image is the lid’s front edge and the bottom is the hinge, kept clear for half an inch. Printers lay the inside out on its own dieline, so check in their preview that the message points the right way.

Printing inside costs more, because two printed sides take more ink and labor. A printed outside with a plain inside, or the reverse, keeps the price down. Tissue, stickers and thank you cards are separate pieces, and a photo of the open box is a mockup, so this page leaves them out and makes the flat panel.

A mailer that ships on its own carries a label, usually on the lid. USPS rules for commercial parcels put the address and barcode squarely on the largest surface, not over an edge or another label (DMM 202, 6.1), and online labels print at about 4 by 6 inches (USPS), as of October 2026.

So in your mailer box design, keep a calm, light area on the lid top big enough for that label, with nothing important under it, and save busy patterns and dark solids for the edges: say so in the description. If the mailer goes inside a shipping carton, the whole lid is yours. Shipping boxes have no federal rule for words on the outside; a mailer that is itself the retail package may need its product name and net quantity, which this page leaves to you.

Open a design to download a print PDF of the panel at full size with 1/4 inch of bleed, the amount box printers ask for on corrugated (Packlane), and a TrimBox, or a 300 dpi PNG. There is no cut line in the file: a panel’s edges are folds on your printer’s dieline, so place it on that dieline panel by panel.

The art is an image, so check every word at full size, ask the printer to convert it to CMYK, or have a designer redraw the logo and text as vectors for the sharpest print. For folding cartons and gift boxes you can do the whole job here: our free box templates cover boxes with lids, drawer boxes and tuck end boxes, and AI gift box design designs on those dielines.

Each design costs credits by model and resolution: 10 for GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst at 1K, 8 for Nano Banana 2.1, 2 for a Muse Image draft, up to 22 for Seedream 5.0 Pro at 2K. Plans start at 800 credits a month (see pricing), and a failed run returns its credits.