There comes a time in any business, where getting business cards printed is a priority. Printed business cards are a good starting point before you become more adventurous and start venturing out into other printed goods. They can also be a great, cost effective way to spread your name, almost virally.
Luckily, designing and printing your business cards needn’t be an arduous task. The worst part is choosing what you are going to put on them! The trends at the moment include textured background graphics, where it gives the impression your cards are made of any other material than card. Ruffled paper, terracotta and grass are amongst the most popular texture techniques!
The first stage to creating your business card is setting up your design file correctly for printing.
The 3mm bleed is important to sort out whilst setting up your design file and will save you the trouble later on of having to resize anything. For the card dimensions 85mm x 55mm you will need to add the 3mm bleed to each side. Therefore, the new dimensions of your design file will be 91mm x 61mm.You will also need to make sure the resolution is set to a minimum of 300dpi (dots per inch) and the color mode to CMYK. This ensures the resolution is high enough for print and the colours are set for ink, not for screens.
Before you add any text or artwork, you need to add guides into your file. The first will be a rectangle 3mm from each side. This marks out the size of your card inside the bleed and should now leave you with a guide box of 85mm x 55mm. Then add an even smaller rectangle inside the last guide to give you a safe area. This will be a further reduction of 3mm from each side leaving you with a working canvas of 79mm x 49mm.
Now armed with the perfect design file, you can create your card graphics and information. Just spend some time getting your design perfect, before looking at our business card printing page to order your cards!