You might’ve seen or gotten hold of a business card before. It could’ve been in your local bank after setting up an account. Or at a networking event. Or during a conversation with people at a bar. Business cards are exactly what the name indicates: to introduce one’s business, profession services or company to somebody else, in order for them to potentially do business later on. Within the confines of something that’s almost the same size as your driver’s license, you want your card to showcase a professional image and give a positive impression about you or your business.
In this age when everybody’s constantly connected online, you may wonder: is it worth the effort and cost to print business cards? The answer is yes! The fact that so much is going on in the digital world means that by going offline, you bypass that chaos. You do something different from competitors. You create a tangible asset with a business card and by adding things like colours, embellishments and striking visual elements, it will make you more memorable.
With a well-made business card, you give all those conversations with people at events a better chance of success – converting them to clients or customers – by handing them a physical reminder of who you are and why they should contact you. And in terms of brand recognition, a quality business card can work wonders compared to a Twitter or Instagram page where such platforms have limits in design.
One element about a business card to first consider is the type. Your choice here has an impact on the way words, colours and images will come out when your card is finally printed. It partially influences the impression about you or your company. So it’s good to understand the main types of business cards listed below.
Standard business cards are simple yet practical. With a standard size of 90x55mm (see other size options below), this type can easily get the job done if you need a versatile business card that can suit different industries, settings or occasions.
Spot UV is one of two clear gloss types for business cards. What makes it appealing is the way it adds a shiny UV coating to a select area of the card. Think about the way a company logo or a person’s name and title can be enhanced by such coating. If you combine this Spot UV high gloss clear with a matt laminated finish, the resulting contrast will only make your business card stand out more.
This type involves a metallic foil that’s applied to the surface of a business card. You end up viewing a card that appears sleek and shiny. That’s why it’s the perfect option for business cards meant to convey premium and top-quality products or services.
Scodix is another type of business card with clear gloss. It’s also known as raised UV and delivers an attractive, premium finish when the card is finally printed. It’s this raised UV look that captures both a sense of great quality and a sense of being unique from the others. Can also be in gold or silver!
There are several other business card designs and styles to check out, and each has its own texture and distinct personality overall.
While business cards are made to fit in wallets, that’s not to say there isn’t some wiggle room for the exact dimensions. The different sizes are found below, and for your reference, consider how most ATM cards or credits cards are roughly 85x54mm in size.
Our standard sizes are:
90x55mm
90x45mm
86x54mm
Note that you can order a custom-fit business card if none of the sizes above best suits your card. You can also contact the printing company if you’d like other customisations such as rounded corners or an alternative shape. Normally, these would require a custom quote.
GSM, which stands for Grams per Square Metre, refers to the weight or thickness of the business card. You’re best off selecting a higher GSM if you want to produce a card that’s thicker or more rigid.
When designing and printing your cards, having content on the back side of your business card can be a good thing. Since most other business cards out there display the usual bits of information, your name and contact details, you can have a bit of fun for the other side with ‘extra’ components. Consider things like a QR code that links to your online portfolio, or maybe a testimonial from a celebrity or a well-known company you did business with. Treat that back side like a “more about me” section that sells yourself even better.
This pertains to the actual material being used to print your business card. The ones listed below are commonly available.
Typically available with a weight of 350/450gsm, this stock type does the best job for business cards that are sturdy, firm and able to show off multiple colours and graphics. If flashiness suits your brand, then select this one.
Unlike artboard coated, uncoated business cards lack the ‘sealing’ substance, which in turn makes these cards more porous. That means more ink ends up being absorbed during printing, and images or colourful elements wind up appearing softer and less crisp. However, uncoated cards are actually becoming more popular as a modern business card type with their raw paper look and feel. They are generally available in 300gsm or 350gsm.
You can go green here as this option involves 100% recycled material. It’s available in 140gsm. Alternatively, you can choose the Buffalo Board type which is also made of recycled paper, specifically brown recycled board, with a stock weight of 332gsm.
This is the finishing touch, the plastic coating on top of the print. You have a choice among Gloss, Matt and Velvet lamination. Is the ability to shine when held against light important? Then Gloss would be your best bet. Or if you want a business card that has a smooth luxurious feel and laminated similarly to most cards nowadays, Matt would be ideal. If you prefer something even softer and silkier, there’s Velvet lamination.
You probably know all the must-have details in your business card: name, job title, company name, logo and contact details including website, email address and phone number. If applicable, you also want to include a tagline or short description of your business, an office address and perhaps links to social media accounts (for certain industries). But beyond that, designing this card is about more than what you show. It matters how you show it.
The way your card looks from top to bottom, left to right should reflect the qualities of your brand, your business or services. If the work you do is typically serious, analytical or numbers based, then a more muted colour selection and font style would show that. If you offer web design services, then the card has to serve as the first piece of proof that you’ve got real creativity and an eye for detail. However, there are no actual rules at the end of the day. The only thing worth setting as a rule? Stay in the other person’s shoes and ask “Does this make me want to know more about this person/company/brand?”
Still, even before you dive into the whole designing process, step back and ask if you really think you can pull off designing your own business card. Remember that you can outsource this. You can rely on an expert with a proven track record of effective and strategic designs, someone who’s been around long enough to know what colour scheme works for a personal trainer’s card versus a wealth manager’s card. Someone who knows which font type best captures an IT company’s credibility. If you are willing to invest, seek a professional to help you come across better as a professional – through your next business card.
It’s all about excellent first impressions when you promote yourself or your company. That’s why the need for top-notch quality, printed business cards exists now, and it won’t go away anytime soon. We at The Print Company can help you with this essential marketing tool. Click here to find out how we can print the ideal business card for you.
To create the best luxury business card design, you first need to understand the medium and processes you will be working with.
The easy part is print on paper, but where it gets more complex is the modern print finishing options you might choose to add to your business card. Knowing the strengths of each of these finishing processes will help you create a luxury business card that is truly stunning.
If it is your first time creating luxury business cards for yourself, we know that trying to understand different luxury print options can be daunting. In this article we hope to summarize everything you need to know in less than a ten minute read, so that you can confidently design the most stunning luxury business cards for us to print for you. Each section below includes image examples of the print techniques we describe.
Some of our luxury business card printingUnderstanding what inks will work well on different substrates and paper types is important. If you are printing on a black paper, you’ll need to consider using what will need to be done in order to get the appearance you are looking for. Will you need to order specific ink colors to use? How many do you need? Will this drive up the final cost too much? Fortunately when printing with Vermillion Silk you don’t have to ask yourself most of these questions because we keep options simple to make ordering easy and keep prices low for our customers. All of our cards are printed on a premium white 16pt card stock with CMYK ink.
This means you can use any CMYK colors including printing full color images and gradients. The last thing to consider here is that since CMYK is a subtractive color model, and because of the nature of print vs screen, deep colors may appear slightly darker than on your screen and extremely light grey (near 10% grey) may appear slightly more subtle in print than on screen.
What are the potential disadvantages of CMYK over individual spot color inks? Dot gain, or the halftone pattern effect, and not having guaranteed exact color matching. On modern high-end offset equipment like we use, designs are printed at a super high 500 line screen for a final image that is razor sharp without any noticeable dot gain. As far as exact color matching, it is very rare for it to be worth it or necessary to use Pantone or individual spot color inks unless there is some kind of highly uncommon fluorescent color ink that cannot be produced by CMYK (it probably cannot be produced on your computer display either).
Silk business cards with copper foil, blind spot UV and 1/4" rounded corners. One of the cards included in our sample packs.Letterpress business cards are luxurious and appeal to the timeless traditional look of a having an old-school printing press push ink lettering onto your business card. At Vermillion Silk, letterpress doesn’t fit into our philosophy of creating luxury business cards at a price that is reasonable for the average business. While we realize there will always be many options for lower quality business cards significantly cheaper than ours, letterpress cards are many multiples above our products in price. Letterpress is also inefficient to mass produce, very limited in how many ink colors can be used, and as we mentioned — prohibitively expensive for most businesses.
Awhile back, full UV high gloss business cards used to be popular. For a short time these were the fancier option in comparison to uncoated card stock (unless you had the option of going with a more expensive textured card stock). Today, high gloss business cards are seen as tacky. A matte appearance however, is timeless.
At Vermillion Silk we offer two unique matte finishes: silk coating and suede coating. Both silk and suede coatings are a type of matte lamination that gives a heavy matte appearance, but even more importantly, provides an extremely unique and luxurious tactile feel. Learn more about the difference between silk coated and suede coated business cards.
Appearance-wise, both silk and suede coated business cards look similar. Technically though, if you want the highest contrast color, suede will be your best bet as it provides a slightly better contrast for deeper blacks. Since suede is a more textured matte finish, it reflects slightly less light than our silk lamination.
Silk business cards with 1/8" rounded corners that we printed for Bright CoA laminate coating also adds substantial durability to a business card, both in helping it to be tear resistant and water resistant!
After the ink is printed on the card stock and any laminates or coatings are applied, business cards can go through additional finishing processes to add effects. The two most common categories for these extra finishing options are spot gloss effects and foil effects.
While full UV coating is no longer popular, spot UV gloss or spot varnish, is extremely popular today. Spot gloss is the inclusion of clear UV gloss in a specific area of the card design, such as over a brand logo for instance. Selective areas of gloss over a business card look particularly nice when contrasting with heavy matte finishes such as our aforementioned silk and suede laminations. The reason the print industry refers to selective gloss as spot UV is because the gloss coating is cured using ultraviolet (UV) radiation.
Raised gloss is a glossy polymer that while still cured using UV light, is different from spot UV because while spot UV is almost completely flat, raised gloss is a polymer which can be applied to be much thicker, giving it a three-dimensional embossed feeling.
Suede business cards with raised gloss printed for DJ Niki. Blind raised spot gloss used for the music genres in the background.Spot UV is an affordable print finishing option, but we’d argue that spot gloss effects are probably one of the most difficult effects to use to its fullest potential. Though once you understand how to design around spot UV, incorporating it successfully into your luxury business cards is straightforward.
Designers who haven’t used spot UV before tend to think, “I’ll put the spot UV over all my text and over my logo.” While adding spot UV over your logo is a great option, sometimes adding spot UV over all of your contact information isn’t the best choice, especially if that text is set in an extremely thin font. The reason for this is because spot gloss over very thin lines or text can make slight alignment issues between spot UV gloss and ink become noticeable where they otherwise wouldn’t be.
Silk business cards with blind spot UV pattern and silver foil stamping.Want to know a secret for creating a stand out business card design with spot UV gloss? It is called “blind spot UV”. Blind spot UV is a technique where the design elements that appear in spot UV do not also appear in the ink design (we call it blind because the gloss doesn’t have a counterpart appearing in ink). A example could be a spot UV pattern applied over the entire business card, where that pattern does not exist in ink (the above photo is a perfect example). See our article on what is spot gloss and spot UV for a complete description of blind spot gloss and how you can use it successfully on your luxury business cards.
Similar to spot gloss effects, foil effects work great with silk and suede business cards because of the difference in texture and the contrast of reflectivity versus matte. Foil is a more expensive effect than spot UV, and it takes longer to produce because of additional equipment and processes involved.
Foil effects come in three primary varieties, each with its own strengths and weaknesses:
The most traditional out of the three is hot foil stamping. At Vermillion Silk we offer multiple foil colors that can be applied over our silk business cards. This type of foil effect has been around for awhile, but is very popular because it provides great results.
The mix of textures from the combined use of foil stamping, silk lamination and spot UV results in a business card that can really blow people away.
The only potential downside to this type of foil process versus others is that it takes longer to produce since business cards will need to go through a separate setup process in order to have foil added to them.
Gold foil business cards on our silk coating with spot UV on the back.This process requires pressure and heat in order for the foil to adhere properly. Large foil blocks are best applied under a lower pressure so that there is no cracking in the foil. Extremely thin foil needs to be applied with greater pressure to ensure all the detail comes out. It is rare to come across a design that our skilled press operators won’t be able to work with, but you might want to be careful in combining large blocks of foil with thin foil details.
Raised foil doesn’t require heat or pressure like traditional foil stamping. A polymer is used along with the foil to create a raised effect that gives raised foil business cards their 3D, embossed feel.
Raised gold foil, suede business cards. Another card included in our sample packs.There isn’t the same kind of additional equipment setup required for raised foil business cards, so they can generally be completed much quicker than hot foil stamped business cards. If you considered an embossed business card, then raised foil is a more affordable process and in our opinion it looks better than embossing.
The downside to this process versus hot foil stamping or CMYK foil is that raised foil is slightly more expensive, and can only be added by a specific type of digital press whereas foil stamping and CMYK foil cards are printed on offset presses for the highest fidelity in text and images.
If you’d like to learn more, we’ve written about the difference between raised foil and flat foil stamping.
CMYK foil (more commonly called inline foil) is a special foil process in which a foil is added underneath the ink during printing. Any CMYK colors printed on top of this foil will take on the foil appearance.
The benefit of this process is that it allows for any CMYK color to appear in foil, even color gradients! Other foil processes have limited foil colors available because they are either physical foil or a foil plus polymer.
CMYK foil business cards with spot UV added. The chameleon is finished with CMYK foil.There are two downsides to this process in comparison to other foil effects. First, the reflectivity and shine of CMYK foil is not quite as strong as hot foil stamping or raised foil. Second, because CMYK foil is added underneath the ink, we cannot apply our silk or suede laminations to CMYK foil cards since the laminate coating would cover the CMYK foil and dull the effect.
As a result of these downsides, we recommend CMYK foil when your business card design either needs multiple uncommon colors of foil, or if you need a specific color matched in foil. Otherwise, foil stamping or raised foil will be more luxurious looking options.
We prefer the standard business card size of 3.5”x2” (This is the standard size for the US and Canada. International business card sizes differ slightly). We also offer 1/8” rounded corners and 1/4” rounded corners. The first which adds a nice touch to your design and also provides protection to prevent corners from getting beat up in a pocket or purse. 1/4” rounded corners on the other hand provide similar benefits, but have a much more rounded look because of the increased radius. In our opinion 1/4” rounded corners look best when paired with business card designs that have many round elements in the design. We don’t like business cards with banged up corners, which is one of the reasons we love rounded corner business cards.
Suede business cards with blind spot gloss and 1/4" rounded corners that we printed for Beautiful Beasties.While having a completely custom die-cut shape for your business card might seem attractive, there are two important considerations to make if this is something you are interested in. First, the cost will increase significantly. Second, and more importantly, if your die-cut business card shape is too different, it won’t fit nicely in someone’s wallet or with their other business cards. You want to create a business card that someone keeps around. While the uniqueness of custom shapes might help add novelty, it also adds inconvenience. It is for that reason that we do not offer complete custom die-cut shapes. Instead we offer standard, slim, super slim, square and credit card size business cards.
We understand that whether you are a veteran graphic designer or it is your first time ordering business cards for your business, these luxury print options can be confusing. Hopefully this article helped you decide what options are best for your luxury business cards. Will you choose a simple suede business card with rounded corners, or will you go all out with foil stamping and spot gloss? For more inspiration, take a look at our unique business card gallery to see some of our favorite business cards.
To make artwork setup easier, get started with our file preparation package here. We offer complimentary digital proofs and artwork review with every order. If you have any questions about our printing processes, or what might work best for your design, please reach out and a print specialist will be happy to help you.
Did you know, pretty much all of what we covered here applies to luxury postcard printing as well!
If you’d like to see some of these luxury business cards in person, you can order our sample pack here.
Order Our Luxury Business Card Samples Today
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