How to prepare artwork for card printing

A card is one of the smallest print jobs there is. On a surface of 85.6 × 54 millimeters a one-millimeter shift is visible to the naked eye; a logo that looks centered on screen can end up pressed against the edge once the card is cut. Tolerances that pass on paper do not pass on a card.

Everything below is something we end up fixing in most of the files we receive. A file prepared correctly the first time removes the back-and-forth at the proofing stage and turns days into hours.

Cards are cut out of a larger sheet. The blade does not land at micron precision every single time, so the design has to extend past the trim line; that extension is the bleed. If a background color or image does not run all the way into the bleed, a slight shift in the cut leaves a white sliver along the edge of the card.

The same logic applies in reverse: text, logos and anything else that matters have to sit inside a safe area, within the trim line. Text closer than three millimeters to the edge risks being clipped.

A screen emits light; print reflects it. That is why the vivid blue or neon green you see on screen cannot be printed. Build the file in CMYK from the start — files prepared in RGB and converted afterwards come out visibly duller, and we end up having to show you that at the proofing stage.

Black areas are a special case. Large black fills printed with K100 alone come out grayish. If the whole card is black, use a rich black: C40 M30 Y30 K100. Do not do it in fine text, though — four inks stacked on top of each other blur at small point sizes, and plain K100 is the right call there.

If you have a Pantone code for your brand color, send it. We match it to the closest CMYK equivalent; on the offset line the Pantone color itself can also be printed exactly.

Vector artwork is best: a vector is independent of scale and stays sharp at whatever size it is printed. Logos in particular should be vector.

If you are using a photograph, it has to be at least 300 DPI at its final size. An image downloaded from your own website almost certainly will not do; 72 DPI is enough for a screen, and the same image prints blurry. Scaling an image up does not add resolution, it only makes the pixels bigger.

If the font you used is not installed on the machine where we open your file, the software substitutes another one. If we do not catch it, we print the wrong typeface; if we do catch it, we call you and ask for the file again. Either way it costs time.

The fix is simple: convert all text to outlines. "Create Outlines" in Illustrator, "Convert to Curves" in CorelDRAW, or embed the fonts when you export a PDF from InDesign. Once converted, the text can no longer be edited, so keep an editable copy for yourself.

If a technology is being added to the card, that component has a fixed position on the card and the design has to stay out of it. These areas are set by standard, not by our preference.

The magnetic stripe is a band on the back of the card that starts near the top edge; nothing can be printed over it. A contact chip sits in the upper left area of the front face. A contactless chip is embedded inside the body and never appears on the surface — which is why contactless cards place no constraint on the design at all.

If you are printing a barcode, leave clear space around it. A dark background running right up against the barcode stops the scanner from finding the code.

We accept the formats below. The file upload field on the quote form takes exactly these.

The items on this list account for almost every file we have to send back at the proofing stage.

We prepare the design for the cards we produce. Send us your logo and the information you want on the card, and we will put a print proof in front of you for approval. On the quote form, checking "I don't have artwork, please design it" is all it takes.

Nothing enters the production line before the sample is approved, so you see how the printed card will look before it is printed.