How to Design a Business Card for Printing at Paperjet Print

Printing Cape Town, South Africa

Understanding Printing Bleed
Making your design slightly bigger than the size it will be cut down to
Bleed is the area around the trim size of the business card design. We add bleed so that when the cards get cut, there is excess (overlap) in the design and printed area on the paper, so that if the guillotine blade is slightly out, there are no white parts on the edges of the card. Usually a whole stack of paper is cut at once and although the cutting is very accurate, the bleed will allow for a little variation in the cutting process.

The correct business card printing size
90mm x 50 mm or 85mm x 55 mm
The two standard sizes of business cards are 90mm X 50mm in South Africa or abroad they are commonly 85mm X 55mm. You can download the pdf templates that we supply and work over them to help you with the setup and layout of each area.


Design in the safe zone
Don’t go too close to the edge!
We recommend that you stay 5mm from the edge with text, logos etc so that when the card are trimmed there is enough distance from the edges, this will give you design a more professional look.

Contrast:
Can you read it?
If you are using background images, or colours, always make sure that there is enough contrast to read the information, don’t use draft colours on dark backgrounds, or light colours on light backgrounds. If you have a varied colour back ground with light and dark parts, you may want to consider using a drop shadow to bring out the contrast.

Print Ready Files
What format should the files be supplied in?
We accept printed files in 300 dpi jpg, tiff or pdf format. If you are working with a program like corel draw, Adobe Illustrator, Freehand or another design program then it is always best to convert your files to a print ready pdf.

Please contact us for all your printing needs in Cape Town, Johannesburg or Durban