
The size of your standard business card should be 3½” x 2” or 1050 pixels x 600 pixels.Try to use stock sites and other high-res image sources for your inspiration and design imagery.īefore setting up your business card design file, check the following essentials: It is also advisable to avoid right-clicking/saving random images on the internet for use in your print projects. My advice is to use a proper business card design template that is already prepped and optimized for print purposes. No it won’t! It will look like an unholy mess! Not because you’re putting a picture of a cat on your business card (although that’s not a good idea either unless you own a pet store), but because you’re trying to force a low-res image that was created for web use into a design that needs to be created for print? The two things are not compatible.ĭon’t ask me why people do this? You cannot magically transform a 180px by 180px Facebook icon into a crisp hi-res portrait! Pasting a graphic or picture from the internet into your design and enlarging it to 50 times its original size will not achieve the effect you want! “Hey! I really like this tiny bitmap image of a cat wearing sunglasses I saw on the internet! That would look crazy-cute on my business card!” Here is a common thought among people who want to design their own business card You’ve grabbed a tiny (72dpi) image from somewhere on the web and tried to enlarge it to fit in a much larger 2”x 3 ½” (300dpi) space? Either way, the resulting prints will be a hideous blurry mess of pixel stink.Designed your card at a miniscule 72dpi (or lower) instead of the required 300dpi.When you get pixilated images, you’ve either: (Just you try playing ping-pong, typing a letter, or eating a sandwich with pixel-hands…you can’t!!!) She couldn’t hold onto her chicken dinner for very long thanks to her pixel hands….curse you pixilated business card disease! I do not want my hands to suddenly turn into a big mess of undefined pixels. Pixilated! Yuck! Don’t people see this mistake? A pixilated design looks like it’s caught some kind of nasty digital blur infection! I actually try to avoid putting my hands on pixilated business cards in fear that I’ll catch this terrible condition. While I don’t purport to be the world’s greatest design expert, I’ve been in the design and marketing business long enough to know when someone’s made a massive business card booboo! Moreover, working for a company that specializes in business card printing has given me a particular insight into the kind of eye-offensive business cards that cause design and marketing people to drop to their knees, pleading with the Gods of Style & Good Taste to please stop the hurting!!!īefore you start designing your card, here is a list of some of the biggest business card errors! A car crash mixture of different pixel dimensions conjoin to make a truly hideous business card…keep away!


The business card! That ancient print object that has been hooking-people-up for centuries can be both a thing of simple beauty and a hideous design Medusa that turns all tasteful sensibilities to stone!
