Size and Paper of Business Visiting Card
Business cards are either printed through digital printing machines or offset printing machines.
Digital machines print on paper of size 12' × 18' and can fit a maximum of 24 cards in one sheet of paper with 3 columns and 8 rows. There needs to be bleed area and crop or cut marks on all corners and between the three columns and eight rows as well for perfect cutting of business cards. Hence available 12' inches of width is divided by 3 to get 4'. After leaving edges and cut-crop marks, 3.54' is available width after cutting. Similarly, 18' divided by 8 number of rows leaves 2.125' for height.
Visiting cards printing with offset machines require a sufficient number of visiting cards to make offset printing run economically. Offset printing machines are of size 18' x 23', 18 ' x 25', 22' x 28', 30' x 40' being standard sizes available in India. Offset printing machines also result in business cards of the same size as digital printing machines.
| Measurement Unit | Actual Size | Design Size | Safe Margin |
| Millimeter (mm) | 90 (width) x 54 (height) | 94 (width) x 58 (height) | 4 mm from edges |
| Centimeter (cm) | 9 (width) x 5.4 (height) | 9.4 (width) x 5.8 (height) | 0.4 cm from edges |
| Inch (inch) | 3.54 (width) x 2.125 (height) | 3.7 (width) x 2.28 (height) | 0.15 inch from edges |
| Pixels (inch) | 1062 (width) x 637 (height) | 1110 (width) x 684 (height) | 45 pixels from edges |
Papers
There are many papers used for printing business cards. Normal art card costs around Rs. 1 to Rs. 2 per card where as other papers like recycle, texture, metallic may cost up to Rs. 4 to Rs. 5 per visiting card.
Art Card / Paper
Art cards and art papers are used for a normal paper type which is a grade above map-litho paper, which is used for printing newsletter, flyers, bill books which is available from 56 gsm thickness onwards.
Art paper starts from 70 gsm and goes up to 350 gsm. For business visiting cards, 300/280 gsm paper is used. Art paper is available in two textures - gloss and matt.
Ivory Card
The ivory card is manufactured by an Indian manufacturer which is referred to as Indian Ivory or by the foreign manufacturer which is referred to as imported ivory. The ivory card is nearly twice as expensive as normal art paper. Visiting cards are printed on 300/330 gsm ivory card paper.
Embossing
Embossing is a technique by which dies are used to apply pressure on the printed business cards which result in the pressing of the paper and thereby resulting in good looking raised effect.
In the print area, you can emboss almost anything, like logo, design specific area like "Since 1975", "No. 1 Company" or even have it on your name, designation, or other specific areas.
In blind embossing only embossing take place on cards without any printing.
