Guides

Business card printing, answered with numbers

The sizes, floors and minimums that decide whether a card prints as designed. Each figure here is the one the Cardsetting engine measures a card against before it is shown, so the guides and the checks cannot disagree.

• What size is a UK business card?

  A UK business card is 85 × 55 mm. Print artwork is set on a 91 × 61 mm bleed box with text kept 4 mm inside the trim. The numbers, and why each one exists.

• What do bleed, trim and safe zone mean on a business card?

  Bleed is the 3 mm of artwork past the cut line, trim is the cut, and the safe zone keeps text 4 mm inside it. What each is for and what goes wrong without it.

• How big does a QR code need to be on a business card?

  Each module of a printed QR code needs at least 0.35 mm, so a web address fits in 13 to 16 mm and a vCard needs 20 to 28 mm. Measured, not rules of thumb.

• What is a vCard QR code and should my business card have one?

  A vCard QR code saves your details straight into a phone's contacts with no website behind it. What it holds, how big it prints, and what to leave out.

• What resolution does a logo need for a business card?

  Print is sharp at 300 dpi at the size the logo is placed. A 180 px logo is fine at 15 mm and soft at 40 mm. The pixel counts, and the transparent-PNG trap.

• What is the smallest text you can print on a business card?

  Nothing below 5.5 pt, and 6.5 pt for anything read as a line. Contrast of 4.5:1, lines no thinner than 0.5 pt, and why reversed type goes heavier, not smaller.

Machine-readable summary at https://cardsetting.com/llms.txt