Happy Friday! Business cards are a great way to show off your unique style and personality as a business owner. As such, there are almost limitless possibilities for the design and production of these little cards. I will be discussing 3 such possible printing options: Letterpress, Offset PMS & Offset CMYK.
The first option is good ‘ole Letterpress. Letterpress really opens the door to a fantastic variety of paper and ink colors. My example here utilizes a super thick white paper with black ink. A optional “color edge” in green was added to give an extra pop of interest to these cards. Letterpress can be a fairly expensive method of printing, but the unique tactile sensation can be well worth it. Costs could be at least $300 for 500 cards (this is a rough estimate and will vary depending on your paper and ink choices). Using 1 ink color, like in this example, helps to keep that cost down.
The second option is printing on an Offset Press using 1 PMS (Pantone) color. In the example above, we used a metallic silver ink on an uncoated black paper. Depending on where you live and who you print with, 500 of these cards could cost between $200-$300. This method of printing offers a similarly large freedom of choices as letterpress. Just imagine the variety of paper colors you could select from; and paired with even a simple black ink…perfection! Custom sizes can also be explored with these first two options; the sky’s the limit!
The third, and least expensive, option is to print on an Offset Press using CMYK and utilizing “gang-run printing”. Companies such as www.overnightprints.com place many different projects on the same sheet of paper in an effort to reduce printing costs and paper waste. 500 cards could cost around $30 – very inexpensive! A couple of the downsides are that you cannot choose your paper, nor can you count on perfect color accuracy. The example shown above has an added finishing touch of two rounded corners; these add a bit more personality to the cards. Because this method of printing uses 4 inks (CMYK), it allows you to print photographic images, such as the wood grain in this example.