Business card design: small canvas, big impression

Good business card design comes down to restraint. The standard US card is 3.5 × 2 inches, 1050 × 600 pixels at 300 dpi, and it only needs your name, what you do and one or two ways to reach you. Put those on one side with plenty of space, give the other side a single confident colour or gradient that runs off every edge, and the card will feel considered before anyone reads a word. The rest of this guide covers sizes, bleed, layout and the print file.

Business card sizes and dimensions

There is no single world size. The US and Canada use 3.5 × 2 inches, most of Europe uses 85 × 55 mm, and Japan uses 91 × 55 mm. Ask your printer which one they cut before you design, because the shapes are close enough to confuse but different enough to crop your margins.

What to put on a business card

A card is a reminder, not a brochure. Its job is to help someone remember who you were and find you again. Pick the one contact route you actually answer and make it easy to read; everything else is optional.

Type size matters more on cards than anywhere else in print. Below about 7 pt, thin weights break up and phone numbers become hard to read in dim light. If the information doesn't fit at 8 pt, there is too much of it. Our guide to brand fonts helps if you are still choosing a typeface.

A QR code can replace a long list of links, as long as it leads somewhere worth landing: a booking page or a portfolio, not a generic home page. Print it in dark ink on a light, quiet area, keep it around 2 cm across or larger, and scan a printed proof with two different phones before ordering the full run.

Designing the front and the back

Most memorable cards split the work. The front is quiet and practical: name, role, contact, small logo. The back is where the brand lives: a full colour field, a gradient, a pattern or the logo alone in a lot of space. Because the back runs to every edge, it also hides small cutting errors better than a white card does.

A gradient back works well because it reads as colour from across a table and as texture up close. Keep it to a small family of related colours so it prints cleanly, and avoid fine light lines that press variation can lose. These are dependable starting points:

If you want the back to be something no other card carries, that is what a Gradiently Mark is for: a crafted gradient and material background with exactly one owner, checked so nothing else looks too close. Claim one and the same look carries from your card to your website, posts and email header. The idea is explored further in a signature look.

Preparing a business card for print

1. 1

   Set the page at the trim size

   1050 × 600 pixels for a US card, or a custom size for the European and Japanese cards.

2. 2

   Run the back past every edge

   Colour must extend into the bleed so no white sliver shows after cutting. See print bleed and safe margins.

3. 3

   Keep text inside the safe area

   At least 3 to 5 mm, roughly 0.125 to 0.2 in, from the trim. On a card this small, a few millimetres are a large share of the page.

4. 4

   Check the colour in CMYK

   Very bright screen colours print duller. Our page on RGB vs CMYK explains what to expect.

5. 5

   Export a print PDF with crop marks

   Send each side as its own page in one PDF, front first, unless your printer asks otherwise.

In Gradiently, the business card size is in the Studio's size list, and Pro exports a print PDF with 3 mm of bleed and crop marks. For more on gradients on paper, read printing gradients.