Business card design: sizes, layout and what to include

Business card sizes

No size is mandatory. A handful are common, and the printer you use will tell you which ones it prints.

Pick one size and keep it across reprints, so that two versions of your card are never in circulation at once. If you work on both sides of the Atlantic, print for where your clients are: 3.5 × 2 in is the North American standard, 85 × 55 mm the European one.

Setting up the file: trim, bleed and safe area

Cards are printed several to a sheet and cut afterwards, and the cut has a tolerance of a fraction of a millimetre. So the file has three outlines, not one:

• Trim size: the line the card is cut on, 3.5 × 2 in or 85 × 55 mm, for example.
• Bleed: any background or image that touches the edge carries on past it. Vistaprint's US file for a 3.5 × 2 in card is 3.61 × 2.11 in; its UK file for 85 × 55 mm is 88 × 58 mm; and two Romanian print shops, Digital Advertising in Bucharest and Tipar Online in Sibiu, ask for 3 mm on every side.
• Safe area: text, logo and QR code stay inside it. Vistaprint's is 3.36 × 1.86 in on a US card and 82 × 52 mm on a UK one; the two Romanian shops ask for at least 3–5 mm inside the trim.

Colour and resolution

Send the file in CMYK, not RGB: a screen mixes light, a press mixes ink, and an RGB file gets converted by someone who does not know your colours. Decide your brand's CMYK and Pantone values once, in your colour palette, and give the printer the Pantone code when a shade has to be exact. Images in the file need at least 300 dpi at final size.

Even black differs between printers. For solid black areas Digital Advertising asks for C60 M40 Y40 K100, while Tipar Online recommends C40 M30 Y30 K100 for large areas and plain K100 for small text, so that it prints crisp. There is no right value in general, only your printer's.

Fonts and hairlines

Convert fonts to outlines or embed them in the PDF; a printer that does not have your typeface will substitute another, and the text comes out different. Lines thinner than 0.25 pt may not print at all, Digital Advertising warns.

The logo, as a vector

On a card the logo is a few centimetres wide and printed at press resolution, not screen resolution. A PNG saved from your website looks fine on a phone and comes out soft on card. Send the logo as a vector (PDF, SVG or EPS) with its text outlined. What each format is, and what a proper logo package contains, is in logo file formats.

Paper weight and finishes

The US and Europe measure card differently. US printers quote thickness in points, one point being about a thousandth of an inch: Vistaprint's standard card is 14 pt, an 18 pt card feels firmer and 32 pt is much more rigid. European printers quote weight in grams per square metre: Vistaprint UK calls 300 gsm the standard, Tipar Online prints its cards on 300 gsm and Digital Advertising offers stocks up to 400 gsm.

• Matte or gloss coated stock: matte reduces glare, gloss lifts photographs.
• Uncoated stock: easier to write on, useful if you jot an appointment time on the card.
• Finishes: lamination (matte, gloss or soft-touch), rounded corners and spot varnish are the usual ones. Ask for a paper sample before a large order.

What to put on a business card

A card answers two questions: who you are, and how the person holding it reaches you. For most small businesses that means:

• Your name and your role, phrased the way people would look for you: “architect”, not “director”.
• The company name and the logo.
• One phone number, grouped so it reads easily, with the country code if you work across borders.
• An email address on your own domain (name@company.com), not a free mailbox.
• Your website, without “https://”, and without “www” if the site opens without it.
• A street address only if people come to you: a practice, a workshop, a shop.
• On the back, if you print both sides: the logo large on the brand colour, the slogan or a QR code.

What to leave off

• A second and third phone number, a fax number you do not use, and every social network. Put the one you actually answer, or none.
• The full list of services. A card is not a brochure; the services are on the website.
• Text under 8 pt. Vistaprint recommends at least 8 pt for contact details, and names and headings commonly sit at 10–12 pt or more.
• Light grey on white, and thin script lettering for details that have to be read at a glance.
• A photograph behind the text.

Business card layouts that work

Three arrangements that suit almost any small business. Start from one and fit it to your logo:

1. 01Classic, two-sided. Front: a small logo at the top, name and role in the middle, phone, email and website at the bottom, left-aligned. Back: the logo large and centred on the brand's main colour.
2. 02Front only. The logo at the top, name and role beneath it, contact details on one or two lines at the foot. Works when the logo reads well small.
3. 03With a QR code. Name and contact details on the front; on the back, the logo and a QR code to your contact page, with a short line under it such as “Scan to book”.

For the coffee shop in the brand brief guide, say: on the front, the Meridian Coffee logo, a name with the role “founder”, one phone number, an email on the shop's domain and the website; on the back, the mark on the main colour and the shop's address, because that is where customers come. A business card template with the printer's margins already drawn is one of the files of a complete brand kit.

QR codes: a link or a vCard

A QR code on a card can point to a web address or carry the contact details themselves as a vCard, the standard format for an electronic business card (RFC 6350). The difference shows in print:

• A link to your site or a contact page: few characters, so a sparse code that scans easily, and you can change the page behind it at any time without reprinting.
• A vCard: the phone saves the contact directly, but the code carries every field, from name to address. More data means more modules, so a denser code at the same size (DENSO WAVE on QR code versions). And once printed, it cannot change.

Either way, Vistaprint recommends a code of at least 0.8 × 0.8 in (20 × 20 mm), inside the safe area, dark on a plain light background, and tested on several phones from a proof printed at full size with the final URL. Around it stays a clear margin four modules wide where nothing is printed (DENSO WAVE on the quiet zone). If a QR generator gives you a link through its own domain, ask what happens to the code when you cancel the account.

Checklist before you send it to print

1. 01The trim size is one the printer offers, and the file carries the bleed the printer asks for.
2. 02Text, logo and QR code sit inside the safe area.
3. 03The file is a PDF in CMYK, with images at 300 dpi or more at final size.
4. 04Fonts are outlined or embedded, and the logo is a vector, not a pasted image.
5. 05Contact details are 8 pt or larger, and no line is thinner than 0.25 pt.
6. 06The QR code has been scanned from a 100% proof with two or three phones, and it goes where it should.
7. 07Someone who did not type the phone number, email and website has read them aloud.
8. 08Front and back are separate pages, in the order the printer asks for.
9. 09You have seen a proof and approved it before the full run.

Mistakes you only see on paper

• An RGB file: the electric blue on screen prints dull.
• An enlarged PNG logo: soft edges, like a photocopy.
• A background that stops at the trim line: a white sliver along one edge.
• Text tight to the edge: trimmed off on some of the cards.
• Fonts not outlined: swapped for another at the printer.
• A QR code too small, untested, or pointing at a page that no longer exists.
• Everything you could say, squeezed onto 3.5 × 2 inches: none of it reads.
• A thousand cards ordered before you have held one.

The business card in RHAM

RHAM lays out a business card from the brand's identity, in the “Site and marketing” step under “Printed”: the front face at 85 × 55 mm, the European size, with the brand's initials in a rounded square in the main colour, the name, the slogan, a rule, a contact line and the line of business, in the brand's colours and typefaces. It downloads as an SVG, which is a vector, and as a 1,700 × 1,100 px PNG.

It is a starting point, not a print-ready file, and here is exactly what it lacks. The email address in the draft is made up from the brand name and needs replacing with yours. The file has no bleed, the colours are RGB, the text is live text rather than outlines, and the small lines (slogan and contact) come out under 8 pt at actual size. For a US printer it also needs re-laying at 3.5 × 2 in. Install the brand's fonts, open the SVG in a vector editor, add your details, enlarge the small lines, extend the background by the printer's bleed, outline the text and save a PDF. Converting to CMYK takes software that works in CMYK; if you have none, ask the printer whether it checks and converts files before printing.

Separately, the “Photographed” mode makes an AI presentation image: two cards on a surface, one showing your logo and name, drawn from the renders included in your plan. It is a picture to show, not a file to print.