Personalized card fronts can represent your business far more accurately than any generic design. Your customized design will be unique to your business, and therefore more likely to receive appreciation and special notice from your clients.
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The following are our recommendations for designing your customized card.
We recommend CMYK color for card designs.
If your design is in RGB color it will be converted before printing, which may result in a slight color shift and a darker hue.
In the printing process, cards are printed on a flat 6.25 x 8.25 inch piece of paper. This paper is then trimmed and folded, resulting in a final card that is 4 x 6.
The area that is trimmed is referred to as the “bleed“ because this additional area is what allows the final card to be printed edge-to-edge, or the appearance that the printed area is “bleeding“ off of the card.
After the card is trimmed and folded, each side will be 4 x 6 inches. There is a safe zone for each 4 x 6 side of the card to ensure that critical content is printed away from the card edges and fold line.
These templates match up with each pane of the printed card.
Template A: The bleed margin/trimming zone is aligned with the three sides that will be cut, and the top of the template is where the card will be folded.
We recommend this template for the outside front and back of the card, as well as the bottom half of the inside content.
Template B: The bleed margin/trimming zone is aligned with the three sides that will be cut, and the bottom of the template is where the card will be folded.
We recommend this template for the top half of the inside content, or “top content“ as it is commonly known.
Templates are prepared for Illustrator, Photoshop, and as PNG files.
The PNG files are in the RGB color space because PNG files support transparency but not CMYK color, while JPEG files are the opposite.
When uploading your card designs within ServiceMonster, you will need to add each section of the card separately, for a maximum of 4 images total.
It is possible to use two files, one for the inside of the card and one for the outside of the card, however each will need to be uploaded and reframed twice.
Please click here for more detailed instruction on uploading custom images for an FMS campaign.
After an image is uploaded, a dialogue will display to select the printed card area.
This dialogue shows three framing boxes that correspond to the dimensions listed above.
Blue/Outside Box: Corresponds to the full card size plus bleed.
Red/Middle Box: Corresponds to the trimming zone.
Green/Inside Box: Corresponds to the safe zone.
If your design is made with one of our downloadable templates it will automatically scale to 100% and the framing boxes will line up to match the dimensions of the template.
If your design is for a full side of the flat (unfolded) card, you will need to reframe it to match your desired content for each section of the card.
While creating your customized design, please consider the following:
- The design must be at least 200 DPI
- We recommend TIFF or JPEG files with CMYK color space
- Export only the design you want printed (remove template guides and overlays before exporting)
