How to Design a Plastic Business Card
How to Design Plastic Business Cards
The most important point to raise about plastic business cards before discussing the creation of a design is that they make a distinct impression on recipients because of their high quality and uniqueness. Most people hand out traditional paper designs so plastic business cards immediately standout and demand further inspection. Plastic is significantly thicker than traditional paper cards (similar to the thickness of a credit card), but the look and feel is what make them demand attention.
Designing Clear Plastic Business Cards
With clear plastic business cards you have the ability to add white, something we just added, but you have to add instructions to the additional notes section during checkout. We automatically make all white areas clear as glass with our clear cards so if you do not state that you want white somewhere we will assume you do not want it.
All clear cards come with a white backer behind all color ink areas unless for some reason you are experienced in plastic design and do not want it behind all or part of a design for a particular effect. Also, If you have very thin or small text or image areas we cannot get white behind the ink so if you want the text or an image area extra bold use bold font about size 12 or more and do not have thin lines or dots around an image. In the "Yes" card below the name of the person has a white back and the title, phone, and email do not for reference. The white is placed behind the design and makes the colors more bold and easy to see, and can also make text white. Without a white back clear cards appear dull or faded and are hard to read.
Taking Advantage of Clear Transparency
As in the automotive "Rage" card and the "Yes" clear business cards below you can see how it is a good idea to design a portion of the card in color and make other areas clear (all white areas will be clear unless your order instructions indicate white areas like the word "YES" in the sample design). Having a portion of your design color and a portion clear helps emphasize the clear effect.
Clear Cards without Clear Areas
Our clear plastic business cards can also be designed without any clear areas. They are high quality plastic business cards so whether you just want the contact details clear, or no areas clear as in the two examples below, these are extremely high quality business cards that are guaranteed to impress people. You can use full colors on one or both sides, and as little or as much clear areas as desired. Although the cards are transparent, the white backer makes it difficult to see through so you would request to remove white backer to make it easier to see through but that would take a little bit of strength from the color. For more design ideas please see our plastic business card gallery.
Designing Frosted Plastic Business Cards
Designing frosted plastic is unlike the traditional business card design process because white ink is not available. Although the whole design will be transparent whether areas have color or not, the white areas in your design will represent all areas that you want to reveal the substrate or better understood as the plastic material that the card is made from, an off white/light grayish transparent material. So where you put white ink you are telling us to not put any ink there and reveal the off white frosted material. Your text should be at least size 9 and bold, and if it has to be smaller it should be strongly contrasting text, like black text on white background, or navy blue text and white background, or the reverse. This leads into the colors you should use when designing your business card.
Colors To Use
Utilizing dark colors (i.e.; black, red, dark brown, green, robust color images) on frosted plastic business cards is always a better choice because of the transparency effect. Any text or images should be rich in color or your design should have contrasting parts like black text on blank areas that only have the frosted plastic such as the frosted real estate design sample or a black card with text set up to reveal the frosted plastic below as in the automotive frosted sample.
Taking Advantage of the Frosted Style
White colored areas which will represent frosted areas should be utilized creatively. A good example of this is featured in the green frosted real estate card where the design used white text on top of a solid green are; the "SOLD" text appears almost as a frosted cut out. You can also use the full array of colors, patterns, and imagery, as seen with the black frosted automotive card that gives the background pattern a unique look and still captures the entire car and all of its colors. There are so many ways to take advantage with frosted designs and For more design ideas please see our plastic business card gallery.
Designing and printing plastic business cards could never been easier. Our online design center and free plastic business card templates are here to get you started. With just a little bit of creativity and a few minutes of time you can create an elegant and sophisticated business card that will surely impress any existing or potential clients.
See How to Create Plastic Business Cards With the Online Design Studio
