Business Card
Design Checklist.

Size

The standard US business card is 3.5″ × 2″. It is not a legal requirement, just an entrenched convention — wallets, card holders and card scanners are all sized around it — so a nonstandard size is a real design choice with real downstream consequences, not a neutral one. If a nonstandard shape or a rounded corner is on the table, confirm your printer can actually cut it before the layout is finished around it.

Bleed and safe margin

The same rules that apply to any printed piece apply here, just at a smaller scale where they matter more: anything running to the edge of the card — a background color, a photo, a line — needs to extend at least 1/8″ past the trim edge, and any text or logo that cannot be cropped should sit at least 1/8″ inside it. On a card this size, that inner margin is a meaningful fraction of the whole card, so it is worth designing around from the first draft rather than adjusting afterward. See preparing a print-ready file for the general version of both rules.

Stock weight

Business cards are almost always printed on cover-weight stock — commonly somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 lb to 110 lb cover, or roughly 14 pt to 18 pt in caliper, though exact ranges vary by printer and by paper line. Cover weight and text weight are not directly comparable numbers — see understanding paper weight for why an 80 lb cover sheet is much stiffer than an 80 lb text sheet despite sharing a number.

Finish

Coatings and finishes — gloss, matte, uncoated, a spot varnish over part of the design — change how a card feels and how ink sits on it, and not every shop offers every option. Ask what finishes are available before designing around a specific one, particularly if the design depends on an effect like foil stamping or a raised (spot UV) coating, since those are specialty processes not every print shop runs in-house.

Color

Decide early whether the card needs to hold an exact brand color as a spot ink or is fine printed in full four-color process — see spot color vs. process color. A one- or two-color card, printed in spot colors, is often both cheaper and more color-consistent than the same design forced into a four-color process build.

Quantity and process

Business cards are a textbook example of the offset-versus-digital decision: a short run is usually more economical on digital, since there is no plate to make, while a long run or an exact spot color usually points to offset. See offset vs. digital printing for how to think through that choice, and ask your printer directly whether there is a minimum order quantity — it varies by shop and is worth knowing before a design is finalized.

A final pass before sending the file

• Confirm the size, including whether it is standard 3.5″ × 2″ or something else.
• Confirm bleed extends 1/8″ past trim, and nothing critical sits inside the 1/8″ safe margin.
• Confirm any brand color is named by its Pantone number if it has to hold exactly.
• Confirm fonts are embedded or outlined.
• Double-check every phone number, email address and URL on the card — a business card is the one piece most likely to be read one digit at a time.