The printing of greeting cards used to be pretty much restricted to large card publishers, associates that could afford to print them in mass quantities and then sell them straight through gift shops, grocery stores, drug stores and mail order. Things have changed a bit over the last decade or so. Commercial printers have expanded entrance for greeting card printing to corporations and even individuals by ganging multiple orders on large offset presses and by offering smaller quantity orders with digital printing.
Graphic designers now have the opening to bring their holiday ideas to fruition in full color at affordable prices. Whether you want to generate cards for yourself or for a firm as an in-house designer or freelance artist, there are a few prominent things to think before designing custom holiday cards or greeting cards.
Recycle Printers
Quantity and cost are among the first considerations for most designers, but let's not forget size, color pallets, software, and envelopes. Most Commercial printers offer offset printing in multiples of 1,000, which is excellent for whatever with a very large list of friends and relatives or for associates with a good list of clients, prospects and vendors.
If your list is shorter, think digital printing where quantities from 25 to 250 or more are quite common. At some point, depending on your printer's pricing structures, it may literally be economy to buy a thousand and recycle excess copies rather buy 500 or so digital cards.
Most printers offer an assortment of greeting card sizes to fit proper envelopes, as well as free templates to help you lay them out properly. For example, an A-7 envelope holds a folded 5x7 card perfectly, and A-6 envelope works for a 6x9 card. For #10 envelopes, your card should fold to no wider than 3-3/4" or 4" with a distance of 8.5" to 9". All the time remember to lay out your artwork based on the flat size. Check with your printer for availability of envelopes for custom shaped cards, together with quadrate cards.
Envelopes can be ordered blank or with a return address printed on the front or the back flap. If you decree to order printed envelopes, be sure to leave a 3/8" margin at the top for gripper space...the space required by the press to "grip" the envelope.
As for color pallets, it's prominent to decree in advance if you are going to print cards in full color (process) or spot colors. Spot color requires the use of programs like Adobe Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop which have Pantone Pms color pallets. It's not practical to construct spot color cards in Microsoft Word, for example, which only has an Rgb pallet. If you do, it may cost extra to turn your files, which can be expensive. Rgb files will turn to process color but there may be some color shifts. For digital printing be sure to use Cmyk or process colors only.
Remember, it's never too early to construct and order holiday cards.
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