After the cards are cut, a microscopically thin clear laminate is fused on both sides of the card. The resultant silk business card is water resistant and tare resistant. Its smooth surface doesn’t hold smudges or other contaminants. The laminate coating, although undetectable, gives the card amazing strength. Technicians give the card a strength rating 250% higher than a regular matte card.

The matte surface lends itself to special effects such as spot UV (gloss) and reflective stamp foil. Nexcards offers premium silk cards in 10pt, 11pt, 15pt and ultra heavy 16pt. Not all effects are available on all card thicknesses so see our Price Calculator on-line first.

We chose a 15pt stock or the Spot UV on matte, heavier than most but not quite the 16pt that are offered in the Luxury cards.  Although the Spot on matte cards are not moisture or tear resistant as the Luxury cards, 15pt cards can withstand normal handling and give long service.  These cards look impressive and we guarantee you will love them.

If you choose spot UV on matte, let us know how you like them. We anticipate your comments.

See how this client chose a pattern for UV gloss

If you are looking for something different in business cards, consider plastic business cards. They are the most durable of business cards and won’t rip, stain or exhibit wear.  Here we examine the three types of plastic cards fro sale in Nexcards.com.

Clear- This card is perfectly clear. Drop it on the floor and you might have a hard time finding it. This card we print is 20pt (.020 inch). The average cardstock is 14pt and a credit card is 30 pt so our plastic cards are comfortably between. There is no white background as we don’t print white (white is no ink in the CMYK color spectrum). This card benefits from high contrast elements with bold color. Be sure to leave plenty of open background so natural light can shine through to “light up” the card. Black text is the clearest to read.

Frosted-Frosted plastic is more easily seen than described. See the image. The card is not transparent but translucent. Like the clear card, white does not print and bold coloring with an open background looks best. You can simulate white/silver by using a light grey (C=0, M=0, Y=0, K=30).  Nexcards offers frost in two weight, 10pt and 20pt.  This card and the Clear allow printing on one side only

White- These card exhibit a matte white on both sides. As these are not transparent, you can print on both sides. Nexcards has these in the popular 20pt weight. Rounded corners are standard ( as are the Clear and 20pt Frosted cards). These cards will appear much like on cardstock. Colors will be vivid and smaller pastels or fancy type will be immediately discernible.  This the safe choice if you want plastic but the other card types make you nervous as to the result. If that is the case, fill out the samples form and ask for extra samples of plastic cards.

Nexcards offers plastic at cardstock prices. Go HERE to learn more about plastic business cards and prices. Click “Get Started” to hone in on the details.

Hand out these magnetic cards at trade shows, business meetings, open houses, product launches and professional appointment reminders. Our cards use a full sheet of magnet, not the small dots you see on some other cards. These will stick to anything magnetic, like filing cabinets, metal doors, lockers and some auto surfaces. We offer full color printing on a durable 17pt magnetic stock.

Before the advent of full bleed printing, photographs and other printed matter had a defined white border or margin around the perimeter.  You may have snapshots just like this in that old photo album if it goes back to the 50s and 60s. You can compare full bleed printed works to borderless prints, which started in the professional graphic arts studios and eventually migrated to the prints of that seashore vacation. The viewer assumes that the beach sand, the sky, or whatever forms the backdrop for the photo, goes past the picture ends for an indeterminate space.

So when you choose a printer that does “full bleed” that is the benefit that you derive.  This modern look has become the de facto standard for all but the very cheapest printing jobs.  When setting size standards, full bleed printing firms require a certain over-sized design, typically for business cards either 3.75″ x 2.25″ or 3.625″ x 2.125″.  So the designer takes backgrounds, repeated artistic elements or whatever else he or she want to go to the edge of the card and takes those elements to very end of the card design at this slightly enlarged format. In trimming, the perimeter is cut to yield a perfect 3.5″ x 2″ business card.

Well, almost perfect. The trimming process in off-set printing is still largely mechanical. Trimmed pieces are not always perfectly aligned.  Although it’s not a perfect analogy, imagine quickly pounding out dough shapes with a cookie cutter. But instead of a larger flattened dough area, you have to hit the mark on dough pieces precisely the size of your cookie cutter. Pretty hard to do, huh? It’s easier to do that on a larger piece than the cookie cutter.

High speed cutting may drift almost imperceptible though a 500 or 1000 piece set. especially from set to set.  But when the design is full bleed, these very minor shifts (perhaps 1/16″) become imperceptible especially with the common once color background.  With a defined border (and we still get some of those submitted)  the tiny shift becomes more noticeable because your placing  a “ruler” along the edges in the form of the border.

Be assured that your piece will always measure 3.5″ x 2″.  But to avoid unexpected results, we require compliance to two important parameters among our file specifications.  One, submit a full bleed design at the required over-size and keep wanted text will away from those edges. And two, do not submit visible  borders or margins. Most graphics software will allow you to set up the over-spray size defined in our file specs. Only then will you be able to take advantage of the borderless look that is so in demand today.

Refer to our File Specs HERE  (File Size/Dimensions) for these and other specifications. Your printed project will go much smoother and faster if you follow these guidelines.

You can include more text, images, maps, lists and photos about your business on both sides of the full size card stock.  When designing, however, you’ve got to imagine the layout for this unique card and how it will appear to a client. Most designers see this card as a potential stand-up tent. Therefore, the top side of the outside of the card should be upside down to the bottom outside (the back of the tent).  The inside card design panels should be oriented upside down to the front.  That way when the user opens the card, it will appear right-side up.

We offer folded cards in regular card stock or laminated silk, with or without spot varnish.  If you need more real estate to get your message across, don’t jam it all into the regular business cards. Use the enhanced space that a folded card offers.

A new twist on traditional foil stamping is called Akuafoil. In this technique we lay down a reflective disc and print on top of it. This allows us to foil all the colors in the CMYK color spectrum! So we can match the color on your artwork. Gradients and multiple colors is no problem with this technique. We do caution you again to stay away from too small print. You can research Akuafoil HERE.

Embossing is an effect that pushes your chosen printed area from the back to raise it beyond the card surface. You’ve seen this on notary seals and the numbers on your credit card. A design shape or logo is a frequent target for embossing. The raised surface is one height and again avoid using thin fonts and thin lines. An embossment of a foil can be done under certain circumstances.

Typically these techniques are done on one side of the card. If your foil stamp is gold or silver, we can do both sides of a 16p silk card. An embossed business card is usually only one side because the back of the card will show the reverse of your embossment. Because these are delicate processes, we recommend you send us your file through email before ordering.  Let us know what you want to do and we’ll tell you what is feasible.

If you have filled the form out in the past couple weeks, please fill it out again. We’ll be sure to get our sample business card package to you pronto!

BUSINESS CARD SAMPLES

Gene

A customer chooses this card stock if he or she wants a very durable card stock and wishes to  highlight a design that would benefit from a translucent effect.It should be mentioned that “white” in the CMYK color scale (0, 0, 0, 0) will not print on frosted or clear plastic cards. Reserve white for backgrounds and other areas you want the light to shine through.  Avoid dark backgrounds unless you want to use this as an effect to highlight clear frosted text.

Although these cards can be quite expensive, Nexcards has driven down the price of plastic cards so more customers can take advantage of these up-market business cards. In fact, they cost no more than other card stocks we use on premium business cards. You can discover more about translucent business cards HERE.

The “UV” stands for ultraviolet. This wavelength of light is used to cure the varnish which results in a very high gloss. Typically, these effects are done on logos or company names. Occasionally a customer may choose other elements, such as the name or title.

An interesting effect an be achieved by using spot UV in a pattern on the background of the design. Various honeycomb effects are becoming more common as more customers learn about the benefits of using Spot UV on their business cards, postcards or brochures.

There are two types of spot UV, flat and raised. Flat UV is just that, glossy but not raised above the surface of the cards. For an up charge, you may desire raised spot UV which is slightly raised providing an extra dimension of 3D and enhanced sparkle.  If you want one or the other effect, make sure that is what you are buying. If you wish to purchase these cards from Nexcards, choose Luxury business cards.