Design
Business cards that don't get rejected at the printer
Most card designs arrive at the press as an RGB image with no bleed and get sent straight back. We deliver a genuine PDF/X-1a — CMYK, ink-limited, correct trim and bleed boxes. The printer just prints it.
Get your Business Card designed
Custom — designed for you
£29.99 excl. VAT
Introductory price of £29.99 for the first 10 customers — prices go up soon to £99.99.
Bespoke design work with manual oversight. Send your logo and details; we design both faces and deliver a verified print-ready file within 24 hours.
See the actual deliverable
This is the real file, not a flattened preview. Open it in Acrobat and check the separations, the trim and bleed boxes, and the output intent for yourself.
PDF/X-1a:2001 · DeviceCMYK · 2 pages · 104 × 64 mm artboard · 4.9 MB
What the printer gets
A card is only as good as the file behind it. Ours is built to the spec commercial presses actually ask for, and every claim below is checked before the file leaves us.
True PDF/X-1a:2001: PDF 1.3, DeviceCMYK only, zero live transparency, fonts and colour fully resolved. No RGB, no ICC-based colour, nothing for a preflight to reject.
Ink-limited CMYK: Total area coverage capped at 294%. An unmanaged conversion routinely produces 400% solid black, which offsets onto the next sheet and never dries properly.
Correct boxes, not guesswork: 5 mm bleed on all four edges, with TrimBox and BleedBox written into the PDF. Render the TrimBox at 300 dpi and you get exactly 1110 × 638 px.
QR codes that actually scan: Error correction level Q, on a light panel, at a module size that survives print. We decode it back out of the finished CMYK artwork — not just from the generator.
Honest colour advice: Vivid brand colours often sit outside CMYK gamut and will print duller. We tell you before the run, and spec a Pantone spot where it matters.
Custom service
£29.99 excl. VAT · per design
Typical turnaround: within 24 hours from brief to print-ready file.
What's included:
Why cards come back from the press
Four faults account for most rejected artwork. All four are invisible on screen.
No bleed
Artwork stops at the trim, so the guillotine's normal 1 mm drift leaves a white sliver down one edge.
RGB colour
The press converts it blindly at the last moment. Brand colours shift and nobody sees it until the run is done.
Too much ink
Rich blacks near 400% coverage smear, set off onto the next sheet, and dry slowly if at all.
Content in the cut
Text or a logo sitting inside the bleed area looks fine in the file and is simply cut off the finished card.
Ready when you are
Order the custom service and we'll design both faces and deliver a file your printer can run without a single query.