Avoiding Mistakes When Designing Full Color Business Cards

It is very important that there may be slight color shifts between the color business card proofs you see in your email and the cards as the actually print out. Here's why: Your computer monitor uses a color system called RGB (red, green blue) to produce all the colors you see. In professional printing, another system is used, CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black). CMYK printing, also called "process" color printing, cannot produce certain rich/vibrant blues, greens and purples that you can see on your computer monitor.

Here are the main culprits colors: royal blue and royal purple, deep greens and almost any fluorescent or metallic colors. If you have a logo in your card which absolutely needs to print correctly with no color shifts and your logo color includes any of these colors, you need to go elsewhere to have your cards printed. You'll need to contact a local printer and have your full color cards printed in what is known as "Pantone" colors. The pantone color system does not create color by mixing CMYK colors together...Each color is it's own pre-mixed ink. The Pantone color system can produce those vibrant blues, yellows and purples.

Note: Even if you do need an exact color match, this doesn't mean that you definitely have to use the Pantone color system...many colors in the CMYK color system translate very well: cyan, dark blue, navy blue, black, brown and yellow will produce very well on your full color business card.

If you have a certain color combination which needs to be followed exactly on your business card, please let us know prior to printing.