Using Gold Colors in Business Cards

Gold is one of the most attractive schemes when creating full color business cards. It can be used for either and/or the background of the card or the font/text. When using gold for the background of the card, it's best to stick with a brighter/lighter shade of gold as is seen in the graphic below under the heading 125. In this Pantone version of gold we see progressively lighter shades of this color, with the bottom version being the lightest shade. The color is not recommended for the color of the text in the business card unless it is used as reversed text - which is the only way to do this. The percentage of color in the reversed text mush be in the 30-50% range, otherwise it will be unreadable on the card.

The next shad of gold is 128, which is a darker color of gold. This value at full color will not work for the background of the business card as it is way to dark...even reverse text will not work here. The only way to make this color work is less than full color at come percentage less than 40%. If you look at the color samples below you will see a much lighter shade of gold. This will work.

Last, we see version 131, which is darkest of all at full color. This would work great for the text/font of the card as it's so bold and bright. It will also also look elegant and bold for the text. This is perhaps the best shade of gold to use on the card. It is versatile in all it's tints and can be used for both the background color at a low percentage/tint and the full color font at the same time. This can save a lot of money if you are printing in a non-cmyk process environment such as Pantone. Because this shade of gold is being used simultaneously for the card background and font, there is only one spot color being used. This can save a lot in printing costs for the business cards. The lowest color at bottom is a highly attractive shad that is almost tan...a distinct color separate from gold.

There are several other shades of gold we could have used. These are a representative of colors that could be placed on the card. Email us with colors you'd like to see and we'll include samples as in the graphic below.

Pantone: 45, 54, 012, 80