Printing Tip — Business Cards

An inkjet printer seems to work best for busi­ness cards today because you can use two or more col­ors (includ­ing black).  How­ever, as with any do-it-yourself project, there are always some prob­lems along the way.   I have three rec­om­men­da­tions to get your busi­ness cards look­ing crisp and clear the first time around with­out wast­ing card stock.

First, try to use an inkjet printer that feeds the paper straight through with­out bend­ing it back up and out the way it came in.  Epson print­ers seem to do a good job of tak­ing paper and pass­ing it straight through the printer.  Be sure what­ever printer you use is not set to envelopes.  The card stock is not as thick as the enve­lope set­ting typ­i­cally expects.

Sec­ond, be sure that your printer paper type is set to some type of Heavy­weight or Thick Matte paper.  The card stock is a lot like the Epson Pre­sen­ta­tion paper used for pho­tog­ra­phy.  Set­ting the paper type will help get the proper amount of ink on the paper to avoid bleed­ing the fine print.  It will help get the crisp level of detail you want for a busi­ness card.

Third, be sure your printer set­ting for High Speed Print­ing is turned off.  High speed con­serves some ink, but the result isn’t near as crisp as slower speeds.  More impor­tantly, the cards are stiff and don’t bend well through the printer plat­ten.  As a result, high speed print­ing can some­times cause band­ing or lines around the mid­dle area of each card.