Business card stock can be an important consideration when designing business stationery. Depending on the brief, it can be card, plastic and even metal. The card could be plain or coated, different weights and thicknesses. Plastic stock can be flimsy, thicker or unbendable. Metal can be plain, brushed or coated and you can even get wooden or cards that are also CD-Roms.
A plain card is the simplest and most popular material to use for a standard business card. A good quality one would be pulp board as it isn’t as rough as a lot of the cheaper cards many companies use. A good quality printer will use 400gsm weight card at the very least. The ‘gsm’ is the weight of a square meter of the card, so the bigger the number the better the card. This is normally twice the thickness a lot of printers use generally, but is worth any extra it costs in quality.
A coated card will have a gloss or satin surface providing and shiny or soft finish. These can add an extra impact to the card if good quality card is used. Art board would be the card of choice here, again not usually something a lot of printers will offer as standard.
The plastic cards can be translucent or full color and generally only come in the one shape as most printers are unable to die cut them. They end up the same size as a credit card but can be varying thicknesses, from super flimsy to the same thickness as a credit card.
Using plastic business card stock has a definite impact to it, and allows for many design variations, as well as having limitations. They will be a lot of hard wearing and therefore last longer than a standard card. They will also resist tearing, smudging, pulping and fiber loss that card suffers from.
Metal cards are the ultimate design statement for a business card. Generally made of stainless steel the design is chemically etched into the surface or precision cut into the surface, depending on the printer and the design. You can have colored metal too if your design allows it. Once the card has been cut or etched a durable electrophoretic coating is applied to the card in the color of choice. Needless to say, the best looking cards are also the most expensive with the colored metal cards costing around $550 per 100 for a 300 micron thickness. Move on up to a 400 micron and the price goes up to around $700! Definitely the card for the successful and ostentatious business. Especially as you then give them all away!
The stock you can use is growing all the time as new printing or etching techniques are discovered and refined. We can form almost any element into any shape we want, we just need to be able to append information to that shape and make it meaningful to make it worthwhile.
Filed under: Business Cards
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