GRAPick.LK
Business cards look simple, but they're actually one of the easiest print jobs to get wrong — and once a batch is printed, you're stuck with the mistake until the next reorder. Here are the five mistakes we see most often, and how to avoid paying for them twice.
1. Designing in RGB instead of CMYK
Screens display colour in RGB; printers use CMYK ink. A design that looks great on your laptop can print noticeably duller or shift in tone — blues turning purple, bright reds going flat — if it wasn't converted to CMYK before sending it to print. Always ask your designer or printer to confirm the file is in CMYK before it goes to press.
2. No bleed or safe margin
Printing and cutting are never pixel-perfect — there's always a small amount of movement. "Bleed" is the extra background colour or image that extends past the cut line, and a "safe margin" keeps text and logos away from the edge. Skip either one and you risk thin white slivers at the edge, or text that gets sliced off during cutting.
- Extend backgrounds/colours at least 2–3mm past the trim line
- Keep important text and logos at least 3–4mm inside the trim line
- Always check the printer's exact bleed requirement — it varies slightly between print shops
3. Low-resolution images or logos
A logo that looks sharp on a website (usually 72–96 DPI) is often not sharp enough for print, which typically needs 300 DPI. Stretching a small web logo up to card size is the single most common cause of blurry, pixelated business cards.
If a logo looks slightly fuzzy when zoomed in on-screen, it will look worse once it's printed and physically in someone's hand.
4. Too much text, too small
A business card is read quickly, often in bad lighting, and sometimes by people who don't have perfect eyesight. Cramming in every phone number, email, social handle and tagline at a tiny font size defeats the purpose — nobody can actually read it. Keep it to the essentials: name, role, one phone number, one email, and your main contact method (website or WhatsApp).
5. Skipping a physical proof
Colours, paper texture and finish (matte vs. glossy vs. textured) all affect how a design actually looks once printed — something a screen simply can't show you. For larger orders especially, it's worth asking for a single sample print before committing to the full batch.
Getting these right the first time is almost always cheaper than reprinting a batch that looked fine on screen but wrong in hand.
Our business card printing
If you would rather not worry about any of this, our business card package is $10 per 100 cards, with design and printing included, a matte or glossy finish, and local delivery in Sri Lanka. You can see it on our pricing page.