Screen Printed business cards?

daytona

daytona

Member
Hey guys, I need to get some business cards printed with a colour combination that is shaping up to be yellow (or a similar light colour) on very dark grey. I want to use a nice dark stock for the cards, maybe some colourplan 700gsm, so would screen printing be the best/only way to apply a light colour to a dark card? Any help/advice/printer sugestions very welcome :)
cheers.
 
I would think screen printing (if you can get it done) would be quite an expensive way to go...or if, you are at uni, you could print them yourself!

The 'normal' way to put a light colour on dark is to print the darker colour on to the lighter colour - so choose your colourplan board as the "ink" colour.

There does seem to be a growing use of really heavy business cards - my mortagage guy had some done (and not by me!!) and tbh I thought they were over the top. Is he making so much money out of me?

Another way is to use a matt foil on the darker card - that would work.
 
Hi Kate, thanks for the reply. You're right I reckon screen printing would be pretty expensive as I'm away from uni and can't do them myself.
I totally overlooked the idea that you could print onto a light bored with the dark colour... so that could be viable.
I guess the gsm is still under consideration so it's interesting to hear your two cents. If the gsm was lower would that open any other print options that are closed because of the thickness.
 
Most litho machines only print up to about 400gsm* and probably most digital printers only go to 350gsm - so yes, other options are open.

*I know of a litho machine that prints up to .8mm but that probably isn't going to be cheap for business cards!
 
Digital Printing

daytona said:
Hi Kate, thanks for the reply. You're right I reckon screen printing would be pretty expensive as I'm away from uni and can't do them myself.
I totally overlooked the idea that you could print onto a light bored with the dark colour... so that could be viable.
I guess the gsm is still under consideration so it's interesting to hear your two cents. If the gsm was lower would that open any other print options that are closed because of the thickness.
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There are no real advantages to printing on such thick card, just puts your costs up and will not impress anyone. What you have printed is whats important. If you only want up to a couple of thousand, Digital printing would be best and 300gsm would be sufficient, this would be your best cost option.
 
garlex said:
There are no real advantages to printing on such thick card, just puts your costs up and will not impress anyone. What you have printed is whats important. If you only want up to a couple of thousand, Digital printing would be best and 300gsm would be sufficient, this would be your best cost option.
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Personally i think the feel of the card in your hand is very important. My experience of digitally printed cards, have mostly been matt varnished and all feel like they're hiding the fact their on boring stock. Though digitally printing onto a nice textured stock would probably be fine :3
 
My mate bought some thick mountboard from a book binding supplier for about £2 and screen-printed his own cards at uni. He's too chicken shit to hand them out to people though :/

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Haha yeah, love it. Not suitable for the job I'm working on :p but looks great. Greyboard has a really nice look and feel imo. I'd love to get the cards letterpressed but there's no budget for it. So i guess it'll probably be a digital print on a nice uncoated stock.
 
There is a huge range of stock available now so perhaps your experience had been limited. It is what you put on it that counts the most.
 
Foil on grey heavy stock would look great, but a more cost-effective route would be traditional 2-colour litho on a 400+gsm board and this would give you pantone colour matching so you can chose the colour rather than leaving it to chance.

Any CMYK process (xerox type digital, hp indigo, 4-colour litho) will be liable to throw out strange results on the grey colour, and i say this as someone who could offer this service. Particularly with a yellow logo, the grey may end up looking piss-streaked when the y out of the cmyk catches the eye.

You will only get a really beautiful contrast between the colours with foiling or 2-colour litho. I should add i know next to nothing about screen printing so i couldn't comment on that, only more commercial methods.
 
Printcrazy said:
Foil on grey heavy stock would look great, but a more cost-effective route would be traditional 2-colour litho on a 400+gsm board and this would give you pantone colour matching so you can chose the colour rather than leaving it to chance.

Any CMYK process (xerox type digital, hp indigo, 4-colour litho) will be liable to throw out strange results on the grey colour, and i say this as someone who could offer this service. Particularly with a yellow logo, the grey may end up looking piss-streaked when the y out of the cmyk catches the eye.

You will only get a really beautiful contrast between the colours with foiling or 2-colour litho. I should add i know next to nothing about screen printing so i couldn't comment on that, only more commercial methods.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this response. I'm still getting to grips with pantone, but I'm going to go and talk to a friend about it next week/steal their pantone book for a bit. thanks for the advice
 
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