Printing small size cards on 16 point matte coated card stock with spot gloss is an excellent way to highlight areas of your artwork with a clear high gloss contrast element.
Small cards with a spot gloss finish, also called spot UV or spot varnish, attract attention as the eye is drawn to the opposing visual effect. Spot gloss cards are printed on 16 point coated card stock in full color on the big offset printing press and are available in several small, narrow, and square sizes that are perfect for everything from business cards to trading cards, hang tags, and more.
If you don't see the exact size you want for your spot gloss small cards in our list of standard sizes, click on the tab above to request a custom estimate.
Spot gloss cards offer a cost-effective and unique way to enhance your artwork with a clear layer of gloss placed only where you want it.
Coated cards have a thin clay coating that can chip when trimmed. Cards with heavy ink coverage, especially dark colors that goes all the way to the edge tend to really to show this chipping. We recommend silk laminated cards on cards with heavy coverage at the trim line.
The upside of club-run printing is the shared savings, the downside is that we adjust color globally to get the best overall color for shared jobs. This means the color of club-run printed items will vary through the run and will not match exactly on re-prints. Our Indigo printing service is better suited to color critical work.
Coated cards aren't ideal for writing on. If finished with a matte aqueous coating, sharpies may work if left to dry but ballpoint pens will smudge. If finished with a UV gloss coating, don't even think about it. If this is a big deal, check out our uncoated card stock options.
Due to the nature of club-run printing, you may experience color variation in solid fills of blue. For great blue results, we recommend a 30% difference between your Cyan and Magenta levels to ensure a nice rich dark blue, rather than purple.
CMYK Process colors in the grey range and de-saturated images can shift in color throughout the print run and may cause the greys to appear either cooler or warmer. For a neutral grey, we recommend converting all grey values and de-saturated images to true greyscale consisting of K (black) only values.
For the richest of deep dark blacks in print use 50/40/40/100 as the CMYK value. If printing small black text (or knocked out text), we recommend a k only black (0/0/0/100) to avoid misregistration issues.
Colors under the spot UV areas will appear slightly darker and richer than areas of the card that is not.
Because there may be some slight shifting of the spot UV (spot gloss), we do not advise putting the spot UV over the text. You can expect up to 1/16" variance between the gloss and the CMYK layers, so trying to line up the thin gloss with small or thin text underneath may not turnout as expected.
Spot gloss doesn't always line up 100% perfect. Usually "blind" spot gloss applications turn out the best. Aligning the spot gloss with CMYK elements often reduces the contrast of the spot gloss and any shift in alignment is noticeable. Spot gloss alone provides great contrast when applied over a solid fill or even just on the white matte stock. Another great effect is to have a pattern in just spot gloss in the background.
Bleeds: all files must have a 1/8" bleed on each side
Live Area: keep all critical text and artwork 1/8" inside the trim
Colors: supply your files in CMYK color (Pantone/RGB colors will be converted or rejected)
Spot Gloss: Include a separate file/artboard with these elements colored with Pantone Black to denote the special finishing. Alternatively, if you would like to include these elements in the same file, place these elements on a separate layer and colored with a Pantone color (typically Pantone Black) that denotes the Spot Gloss.
Resolution: 300 dpi minimum (400 dpi preferred)
Fonts: fonts must converted to curves/outlines (we do not accept fonts).
Transparencies: flatten all transparencies
Types Of Files We Accept: MAC & PC files from Photoshop (PSD), Illustrator (EPS or AI), CorelDraw (CDR or EPS), Adobe Acrobat PDF, TIFF or JPEG.
| Trim Size | File Size | Template | |
| Square Card | 1.75" x 1.75" | 2" x 2" | UNAVAILABLE |
| Square Card | 2" x 2" | 2.25" x 2.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Square Card | 2.5" x 2.5" | 2.75" x 2.75" | DOWNLOAD |
| Name Card | 3.5" x 1.5" | 3.75" x 1.75" | DOWNLOAD |
| Name Card | 3.5" x 1.75" | 3.75" x 2" | DOWNLOAD |
| Business Card | 3.5" x 2" | 3.75" x 2.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Hang Tag | 4" x 2" | 4.25" x 2.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Trading Card | 4" x 2.75" | 4.25" x 3" | DOWNLOAD |
| Square Card | 3" x 3" | 3.25" x 3.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Trading Card | 4" x 3" | 4.25" x 3.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Promo Card | 4" x 3.5" | 4.25" x 3.75" | DOWNLOAD |
| Hang Tag | 5" x 2" | 5.25" x 2.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Square Card | 4" x 4" | 4.25" x 4.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Hang Tag | 6" x 2" | 6.25" x 2.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Bookmark | 7" x 2" | 7.25" x 2.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Bookmark | 8" x 2" | 8.25" x 2.25" | DOWNLOAD |
| Club Flier | 5" x 3.5" | 5.25" x 3.75" | UNAVAILABLE |
Offset Printed using Stochastic Screens
16pt coated card stock, 30% post-consumer waste (130lb)
Full Color Both Sides (4/4) or Full Color One Side (4/0), using soy-based inks
Matte Aqueous Coated with Spot UV (one or two sides)
