Foil effects small cards are printed with full color inks on top of a silver layer of foil producing a full palette of glimmering foil colors on the same card. While traditional foil stamping is limited to specific foil colors our special foil effects printing method allows you to design and print custom foil colors, multiple foil colors, foil half tones and even foil gradients.
Foil effects small cards are offset printed with the same high-quality standards we have for all our offset printed cards, producing high resolution images and crisp detailed graphics. These cards are finished with your choice of a matte, high gloss or UV spot gloss coating
Big or small your foil effects cards will be a shining example of your sophistication, style and a great way to show off your design talents!
Images or artwork printed with foil effects will darken slightly and some gradient range will be lost. Consider lightening images before printing for a better result.
To create typical silver foil, we recommend applying 15% K over the foil.
Yes, foil effects allows you to design with full coverage and full bleed, unlike foil stamping which is limited 50% of the coverage.
Knockouts are the spaces in the Foil Effects mask or in the CMYK print file. Beware there might be a "halo" of white around the knockout area. Although registration is better than traditional foil stamping, it will not be exact.
Do not design using foil effects on very thin or small text or artwork. For best results, use large areas or fonts 12pt and above. Sans-serif fonts 10 point or above will also work.
A UV coating will bring out more of the foil/CMYK subtleties in your artwork as well as add another dimension of gloss to your design.
Foil effects works best on lighter colors. The darker and more saturated the color is, the less effect the foil effect will have.
Foil Stamping is the true and traditional form of adding foil to your project. Foil stamping is limited to under 50% coverage, cannot bleed and is not suited to complex designs. Foil effects allows almost unlimited foil colors, gradients and can be used for intricate designs. We offer traditional foil stamping on silk laminated and uncoated stocks while foil effects is only printed on a coated card stock.
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 edges, tend to really to show this chipping. We recommend silk laminated cards for designs 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.
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.
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.
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 mis-registration issues.
Color on cards finished with a UV gloss coating will appear slightly darker and richer than cards finished with an aqueous coating.
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)
Foil Effects: 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 Foil Effects.
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. Foil Effects layers can only be printed from a vector-based file.
| 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
Foil Effects with Matte or Gloss Coatings
