Guide
How to make printable greeting cards worth the paper
A printable card has to survive being printed on somebody kitchen printer, cut with household scissors and folded by hand, and still look like something you would give a person. That is a design constraint, not an excuse.
Short answer
Design as a single landscape sheet folded once down the middle, so nothing has to line up across two sides of the paper. Use A2 (4.25 x 5.5 in) for notes and A7 (5 x 7 in) for occasions. Print crop marks, not borders. Leave the inside mostly blank, because the sender writes the real message. Ship US Letter and A4 versions of every card.
The fold decides the product
Everything difficult about a printable card comes from asking a home printer to put ink in the right place on both sides of a sheet. So do not ask it to.
Lay the card out as one landscape sheet, folded once down the middle. The right half of the sheet is the front of the card; the left half is the inside. Print one side, cut once, fold once. Nothing has to register against anything. It is more robust than double-sided, it is stiffer because the card is two layers of paper at the fold, and it prints correctly on every printer in the world.
| Size | Flat sheet | Folded card | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| A2 | 5.5 x 8.5 in | 4.25 x 5.5 in | Thank-yous, notes, place cards |
| A7 | 10 x 7 in | 5 x 7 in | Birthdays, weddings, Christmas |
| Square | 10 x 5 in | 5 x 5 in | Modern, but needs a special envelope |
Name the envelope in the listing. An A7 card needs an A7 envelope, and a buyer who has to go looking has already regretted the purchase. Envelope sizes are the single most useful piece of information you can put in a card listing and almost nobody includes it.
Crop marks, not borders
A printed border demands a perfect cut. Household scissors do not give one, and every millimetre of error shows as a white sliver or a shaved edge. Short crop marks at the four corners, sitting outside the card area, let the buyer line up a ruler and cut confidently, and nothing of the mark survives on the finished card.
Leave at least a quarter of an inch of paper outside the card on all sides for the cut, and keep all artwork inside the card boundary rather than running it to the edge. Full-bleed printing at home is not reliable; a design with an intentional margin looks deliberate and always works.
Writing the front
A card is a very short piece of writing, and short writing is where slogans creep in. The lines that land are specific, warm and slightly unexpected. The lines that fail are the ones the buyer has read a thousand times.
- Say the occasion plainly or do not mention it. Half-gestures at an event read as evasion.
- Prefer the concrete. "You made the tea for four days straight" beats "thinking of you".
- Do not rhyme unless you are good at it. A weak rhyme is the fastest way to make a card look cheap.
- Write your own words. Song lyrics and living poets are in copyright, and greeting cards are a well-policed use.
Typography is doing most of the work on a card front. One display face used confidently, one quiet face for anything secondary, real margins. A quote set well on plain stock beats an ornate card with weak type.
Occasions worth building sets for
Single cards sell slowly; sets sell. Build around an occasion where somebody needs several cards at once: a pack of eight thank-yous after a wedding, a set of place cards and a menu, twelve Christmas cards, a set of "just because" notes for someone in hospital. The buyer with a list in their hand is worth ten browsers.
Because the card is drawn as vector, text can be reflowed and re-typeset for each card in a set without redrawing anything, and every card prints sharp at whatever resolution the buyer printer manages.
Selling it
Include US Letter and A4 versions of every card, since A4 is the standard paper outside North America and a Letter design printed on A4 shifts the fold line. That is one extra file and it removes a whole class of complaint.
Add a short read-me: paper weight recommendation (200 to 250 gsm if they have it), which envelope to buy, and the cut-and-fold instructions in three lines. On Etsy the first listing image should be the printed card standing up, photographed or mocked up honestly at the size it will actually be.
Neubook draws card sheets as vectors with the fold line and crop marks in place, at US Letter or A4, so a card cuts clean and folds square. Give it the occasion and the words.
Make a card, freeSources
- Etsy seller fees and payment policy
- ISO 216, the A-series paper sizes
- SVG, the vector format these pages are drawn in
- Dots per inch, and why it decides print quality
- Greeting card sizes and conventions
Common questions
What size should a printable greeting card be?
Two sizes cover most of the market. A2, 4.25 by 5.5 inches, is a quarter-fold from Letter and suits notes and thank-yous. A7, 5 by 7 inches, is the standard occasion card and fits the envelopes sold everywhere. Say which envelope the buyer needs in the listing.
Should the design be double-sided?
No, if you can avoid it. A single landscape sheet folded once needs no alignment between the two sides of the paper, which removes the most common way a home print goes wrong. Reserve double-sided for cards where you want a printed inside message.
How much should go on the inside?
Very little. The buyer bought a card to write in it. A short printed line at the top or the foot, and white space for a handwritten message. A card with a printed paragraph inside is a leaflet.
How do I make the card easy to cut out?
Crop marks at the corners, not a printed border. A border has to be cut exactly on the line or the error is visible; crop marks let a slightly wobbly cut still produce a clean card. Leave at least a quarter inch of paper outside the card edge for the cut.
Can I sell cards with quotes on them?
Only if the words are yours, are old enough to be out of copyright, or are licensed. Song lyrics and modern poetry are protected and are enforced vigorously. Writing your own line is both safer and more distinctive.