Plastic Card Types
Most people fancy the idea of customized plastic cards. They allow you to print any kind of information on the card without shedding too much money on it. Every business card can be customized in terms of its size, colour, effects and text details on them.
Most plastic business cards are 85mm x 54mm size with rounded corners printed in CMYK colours via Litho. Printing a business card provides us with more than basic options for print and can be customized to provide a bigger impact. Business cards are most effective from a marketing point of view if and when they are customized. It is important to think of a business that designs its cards outside of the box so that they will be remembered.
When ordering your plastic business cards/ loyalty/membership cards, the first thing to think about is the goal of the card. You may want to relay business information to your customers and audience, but there is also an underlying agenda – that of selling more. Most companies optimize the card to be a marketing tool. To serve as a tool that holds information for the longest. Customers can then refer to the information whenever they wanted to buy or check on the company. Customers can refer to the cards to get more or additional information about the company.
That said, our credit card-sized business cards are easy to carry around and obviously durable because they are made of plastic. They fit in wallets and can be carried around for easy reference. As a strategy, your customers can then show off to other customers and this will act as a referral. The cards can be made into special shapes but on the whole should be the same size as a credit card so that it fits in peoples wallets. Oversized plastic cards are best used at the office or home without having to carry them around or with a hole in so that they can be attached to lanyards (think festivals or information cards)
Plastic Business Card Shapes
The corners are usually rounded but special tools can be made for special shapes and I would try to keep away from square corners since they will end up ripping wallets if its too sharp. If you are in a competitive industry, which most people are, it is critical to add features that make the card set your business apart. The design should be more memorable than not. That is achieved first by using a premium printing plastic material then great effects.
But then in addition to including a logo, colours have a meaning when implemented on a card. Most companies will do with a company theme colour. That works for most of the coloured print on the card, for instance, the logo. However, you can also emulate other things like the colours of your website, products, and services, etc to add pomp. Most companies are also aware of the industrial theme colour. So if a company is in the environmental field, they can use green and so forth. It is critical to spend a good length of time designing the artwork to produce the best effects and in the best resolutions possible preferably in Vector 300dpi. Finally, if you are looking to use common colours like red, pink, brown, orange, yellow, green, blue, white, and other colours, concentrate on their meanings also. If you are interested in prestigious membership cards, gold or silver foils are also recommended, among other premium features like matt finish or spot UV.
Hand produced Plastic Business Cards
Whilst modern machinery is employed for parts of the printing process we still employ traditional artisan methods in printing your cards, its still a very much hands-on business with most of the effects:
- The prints are initially printed using Litho which can be done with Pantones or CMYK (or a mixture) depending on what is needed
- Traditional methods are then used to add effects like metallic inks or foils
- The other category of cards are the matt finish plastic cards – these have a refined matt texture. The texture is produced by using special matt steel plates in the lamination process.
- Then if needed things like a Spot UV can be applied via silk screening to make parts of the cards shiny and slightly raised
- This produces unique cards that can be used by any business or company.
- A full-colour plastic card can also be produced at request. This type of card is the result of printing artwork and laminating between two sheets of clear PVC. The PVC is clear and thick to ensure durability. The art work put in between the PVC sheets is printed in full colour on both sides.
- Of course, the card can be personalized at the owner’s request with things like names/numbers/barcodes/QR codes/Scratch panels etc.
Production of plastic business cards
Most business plastic cards are manufactured using PVC material. Consider that when manufacturing business plastic cards are being printed, the material needs to have surface energy higher than that of the ink to ensure the ink adheres properly. However, PVC has low surface energy and achieves poor ink adhesion. To ensure proper adhesion of inks, which will determine the quality of the card prints, we first test the surface energy and ink surface strain concerning each other. This will help to improve the card’s surface characteristics. For instance, a surface angle meter can be used to measure the surface energy of a material like PVC when making cards. After this, we match the best values of surface energy and ink surface strain to end up with the best adhesion characteristics.
Plasma treatment of plastic cards
Plasma treatment improves the quality of our business plastic cards. It improves adhesion quality, which means because plasma is a heavily ionized gas, it improves the ability of the material to catch inks and bond properly. When exposed to ionized gas, the material is electronics-free off because the atoms become too hot. The electrons are ionized and the free radicles are now able to connect with the material and develop extra polar groups. These groups improve the wettability of inks and solid bond quality. After the ionization, the ink is also able to spread widely and better on the surface. This provides better printouts on the material. The business plastic cards end up being clear and the information on them is clear.
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