In preparation for the upcoming holidays, you may want to get a better idea of one of the most used, if not the most used means of sending well wishes: the manager’s greeting card. Before the rise of e-cards sent via email, traditional greeting cards ruled. And compared to emails and electronic cards, greeting cards still say a lot more than a long letter sent over the Internet.
You know that with a greeting card, the sender went to great lengths to buy it, sat down to prepare and write a warm message, and spent time and money getting it to you. So it’s not just the written note that gives the impression of a sincere greeting, but everything else that goes into sending a card.
For the same effect, send out your own set of greeting cards this holiday season. But instead of using pre-made greeting cards found on store shelves, you may want to take it one step further with your own cards with your own design. You can easily send this design to your local or online printer and print it out.
The first is the first
Start creating your greeting card design, one that recipients will easily associate with you, for personal use, or with your company, for commercial purposes. There are two elements in your greeting card specifications that you can use to create an even more unique look. These are the folds and the color options.
To mark or not to mark
For the folds, you can go for the typical half-fold greeting card where the material is folded along the center line within the span of its width. Folding can be achieved in two ways, one is by conventional folding which results in uneven cracks along the spine resulting from folding, especially for thick papers such as those used for greeting cards. To avoid such an undesirable result, you can request a score.
Scoring is the method of adding a depression along the center line of the card’s width to facilitate folding. In addition to putting a guideline for the fold, hatching makes it easier to fold along the line because, in effect, the middle line isn’t as thick as it used to be. The cut should be deep enough to make folding effortless, but at the same time, not so deep that it would make the card easy to tear down the middle.
Another greeting card fold is the gate fold in which two equal sections across the width of the card are folded into what looks like a gate, hence the name. Contact your local print shop to ask if they can accommodate this custom job.
Choose which sides to color
Printers typically offer three color options: 4/0, 4/1, and 4/4. The first, 4/0, represents full color printing on the front panel only, giving you plenty of room to write your message. To print all sides, you can choose 4/1 or 4/4. The former means that only the front panel is printed in full color. The other side of the card is printed with black ink only. The latter, on the other hand, indicates that both sides are printed in full color, perfect if you want to add designs inside your card.
Get nostalgic this season. Spread your message the old-fashioned way by using greeting cards with updated looks and designs. Keep up the traditions while adding a modern twist. Get the best of both worlds.
