It doesn’t matter how high your IQ is. Everyone – smart, dumb, young, and old – likes shiny things. As humans, our eyes just gravitate toward light, and there’s no exception when it comes to business cards that have a little flash.
Foil stamped business cards are quite literally flashy. The foil stamping process is completely different from metallic ink printing, and the innovative procedure makes it much more affordable as a premium business card printing option.
In fact, foil stamping doesn’t use any ink at all. That’s why it’s also referred to as “dry printing.” What happens is we start with 16pt cardstock (for our business cards or flyers), print it with your design in full color ink, and then take those cards and use heat, pressure, and metallic paper (or foil) to bond the shiny material to the cardstock. We take your business card design and create carved plates made of metal, which are also known as “dies,” that will stamp on the foil accents you’ve specified in your foil stamped business card design. The dies pick up a layer of foil and then come in contact with the surface of your card. They’re then heated until the foil is transferred onto the desired areas of your card. And thus a foil stamped business card is created!
Elite Flyers offers foil stamping in either gold or silver foils. Both gold and silver foil stamping look great on traditional business card backdrops, but they look even better on silk laminated business cards. Plus, silk lamination adds durability, ensuring that your carefully designed foil-stamped cards are not only attractive and sleek-looking, but also waterproof and tear-proof.
Silk laminated cards aren’t really encased in silk. If they were, they’d cost like 60 times as much and probably wouldn’t stand up to a few minutes in your pocket, let alone a rainstorm. They’re bonded instead with a thin plastic film that’s brushed to give them a smooth, luxurious look and feel. We use the word “laminated” because the process doesn’t just involve applying a coating. In lamination, the plastic film becomes permanently and totally bonded to the cardstock, making the end product completely water resistant and impossible to tear.
The silk lamination process renders your business cards extremely durable and gives them an expensive-looking sleek finish and silky feel. There are two things to consider, though, in deciding whether or not to choose silk lamination. One is that the bonding process changes the color of your cards just a bit. If impeccable color matching is crucial to your business card design it includes a heavily-branded corporate logo, for example, silk lamination may not be the way to go. The other thing to consider is price. Silk lamination is a premium feature, and it obviously will increase the overall cost of printing your cards. You’ll want to consider whether having an impressive card is likely to be important in your particular field. If you’re a wedding planner, it probably is. If you’re a tire wholesaler, you may or may not require silk lamination to convey the image you want.
When you pair smooth, luxurious, and matte silk lamination with eye-catching shiny foil stamped accents, you end up with a striking card that will make people do a double or triple take when you meet them at business mixers, tradeshows, or just out and about.
As you can see from these examples of cards we’ve printed for some of our customers, our foil-stamped silk laminated cards look great whether you’re keeping the design super simple and clean or adding in full color photographs along with the foil-stamped accents. If you like the idea of an artistic-looking card that combines unique design elements like silk lamination and foil stamping, ask our design team for advice on how to make these options work with your company image.