Business card sizes

A US business card is 3.5 × 2 inches (88.9 × 50.8 mm). Cross the Atlantic and the standard becomes 85 × 55 mm; in Japan it is 91 × 55 mm, in China 90 × 54 mm and in Korea 90 × 50 mm. The differences look tiny, but the aspect ratios are not the same — a European card is noticeably squarer than an American one — so a file built for one market will not simply scale into another without the margins drifting.

Bleed is set by the print shop, not by the size. For the same 3.5 × 2 in card, most US shops ask for 0.125 in on every side, Vistaprint asks for about 0.055 in (a 3.61 × 2.11 in document) and MOO for about 0.08 in. In Europe the spread is wider: FLYERALARM takes 1 mm, Vistaprint UK 1.5 mm and SAXOPRINT 2 mm. Download the template from the shop you actually order from before you start.

Keep names, phone numbers and logos at least 3 mm (1/8 in) inside the trim line. Guillotines drift by a millimetre or two, and text that hugs the edge either gets clipped or makes one margin look visibly thinner than the other. The 85.6 × 53.98 mm size (ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1, the credit-card size) is a separate format used for plastic cards and membership cards.