Your Logo on a Holiday Card: What File to Send, and Why It's Two Setups

Two setups, $30 each: one for the card, one for the envelope. We keep the file, so next year costs nothing. Send a 300 dpi CMYK file at the size it will print, or larger. That is the whole answer. The rest is why the file matters more than anything else on the order.

Why it is two setups

The card and the envelope are set up separately, so a logo in both places is two charges, $60 the first year. You can have it on either one, or both.

Most people put it on the card and leave the envelope alone. If you use the envelope's imprint lines for your return address, the client already knows who it is from before they open it, and the logo inside does the rest.

Both setups are one-time. Reorder next year and neither one is charged again.

The file that prints well

Three things, and the first one catches nearly everybody.

300 dpi at the printed size, or larger. A logo saved from your website was made for a screen. It has enough pixels to look crisp on a monitor and not nearly enough to look crisp on paper. Printed, it goes soft at the edges, and soft edges on a logo read as careless even to people who could not tell you why.

CMYK, not RGB. Screens make color out of light: red, green and blue. Presses make it out of ink: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. A file built for the screen has to be converted, and bright colors, vivid blues and greens especially, can shift on the way. Start from CMYK and there is no conversion left to surprise you.

Clean artwork. The logo by itself. No background box, no screenshot edges, nothing cropped. If there is a white rectangle around the logo in the file, assume there will be one on the card.

Multiple colors are fine.

Where to get the right file

Whoever made your logo has it: the designer, the agency, the printer who did your business cards. Ask for "the print-ready version of the logo, in CMYK." Those words get you past the version on your website.

If nobody can find it, call 833-682-8250 before you order, not after. A soft logo on 500 cards is a problem you want to know about while it is still a file.

A card built around a logo

You can add your logo to the imprint on the design you choose, inside the card. There is also a family of logo cards, built with a place for your logo on the front, if you would rather the mark be on the cover than inside it.

One more file you might not know we print

The same setup works for a headshot. Any card in the catalog can carry your photo printed inside, billed exactly like a logo: $30 the first time, kept on file, free on reorders, same 300 dpi CMYK spec. For anyone whose clients know them by face as much as by name, that is worth a look.

The short version

$30 for the card, $30 more for the envelope if you want it there too, free next year. 300 dpi, CMYK, clean. Get the file from whoever made the logo, and get it before you order.