Well, if he's your mate ( ), why not give him a jingle and ask him? PDF would probably work though. Just make sure to embed all the fonts you've used.

You don't mention what type of printer he's using to print it out on. If it's a standard desktop inkjet printer, the amount of colors shouldn't be an issue. If it's a laser printer, there might be an issue, but it's best to ask him what type of printer he's printing it out on.

In terms of stock, again, whatever type of printer he's printing it on will factor in, but there are many cardstocks available that will go through both inkjet and laser printers without a hitch.

If you are only going to print 100 cards, then offset would be much much too expensive. Go digital in which case you can use as many colours as you like (as long as it can be made by CMYK. ie. not flourescent or metallics).

A pdf with at 5mm bleed and trim marks is ideal. Make sure you save it at the highest setting - which is generally the "Press Quality" Setting. I know you aren't printing on a press, but higher the better right?

Most digital printers don't print on stocker thicker than 280gsm, but they can print 300gsm if you push it. Just that the technicians don't recommend it, so if printers do printer on 300gsm, and they have a paper jam, they can get into trouble. Matt laminating a 280gsm card thickens it up and makes it look very swish indeed. I think it is worth doing this. Makes your card last longer too. Remember Matt laminate. Not gloss. Gloss is tacky.

Oh, even if you did do offset, you would be printing in CMYK instead of spot colours to save money. So in that case, it really doesn't matter if you reduce the number of colours or not. Also it may be more trouble than it is worth trying to convert this design into spot colours since you have done it in psd?

I don't know how prices are over there, but in the US, it costs more to print 100 cards digitally than it does to print 1,000 cards offset. Plus, you can get the offset on a much heavier stock and the print quality is far better.

Thanks for the help ppl, we're probably gonna get it done professionally: http://www.facemediagroup.co.uk/?page=business.cards

It uses digital printing on 320gsm uncoated business card board.

It's cheap enough at £40 ($76) for 250 cards. So i'm not complaining about that.

One other questio tho, what is the advantages of printing it off as a pdf as apposed to a flattened work as psd, bmp or png?

Printing it as a PDF will created a postscript file that will keep your text crisps vs. what you get with a PSD. My biggest concern would be your margins. They look very tight. When printing digitally, you have to keep in mind how the stock will shift in the machine. I can almost guarantee that you will loose some of your text when the cards are cut down. I always recommend a margin of no less than 3\16”, whatever that translates to in the mm for our friends in the UK.

Bazzle: Red's point is correct. You should make it a general rule to always output to PDF for print. A PSD file contains a flattened, rasterized version of the file, and that's what a RIP or digital press will typically use. Your text ends up at 300 dpi (or whatever resolution you set in Photoshop). A PDF embeds the font and vector information so the RIP can work at its best.

For most printers (some can do very precise work) you should keep text away from the edge of the card. I generally use 9 points (~3mm) and I've never had a problem, but it depends on the printer.

That sounds too much for digital (but judging from here prices are very different in different countries!) . Have you shopped around? I wouldn't pay more than $50NZ which is £17 for 250 business cards.

Dont know where you are mate but here in australia printing 100 of them digitally OR offset is going to cost way too much. But if you wanted 1000 there planty of trade printers who will do them for the equivelent of $40 - $50 US

Also ive found with business cards you dont have to worry about lettering going chunky around the edges because theyre so small. Your best bet is to contact the printer and ask them. If they take psd file then give them that UNLFLATTENED. This keeps the fonts all as postscript anyway. Otherwise for something complex like that a tiff is good and keeps your colours right. So long as you dont go below 600dpi it should look sexual.

Your printer will also tell you how much bleed they want, usually 2mm all round or something, and the safe distance for lettering to go in from the edge so it doesnt risk being chopped off.

Here in LA there's a company called 4Over Inc., who do $25 for 1000 cards, UV coated 4/4 on 14 or 16 point card, full bleed both sides. I don't know how they do it, frankly, but their quality is excellent.

Please don't give your printer a psd with fonts left the way they are. Having to install all the fonts you have used (provided that you have supplied them) is just one extra piece of work that isn't required.

I don't understand why digital would be expensive. How much do you pay for an A3 digital photocopy? Just say you pay $5US )which is too much by my standards), you fit 21 business cards (3 by 7) on 1 sheet, 100/21 is 5 sheets (with 5 business cards to spare). $5US x 5 sheets of A3 copies is only $25...Sure you got trimming, but how expensive is it to trim 5 sheets of paper?

If you’re looking for a non-local printer, I wouldn’t recommend 4Over. Our company has done a few jobs with them and their service has been very spotty. The quality can be great, but the customer service on jobs we’ve had issues with is horrible. Once, they miss cut some business cards and tried to say it was our file that was the problem. The customer service person was very rude over the phone. When they looked into it further, they realized their prepress dept. placed the file incorrectly into the printing template they use. Their turnaround times can very greatly. We’ve had to wait for weeks for an order to come back on a few occasions.

I've had the same experiences, but I have you beat! When you use the web site to determine pricing, as the qty. increases, so does the cost of shipping - untill you hit a certain qty., at which point, it changes to $0. Now, to any sane person, that would indicate that when a certain price is reached, shipping is inlcuded, which many companies do. After placing the order, I received an email saying "because of the size of your order, shipping will be calculated at the time of shipping" Um...WTF? I called them and walked them through the site and they agreed. The response was "yes, we can see how it looks that way, but it's not our problem. We don't ship anything for free." The end result was a shipping bill for several hundred dollars and we made no money of the order because I sure as hell wan't going to go back to my client and tell them that they were going to have to pay more $$ - that would be unprofessional. Anyway, 4 Over is shit when it comes to service.

I'd agree with both of you as far as long distance ordering. 4Over is the kind of company that you want to deal with on a local basis. They're a high-speed assembly line type of operation with strictly limited options as to paper stock, sizes, etc.. You have to make things really, really simple to interpret (like two PDFs named "front" and "back" rather than a two-page PDF). Forget prepress fixes!

That said, their final product has always been immaculate on any jobs they've done for me: colors accurate (although they have prominent disclaimers about color accuracy), trim and fold accurate, quality stock.
When they screwed up (one job) it was spectacular. There wasn't much argument about it, and they turned the redo around in a day, but I wouldn't have wanted to try to handle it by phone.

For simple stuff like flyers, postcards, business cards, 4Over tend to price very attractively -- 50% or more under the rest of the market -- and I've not seen a problem. Since it's a short drive to their pick up point I have immediate QC on the product, and if I need something fixed I'm right there.

I don't think I would ever use a non-local "budget" printer because I wouldn't figure it worth the risk. OTOH I'm in LA, where they're thick on the ground, so it's hardly an issue.