Design Advice - Message Cards

So you want to make a great message card? 

This guide will run through some essential tips to get your message cards the best they can be! 

Size matters! 

The message cards are about 3 inches by 3 inches in size, or 1,000 x 1,000 pixels. 

The previews of products that you see are close-up shots, with the designs digitally rendered. This may make text and other design elements appear larger and/or more legible than they may be on the finished product. 

If you want to make sure your design will look great, print it out at the correct size on a regular printer! If it looks great there, it will look fantastic on the real thing. 

Choose the correct DPI.

The DPI (dots per inch) setting controls the amount of detail a print will have when the artwork is applied to the product. For best results, you should set the DPI of your artwork to 300. Lower DPI settings will work too, but you'll be missing out on quality.

Choose your phrase and text size carefully.

Great phrases and great text wins sales! But too long of a phrase can make your design look too crowded, or make it hard to read. Remember the message cards are quite small so short, emotionally punchy phrases work best!

Keep away from the edge.

When creating your design, keep text and other important design elements away from the edges of your design a little. 

When we print your design, we cut into your design by a tiny amount, to make sure the background looks perfect. This is known as a "bleed". 

Keep important text and other important design elements away from the edge slightly, otherwise it may get cut off!

Make sure you leave some room!

Remember, your message card will have the jewelry piece sitting on top of it. So be sure to leave space in the middle for the piece to sit.

You can upload your design to your product to get a digital mock-up of it, which will show the placement of the jewelry piece.

Check your color profile.

When uploading your design to our system ready for print, your image will be converted to a .PNG file. This file type does not support CMYK color profiles, and so the color in your image will be converted to an RGB color profile. This will still work just fine, but If you have designed your message card using the CMYK color profile, the colors in the image might look slightly different when printed.

If you require pixel-perfect color, we recommend designing your message cards using an RGB color profile.

Most of all, keep it simple!

Our marketing research and sales data has shown that simple designs sell the most.

Sticking to one or two neutral colors, simple easy-to-read fonts, and keeping a minimal look has proven time and again to make very effective designs.