Many folks are surprised to learn that folded business cards are available.  It’s definitely an uncommon feature, but depending on your line of work, it might be something worth considering the next time you aim to have your business cards professionally printed.

There are 2 primary ways to facilitate a business card fold: perforation and scoring.

A perforation is a series of small holes on a sheet of paper so that a section can tear easily over a straight line.  This is a common attribute of event tickets, business reply cards, notebook paper, and hundreds of other items regularly used in our society.

A score, on the other hand, is a crease applied to a sheet made of a heavy stock paper to eliminate cracking and to facilitate a straight and accurate fold.  Pick up any greeting card, and you will see scoring.

Folded business cards are typically printed on a 4” x 3.5” card stock.  The 4” side is folded in half along the scored or perforated line, leaving you with a standard 2” x 3.5” business card when folded.  Scoring or perforation typically works best on silk business cards and glossy business cards.

The main benefit of this type of business card is that it offers additional “marketing space” for your card.  In other words, instead of the standard 2 sides (front and back), you now have 4 sides to work with – double the marketing space.  You could leverage this additional space for any number of creative purposes – for example, including a map to your business, your company mission, or even an appointment card.

The other benefit is that folded business cards are extremely unique, and as such will help your business cards stand out from the masses.  Unique business cards are more likely to be retained by customers and clients, even if just for novelty reasons.

Folded silk business cards also allow for additional enhancements, like spot UV, foil stamping, and embossing, any of which will serve to dramatically embellish your folded business card’s uniqueness and stickiness even more.

So there you have it – a quick and dirty overview of folded business cards.  To sum it up, the folding is usually done on silk business cards or glossy business cards, utilizing either perforation or scoring.

Till next time…