Designing a personalized card is fun and easy. Whether you’ve elected to design cards to print at home or have them professionally printed, there are a few things to keep in mind. We’ve put together some tips to help you create your best card design.
Spacing
When designing a card, make sure you take into account both positive and negative spaces. Positive space is where information (main point of interest, elements) are. Negative space is everything else. Generally Positive space (the main focus) is usually smaller than negative space. Make sure that you create a balance of positive and negative space. You don’t want your design to look too bare or too crowded.
Color
When choosing back ground colors, for all aspects of the card (inside and out) make sure you select complimentary colors or you can stay in a monochromatic color scheme and uses various hues of the same color. If you are adding embellishments and photos to your design you can change the opacity to make them appear bolder or faded. Also, make sure your text color is visible on your background color. You don’t want to put light on light or dark on dark as it won’t be legible. In order to select the same color for all sides of the card in the color picker, once you’ve selected the color you can copy and paste the code to the right of the color.
Embellishments
The use of embellishments can really enhance your design. Whether is shapes, borders, or images, if placed well, they can create a beautiful design. Be sure to choose shapes and designs that compliment each other. Avoid overcrowding your design. Remember to use a balance of positive and negative space. You can adjust the size of any of the embellishments. You can also flip, crop or rotate images. Play around with it to see what fits best. You can always remove anything you don’t want to use.
Frames
The use of frames is great for framing images or creating a stylish text box. You can adjust the size of the frame easily to suit your needs. It’s best to avoid framing the whole perimeter of your design. Since there are so many printers with variable settings, there is a chance the frame could get cut off partially or look off center.
Safe Zone
Around each design you can enable the safe zone tool. 
The safe zone is represented by the dotted lines around the perimeter or the design. Use it as a guide when placing your design elements. Since all printers are just a little different, the safe zone can be used to help ensure nothing gets cut off in the printing process.
Photos
When selecting a photo to uploaded, it’s important to make sure your photo was taken in the highest resolution supported by your camera. You can always reduce the size and resolution. In fact, your photo will be easier to edit in photo editing softward if you reduce the size. You can currently upload photos in .jpg, .gif and .png format to the PurpleTrail Design Center. Here’s a list of suggested minimum requirements for photos. If you are printing this size, your photos should have at least this resolution:
- 4×6 size photo 690 x 460 pixels
- 5×7 size photo 805 x 575 pixels
- 8×10 size photo 1150 x 920 pixels
Make sure you’ve edited your picture to get rid of any red eye or other “imperfections”. Once you have your photo in the design center, you can crop it, change the opacity, flip it, rotate it and put a border around it. You can also add in effects like changing it to black and white, aqua or creating an antique or sepia appearance. You can add pictures to any part of your folded card. Photos can be added to the front and back left side on postcards.
Text
When adding text to your printed cards make sure you select a font that is very legible. When choosing a script like font, you’ll want to increase your font size to make sure you can read it. If you have a very dark background for your design, you’ll want to pick a complimentary lighter color for your text font. The opposite is true for light backgrounded cards, you’ll want dark font to make sure it shows up clearly on your card. You can easily increase the size of your text box as well as make the text center, right, or left aligned. Make sure you don’t cut off any parts of words by making the text size too large.
