How To Setup Greeting Card For Printing

What to know

To set up your greeting card design properly, the first thing you need to know is how you want the cards to fold. Standard greeting cards can be folded in two ways:

1. Horizontal fold, which means the paper folds from top to bottom

2. Vertical fold, which means the paper folds from left to right

Because of these different types of folds, the orientation and placement of your artwork are very important. Furthermore, you can print on both inside and the outside of the greeting cards, or on the outside only. So with these folds and pages in mind, your design should consist of 4 panels:

For horizontal fold cards

1. Outside front (front cover)
2. Outside back (back cover)
3. Inside top (optional)
4. Inside bottom (optional)

For Vertical fold cards

1. Outside front (front cover)
2. Outside back (back cover)
3. Inside left (optional)
4. Inside right (optional)

How to set up your design files

To create a design for folded greeting cards, you will need to have 2 different design files - one file for the outside of the cards, and another file for the inside of the cards (in case the inside has any design elements).

The most common problem designers face when creating greeting cards is the placement and orientation of outside covers and inside pages. Many people tend to set these up reader-view, disregarding how the greeting card will look once folded.

The following photos are illustrating how the 4 panels should be distributed inside your design files:

For horizontal fold cards