Design a business card and letterhead ready for a Lagos printer

A client's card comes back from the printer with the last digit of the phone number sliced off, and the deep navy in the logo has printed as a washed-out grey-blue. The designer blames the printer. The printer blames the designer. It is almost always the designer — the file was never set up for print in the first place.

This lesson is about making files that survive the cutting machine and the ink. You already have a logo, palette and type choices from the earlier modules; now we put them on paper.

Words in this lesson

The three lines on every print file

Every print job has three invisible boundaries. Learn them once and you will never lose a phone number again.

So if your card background is a solid Ankara-inspired green, that green must extend 3mm beyond the trim on all four sides. And the phone number must sit at least 3mm inside it.

Set up the business card

Nigerian printers work in two common sizes. Ask before you design, but 85 × 55mm is the safest default.

Document setup, whatever software you use:

Size:        85 x 55 mm
Bleed:       3 mm all sides
Margin:      4 mm (safe area guide)
Colour mode: CMYK in the final print file (Figma exports RGB — see below)
Resolution:  300 dpi (raster effects too)
Pages:       2 (front and back)

In Canva, create a custom design at the trim size, 85 × 55mm, then go to File → Settings → Show print bleed. Canva's bleed is fixed at about 3mm (3.175mm), so stretch backgrounds out past the dashed line. When you download, choose PDF Print and tick Crop marks and bleed.

What actually goes on the card

A business card has one job: let someone reach this business. Everything else is decoration. For a Nigerian small business, the realistic list is:

• Front: logo, business name, one-line description of what they do ("Bespoke menswear", "Solar installation & maintenance")
• Back: person's name, role, one or two phone numbers, WhatsApp number if different, email, Instagram handle, area/address if customers visit

Two numbers is normal here and you should plan for it — MTN and Airtel on one card is not clutter, it is insurance. What is clutter: a full street address for a business that only delivers, a website that is just a Linktree, and five social icons when the client only posts on Instagram.

Set phone numbers in a size a person over forty can read without squinting. 7pt minimum, 8pt is better. If the text does not fit at 8pt, you have too much text, not too little space.

Set up the letterhead

Letterhead is A4: 210 × 297mm, 3mm bleed only if colour runs to the edge. Most letterheads do not need bleed at all, and skipping it saves the client money.

The trap with letterhead is that it is a container, not a poster. Someone will type a two-page invoice into it. So:

Top zone:     logo + business name, 25-35mm deep
Text area:    left/right margins 20-25mm, clear of all graphics
Bottom zone:  contact strip - address, phones, email, RC number
              15-20mm deep

Leave the middle empty. A watermark logo behind the text is acceptable only at about 5–8% tint — anything darker makes a photocopied letter unreadable, and Nigerian letters get photocopied a lot.

Include the RC number if the business is a registered company, or the BN number if it is a registered business name. It signals legitimacy on a quotation or an invoice and clients notice when it is missing. Ask for it.

Also build a second version with no colour bleed and light ink coverage — the version the client's secretary prints on the office LaserJet at 3am. A letterhead with a full-colour band across the top is beautiful at the printer and a nightmare on an office printer that runs out of cyan.

CMYK, and the black problem

Screens are RGB, ink is CMYK. That bright electric blue on your monitor does not exist in ink; it will print duller. Figma can't turn a file into CMYK, and Canva's editor works in HEX, so you can't see the ink colour while you design. What you can do is plan for it while you design: keep glowing colours out of print work, write the CMYK values beside every colour, and print a test page early — so the client never falls in love with a colour that cannot be printed.

Black has its own rule:

• Small text and thin lines: pure black only — C0 M0 Y0 K100. Anything else and the four plates misalign slightly, giving you fuzzy, coloured-edged text.
• Large black areas: rich black — C40 M30 Y30 K100 — otherwise a big black rectangle prints as washed-out charcoal.

And check every image you place. A logo you pulled off the client's Instagram at 500px wide has only about 150 pixels per inch across a business card — half of what print needs. It prints like a stall banner in Yaba. Use your vector logo file.

Handing over to the printer

Here is the part nobody teaches. Walk into a print shop in Computer Village, Shomolu or Ogba and the operator will say "send am for Corel." CorelDRAW is the standard on the Nigerian print floor, not Illustrator, not Figma.

You have two safe options:

1. Print-ready PDF — 3mm bleed, crop marks on, all fonts converted to outlines/curves. Every printer can open a PDF, so it is the safer choice. Canva's PDF Print download adds the bleed and crop marks for you. Figma's PDF export has neither and is RGB only, so from Figma, extend the background 3mm past the card on every side and write the finished size and the bleed in your message to the printer. If the printer needs CMYK, ask the printer to convert it and show you a proof before they run the job — or, if you are on a paid Canva plan, download a CMYK PDF from Canva.
2. If the printer insists on Corel — you can't save a .cdr from Figma or Canva. Send the PDF, or an SVG if they want to edit it, and ask them to open it in CorelDRAW in front of you before you leave.

Converting text to curves matters more than anything else on this list. If you send live text and the printer does not have Montserrat installed, Corel silently swaps it for Arial and the client's brand typography evaporates. In Figma there is nothing to do: its PDF and SVG exports turn text into shapes, and your Figma file stays editable. In Illustrator: select all, Type > Create Outlines. In Corel: Ctrl+Q. Keep an editable copy for yourself before you do this — outlined text cannot be re-edited.

Name files so a busy operator cannot mix them up:

adaeze-fabrics_business-card-front-85x55-bleed3mm_v01.pdf
adaeze-fabrics_business-card-back-85x55-bleed3mm_v01.pdf
adaeze-fabrics_letterhead-a4_v01.pdf

A fuller asset export kit — PNG, SVG, PDF for web, social and print — comes in the last lesson of this module. For now, just these print files.

Talk paper, because the client will ask

You do not have to be a print expert, but knowing the vocabulary makes you sound like a professional:

• 300gsm / 350gsm art card — the standard business card stock. 350 feels noticeably more premium.
• Matte lamination — soft, no glare, does not show fingerprints. Safe default.
• Gloss lamination — shiny, cheaper, looks louder.
• Spot UV — glossy varnish on one element only (usually the logo) over a matte card. Costs extra and needs a separate black-and-white file marking where the varnish goes.
• Letterhead paper — 80gsm or 100gsm bond. Do not laminate letterhead; people write on it.

Preflight checklist

Run this before every handover:

• Correct trim size, 3mm bleed on all four sides
• Nothing important within 3mm of the trim
• Final print file is CMYK — converted by the printer and checked on a proof, or downloaded as CMYK from a paid Canva plan
• Small text is K100 only, not rich black
• All images 300dpi at final size
• All fonts outlined / converted to curves
• Phone numbers proofread digit by digit, out loud
• Client has approved a PDF proof in writing

That last one saves careers. Get approval on the exact file you are sending, by WhatsApp message if nothing else, before it goes to press. Reprinting 1,000 cards because a digit was wrong is a cost someone has to eat.

Common mistakes

The short version

• Blaming the printer is easy; most print disasters are set up in the file.
• Three lines matter on every print file: bleed, trim, safe zone.
• Keep important content inside the safe zone — cutting is never perfectly accurate.
• CMYK, not RGB, and small text in K100 rather than rich black.
• Outline the fonts or the printer may substitute them.
• Run a preflight checklist and ask for a proof before the full run.

Try it yourself

Take one of the brands you have built in this course and produce a two-sided business card and an A4 letterhead to the specs above.

Then do the physical test, which is the only test that matters: print the card page at 100% scale — no "fit to page" — on plain A4 at home or a business centre, cut it out at the trim line, and hold it. Is the phone number readable at arm's length? Does the logo look cramped? Does it feel like a card someone would keep in a wallet, or one they would drop in the danfo?

Finally, go and get a real quote. Message or visit a printer near you and ask for the price of 1,000 cards on 350gsm matte-laminated, and 500 A4 letterheads. Note what they ask you for and what file format they want. You will use those two numbers when you price branding packages later in the course.

You'll know you've got it when you can hand a printer a file and answer every question they ask about it without opening Figma.