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350gsm is the standard, and 400–600gsm reads as premium.

Weight is the first thing a recipient registers, because a business card is held between finger and thumb where thickness is unusually easy to feel. Below 300gsm a card feels flimsy and bends in a wallet. The premium tier goes further with duplexed cards, two sheets bonded together and sometimes with a coloured core showing at the edge, reaching 600gsm and beyond, where the card becomes an object rather than a piece of paper.

Digital has no printing plates, so short runs and variable data cost nothing extra. Offset uses plates, so setup is expensive but the per-unit cost at volume is far lower.

The crossover point is usually somewhere between 500 and 2,000 units depending on the piece, the colour count and how many versions you need. Versioning shifts it substantially: a job with twelve variants pays twelve plate setups on offset but nothing extra on digital. Ask for both numbers rather than accepting a supplier's default press.

Tri-fold, gate fold, Z-fold and roll fold are the four most common.

Tri-fold folds into three panels with a cover, a reveal and a full spread inside. Z-fold concertinas so both sides are usable as continuous surfaces. Gate fold has two flaps opening from the centre like doors. Roll fold tucks panels inside each other, which means the inner panels have to be cut progressively narrower. That detail catches designers out, because equal-width panels will not fold flat.

Bleed is extra artwork extending beyond the trim line, usually 3mm or 0.125 inches, so that colour reaches the edge after cutting.

Cutting has a small mechanical tolerance, and without bleed even a fraction of a millimetre of drift leaves a white sliver along the edge. The companion rule is the safe zone: keep text and important elements at least 3–5mm inside the trim line, because the same tolerance can cut into content that sits too close to the edge.

Saddle stitching staples through the spine fold and works up to roughly 64–80 pages. Perfect binding glues a flat spine and suits thicker documents.

Saddle-stitched page counts must be multiples of four, because each folded sheet produces four pages. Beyond about 80 pages the fold becomes bulky and the inner pages creep outward, requiring shingling compensation. Perfect binding has no page-count multiple requirement, gives a printable flat spine, and is the standard for catalogues, annual reports and anything over about 60 pages.

CMYK is the four-ink process printing uses. Screens display in RGB, which can produce colours that CMYK physically cannot reproduce.

Bright saturated blues, vivid oranges and neon greens are the usual casualties. They exist as light on a screen and cannot be built as ink on paper. For brand colours that must match exactly, specify a Pantone spot colour, which is a pre-mixed ink rather than a four-colour build. Asking for a printed proof rather than approving from a screen is the reliable way to avoid surprises.

It varies widely by product. Business cards start in the dozens, while catalogues and folded work typically start around 500.

The difference is setup. A digitally printed business card has almost none, so a run of 50 is viable. A folded brochure needs a cutting and creasing die plus folding setup, which pushes the sensible minimum higher. Across most corporate print, lead time runs 7 to 10 business days.

Gloss for photographic reproduction, matte for readability, uncoated for a tactile and writable surface.

Gloss coating holds ink on the surface, producing the sharpest images and deepest blacks, but it reflects and can be hard to read under bright light. Matte scatters light, which makes body text more comfortable to read. Uncoated absorbs ink, so images look softer and colours slightly muted, but it takes a pen and has a warmth that coated stocks cannot match, which is why letterheads and stationery favour it.