Design a double-sided business card

A business card is really two designs in one file: a front and a back. In Popcorn Editor you build each side on its own canvas, keep them together in a single document, and export both as one print-ready PDF the printer can drop straight onto a press.

This guide walks the whole job — size, bleed, CMYK, both sides, and export — so the file your print service receives needs no corrections.

Why a card is two designs#

Think of the front and back as two pages that happen to share a size and a brand. Rather than juggle two files, you keep them as two canvases in one document. That way they stay in sync, share the same swatches and blocks, and export together in the right order — front, then back — as a single file.

Pick a size#

Business cards have a couple of standard trims. Enter yours as a custom print canvas:

When you create a New design, use the Print preset category or type a custom size. Units are set per document — right-click the ruler to switch between millimeters and inches (there's no separate menu for it). Pick whichever your printer quotes in, and enter the trim exactly; bleed comes next and sits outside this number.

Set up the front#

With the first canvas at the right size, set it up for print before you place anything on it:

1. Under View → Color mode, switch to CMYK (print). Cards are printed with ink, and CMYK soft-proofs your colors on screen so what you see is close to what the press produces — no surprise shifts later.
2. Open File → Document setup… and add a 3 mm bleed. Then turn on View → Show bleed so the bleed guide is visible.
3. Keep important content — text, your logo, anything you can't afford to lose — about 4 mm inside the trim. That's your safe area; it protects against the small drift every guillotine has.

Bleed and safe margins are the single most common reason a card comes back wrong. If you're fuzzy on them, read Bleed and safe margins first — it's a five-minute foundation for every print job.

Run any background color or photo all the way out to the red bleed guide. Anything that stops at the trim risks a thin white sliver after cutting.

Design the front#

The front is usually the quiet side: logo, name, role. Keep it clean.

• Press T and type the name. Style it in the Properties panel — font, size, weight, tracking — and keep it inside the safe area.
• Add your logo with the quick-add image button, then use the image fit controls to Fill or Fit the frame. In a CMYK document the editor flags any image whose effective resolution drops below 300 PPI with a warning, so you know it'll print sharp.
• Give your brand colors real names in Swatches so the exact same values carry to the back and to future cards.
• Want rounded corners on a background shape? Select it and set the corner radius in Properties.

Add the back canvas#

Now the second side. Use Add canvas (the quick-add canvas button, or Object → Add canvas) to create a new page at the same size. This is where the working details go:

• Contact details — phone, email, website, address.
• A QR code linking to your site or a vCard. Add one with the quick-add barcode or QR code button; a QR is the easiest way to make a card actionable. See Scannable QR and barcodes for keeping it crisp and readable.
• A tagline or a repeated logo to tie the two sides together.

Set the back up the same way as the front — it inherits the document's CMYK mode and bleed, so you only need to mind the safe area again.

Keep both sides consistent#

A card looks amateurish the moment the logo is a hair bigger on one side, or the accent color is subtly off. Two tools keep the sides locked together:

• Blocks — design a logo lockup or footer once, turn it into a Block, and drop the same instance on both canvases. Edit the main block and every copy updates. This is the reliable way to reuse one element across sides. See Blocks.
• Brand kit — pin a brand kit and both the canvas and the Assistant stay on your real colors and fonts automatically.

Export both sides in one PDF#

This is the payoff — one file, both sides, ready to send.

1. Click Share → Download (or File → Download) to open the Export dialog and choose PDF.
2. Set the Color space to Print (CMYK).
3. With both canvases selected, the Multiple canvases toggle appears. Choose:
   • Single PDF (pages) — one side per page, front then back, in one file. This is what most printers want for a double-sided card.
   • Separate files (ZIP) — front and back as two files, if your printer asks for them split.
4. Turn on Bleed (3 mm) and Crop & registration marks so the printer can align and trim both sides.
5. Choose the PDF/X-4 standard and an output profile that matches your print service (ask them which — for example Coated FOGRA39 or US Web Coated (SWOP) v2).

Export runs entirely in your browser, so nothing is uploaded to a server to be processed. Before it writes the file, the print checks flag anything risky — low-resolution images, missing bleed — so you fix it here rather than on the proof. For the full run-through of the dialog, see Exporting multiple canvases.

Optional: print many at once#

Ordering a stack of cards? Use Step & repeat (imposition) in the export flow to gang your card across a production sheet, with the gutter and margins your printer specifies. You design one card; the imposition fills the sheet.

That's a double-sided card that looks intentional and prints clean: correct trim, 3 mm bleed, safe margins, CMYK, and both sides in one PDF/X-4 file. To go deeper on the two canvases behind it, see Multiple canvases, or lock down the print rules with Bleed and safe margins.