Designing Hot Foil Cards in Canva

How a hot foil card is different

A full colour card is printed in CMYK, so it can carry photographs, gradients and any colour you like. A hot foil card is printed one colour at a time: a heated metal plate presses a thin layer of foil onto the card in the shape of your design. Each colour on each side needs its own plate, which is why a hot foil design has to be made of solid, flat colour (how hot foil printing works).

That’s the main thing to remember in Canva. It shows foil as a flat colour, so you’re designing where each ink goes, not how the shine will look. Hot foil suits logos and clean type rather than photographs, and a bold, simple design looks better in foil than a busy one.

The four hot foil cards

All four are 86 x 54mm, the size and thickness of a bank card, and all four choose from the same 42 ink colours: metallics, pigment colours and holoprint, an ink that shows a shifting rainbow as the card moves. What changes is the card underneath, and so how the colours look.

See every colour photographed on each card on our ink and foil colours page. A light ink stands out on a dark card and fades on a light one, and the same ink can look different from one card to another, so pick your colours with the card in mind.

What a hot foil design can and can’t have

Hot foil prints solid, flat colour with hard edges. Anything that fades, blends or shows through can’t be stamped. Here’s a card designed for a screen, and the same card redrawn so it can be foiled.

1. A gradient background. On a hot foil card the background is the card itself. Pick the card colour instead.
2. A photograph. Foil can’t print a photo. Use simple line art, or choose a full colour card.
3. A shadow and a glow. Soft edges can’t be stamped. Take them off text and shapes.
4. A see-through band. A faded or see-through colour is a tint, which foil can’t print. Every colour has to be at full strength.

Marrowby Cellars is made up for this page. Some real logos need simplifying before they can be foiled. If yours does, our design service can redraw it as line art for £29 +vat. Our hot foil limitations page has more on what foil can’t do.

Setting up a hot foil card in Canva

Most of our Canva guide applies, with three differences: no bleed, a 3mm band along each long edge that can’t be printed, and flat colours only.

1. Create a custom size of 86 x 54mm, with the units set to mm. For a portrait card, 54 x 86mm. Our hot foil artwork guides give the artwork size as the card itself, 86 x 54mm.
2. Leave Canva’s print bleed off. Hot foil cards aren’t cut out after printing, and nothing on them runs to the edge, so there’s no bleed to add.
3. Colour the page background like the card, so you can judge your colours against it: black for satin black, white for white, a flat gold or silver for metallic, a pale grey for frosted. Say in your email that the background is the card, not an ink.
4. Add guides 3mm in from each edge. Press Shift and R to show Canva’s rulers, which measure in mm on a design made in mm, and drag a guide in from each ruler (Canva’s help on guides). Rulers only work on a computer, not in the phone app.
5. Give each ink its own flat colour, as the next section shows.
6. Type wording in Canva’s text boxes, and upload your logo as an SVG if you have one. Canva accepts SVG files under 3MB (Canva’s upload formats), and line art in SVG stays crisp at any size.
7. Printing both sides? Put the back on page 2. On a frosted card, put any clear ink design on its own page and mark it as clear ink.

One flat colour for each ink

You won’t find our ink colours in Canva. Instead, pick a stand-in colour for each ink and use that same colour everywhere the ink goes. Select an element, open its colour, and enter a hex code: Canva works in hex codes (Canva’s help on colours), and here the hex code simply tells us where each ink goes.

1. Burgundy, #7A1F3D in Canva: print in Wine Velvet (Burgundy).
2. Gold, #B8963E in Canva: print in Metallic Gold.

• Up to 4 colours. Clear ink counts as a colour, so holoprint, black and clear ink is a 3 colour print.
• The same hex code every time. Copy it from one element to the next, or use Canva’s eyedropper, so two shades of “gold” don’t turn into two inks.
• No gradients. Canva’s colour panel offers gradients: leave them alone for foil.
• List the inks in your email, for example: “#7A1F3D is Wine Velvet (Burgundy) and #B8963E is Metallic Gold.” The ink names are on our ink and foil colours page.

There’s no Pantone matching with hot foil, so choose the nearest ink to your brand colour. If you need to see an ink first, we can supply a pack of colour swatches: email sales@cpcards.co.uk to ask the price.

Keep clear of the two long edges

Hot foil can’t print within 3mm of the card’s two long edges: the top and bottom of a landscape card, or the left and right of a portrait one. That leaves a printable area of 86 x 48mm.

1. Won’t print. A band 3mm deep along each long edge, whichever way up the card is.
2. The printable area, 86 x 48mm.
3. Keep wording and logos 3mm in from the short edges too.

So a border or a band of colour can’t run to the edge of a hot foil card. Frame your design inside the printable area instead, or let the card’s own colour do the work.

Text, lines and solid areas

Foil needs bigger, bolder detail than full colour printing. These limits come from our hot foil artwork guides:

To check sizes, print page 1 on paper at 100% scale, not “fit to page”, and compare the smallest words with the samples in our font size guide. Our black plastic card and clear business card guides show designs that are too fine for foil beside the same designs made bold.

Barcodes, QR codes and numbers

A barcode or QR code can go on a metallic or white card if it’s the same on every card, because then it’s simply part of your artwork. White cards can also have sequential numbering and signature strips. For a satin black or frosted card, email sales@cpcards.co.uk to ask first.

If every card needs its own barcode, QR code or name, a full colour card is the usual answer: design one card and send the details in a spreadsheet, as our guide to names, numbers and barcodes on Canva cards explains. Scan any code from your screen before you send the file, because we can’t test it for you.

Downloading and sending your design

1. Select Share, then Download, and choose PDF Print (Canva’s download file types).
2. Download all pages, so the front, any back and any clear ink page arrive in one PDF.
3. Don’t worry about the colour profile. We print the inks you name, not the colours in the file.
4. Email the PDF to sales@cpcards.co.uk with the card (metallic gold or silver, satin black, white or frosted), the quantity, one side or two, and which colour is which ink.

We check every design is suitable for hot foil before anything is printed, free of charge. If something won’t foil cleanly, such as a gradient, hairline detail or wording too close to the long edges, we tell you and suggest a fix. Changes you make yourself cost nothing; a technical fix to your file is £10 +vat, and redrawing a logo or a design as line art is our £29 +vat design service. Our Canva artwork checklist covers the rest of the checks before you send.

Proofs and colours

Every order gets a free email proof before the full run is printed, so you can check the layout and wording. The colours on the proof are a guide only, and the same foil can look different on a frosted, white, satin black or metallic card. If in doubt, email sales@cpcards.co.uk to ask about a sample colour being posted to you for approval.

Our printed postal proofs are for full colour cards only. Read every word and number on your email proof yourself before you approve it, because our check is a technical one: it doesn’t cover spelling or details.