Gift message card sizes, and how to design one you can print

Common gift message card sizes

There’s no standard size. These four are common, and the drawing at the top of this page shows them to the same scale.

A6 and 4 × 6 in look alike, but they aren’t the same: A6 is about 3 mm wider and 4 mm shorter. Design for the card stock you buy, and check its size on the pack.

Noteable comes with a sample gift note in both A6 and 4 × 6 in, with To, Message and From already placed, if you’d like a card to start from.

How much of a message fits

That depends on the card, the font and its size. Noteable’s sample gift notes are a starting point: on an A6 or 4 × 6 in card, the message gets six lines of Caveat, a handwriting font, at 19 pt. Its character limit is 160, about 25 to 30 words, and the To and From names get 24 each.

A7 is half of A6, so at the same font size it holds about half as much: around 80 characters. A business card has room for a line or two.

1. Try the longest message you’ll accept. Preview the card with test values in Noteable, or type the message into your design app, and see where it stops fitting.
2. Make that the field’s character limit. Shoppers see a count as they type. Noteable trims a message that’s longer than its box, so a limit that matches the box keeps every word on the card.
3. Tell shoppers where it goes. Help text under the field, such as “Printed on a card in the box”, tells shoppers what they’re writing for.

Lay out the card

• Keep the words away from the edges. Many home printers can’t print right to the edge of the paper, and a card cut by hand is rarely exact. Noteable’s samples keep the text 14 mm, about half an inch, from the sides.
• Give each entry its own space. The recipient’s name at the top, the message in the middle, the sender at the bottom. A greeting can be part of your design, or printed around an entry, so “Emma” prints as “Happy birthday, Emma!”.
• Choose fonts that stay readable. A handwriting font suits the message, as long as it’s large enough to read: small script is hard work. A plain or serif font suits names. The samples use Caveat at 19 pt for the message and Playfair Display italic at 14 pt for the names, from the 27 font families Noteable offers.
• Make the message’s space several lines tall. Long messages wrap onto several lines and keep the shopper’s line breaks.

Make the PDF at the card’s real size

Set the page to the card’s size before you design, not A4 or Letter. The PDF’s page is then the card, and it prints at its real size.

1. Start a design at the card’s size. In Canva, choose Custom size, set the units to mm or in, and enter the card’s width and height. In Word or another app, set the page size the same way.
2. Download it as a PDF. In Canva, choose Share, then Download, and pick the PDF file type for print. Leave crop marks and bleed off: they’re off unless you turn them on, and they make the PDF bigger than the card.
3. Check the size. Open the PDF and look at its page size in the viewer’s document properties. It should match the card exactly.

Noteable takes the PDF as it is, up to 10 MB, and prints each card as a page the same size as yours.

Print at actual size

• Choose 100% or Actual size in the print dialog, not “Fit to page”, so the card isn’t shrunk or enlarged.
• Use card stock your printer can feed. Its specifications list the heaviest paper it takes, usually in g/m².
• Print a test on plain paper first. Hold it against your card stock to check where the words land.

With Noteable, open an order and choose More actions › Noteable to download its cards, or select orders on the Orders page and choose Print › Noteables to print a batch together. For the whole set-up, read How to print gift messages from Shopify orders.

Questions