transparent
card option – material
card
option

Transparent plastic cards
Transparent plastic cards are printed on durable transparent PVC, which has the same durability as white or colored materials. These cards can be designed to be fully or partially transparent, offering the opportunity to create captivating visual effects.

Transparent material
White PVC sheets are usually used to print plastic cards. However, there are now also other substrate options for card production. It may be material dyed in the mass, or on the contrary – transparent material.
Transparent PVC is most often used to print transparent business cards, which then look exceptionally impressive. Such transparent card or business card may contain any additional elements that are used in standard cards: e.g. varnishes with glitter particles., hologram or selective varnish.
The transparent material can also be glossy or matte laminated. With rugged matte
lamination, we can also obtain the ‘frozen’ surface effect, which looks particularly eye-catching on transparent cards.

Transparent cards – technical aspects of printing
Please remember that offset printing uses a palette consisting of four colors: blue, pink, yellow, and black (CMYK, for short). It is impossible to obtain white from these colors. Additionally, the paints are not 100% opaque, so they are slightly transparent themselves. So if there are white elements in the design, they will take on the color of the plastic backing. A way to obtain whiteness and, thus, a greater degree of opacity is to apply white paint to transparent plastic using a screen printing machine.
This, of course, requires that both printing techniques be compatible with each other, so you must take into account the appropriate preparation of files for printing.
The photo below illustrates how to prepare the files to obtain a transparent card with a white color. The main design is made with offset printing (CMYK), the white background is prepared with screen printing, and the whole thing is covered with a matte laminate.
For such a card, you need two files: a separate one for the offset and a separate one for the white screen printing ink.

More information on how to prepare designs for card printing can be found in our guide:
