We proof every card before it prints, which means we see the same handful of mistakes over and over. None of them are exotic. All of them cost responses.

1. The offer is not the biggest thing on the card

A recipient gives a postcard about two seconds on the walk back from the mailbox. If the largest element is your logo rather than the reason to act, those two seconds are spent learning your name and nothing else.

Put the offer at the top of the visual hierarchy and the logo underneath it. Brand recognition is a by-product of the offer being read, not a substitute for it.

2. Type running into the clear zone

Every mailed card has areas the artwork must stay out of: the address panel, the barcode zone and the indicia corner. Type that drifts into them either gets covered or gets the piece rejected. We move it and flag it on the proof, but design it right and the card gets more usable space.

3. Critical elements too close to the trim

Cards are cut in stacks and the blade wanders slightly. Anything closer than an eighth of an inch to the edge risks being trimmed off on some portion of the run — and the elements people push to the edge are usually phone numbers and expiry dates.

4. Low-resolution artwork scaled up

A logo pulled from a website is typically 72 dots per inch. Printed at that resolution it is visibly soft, and softness reads as cheap even to people who could not tell you why. Send whatever you have and we will redraw it as vector at no charge.

5. Gloss on a panel meant for a pen

Appointment cards, reply cards and anything a front desk writes on must be uncoated or matte. Gloss looks sharper in a mockup and smears in the real world.

6. No reason to keep it

The cards that survive a week on a counter have something the recipient wants later: a coupon with a date, a fridge magnet panel, a map, a reference chart, an appointment field. A card with only an advertisement on it has a lifespan measured in seconds.

7. One drop and then silence

The most expensive mistake is not a design mistake at all. A single mailing lands on the small fraction of the route that happens to be in the market that week. Plan three drops before you judge the result, and keep everything but one variable the same between them.