Foil Postcard File Setup: Gilding Zones and the Two-Surface Split
Foil Postcard File Setup: Gilding Zones and the Two-Surface Split
How to place foil intentionally across front and back before your 12-day run starts.
TL;DR
A foil postcard from Popecho is a 100 × 148 mm, 400gsm coated card with hot-foil stamping applied on top of the printed base — meaning your artwork and your foil zones are two separate design decisions. The most important call you make is which areas receive foil and how the front and back surfaces divide that work. Open the product in Popecho's editor, set your gilding layer on the front surface, keep the back clean for text or QR copy, and lock your foil colour before you submit — it cannot change per SKU mid-run.
What This Subtype Actually Demands
A foil postcard is not simply a printed postcard with a shiny finish applied to the whole face. Hot-foil stamping is a separate physical process that runs after printing: a heated die presses metallic or holographic film onto specific zones of the coated surface. That layered reality means your design file carries two distinct jobs — the full-colour base image underneath, and a defined foil area sitting on top.
The seven foil options (polka-dot gold, polka-dot silver, holographic gold, holographic silver, blue, pink, purple) are not interchangeable at print time. Each is a locked SKU variant, so the finish decision shapes your palette, your packaging notes, and your batch quantity before a single pixel moves. At 400gsm, the card stock is rigid and press-ready, but that glossy coated face is not friendly to ballpoint pen — worth flagging if you are planning any fill-in or sign-on-arrival postcard use.
Setting Up the Artwork
The finished trim is 100 × 148 mm. Your canvas should be 106 × 154 mm — that is 3 mm of bleed added to all four sides. When you open the product in Popecho's editor, the bleed boundary and the safe-zone overlay are already loaded for this format; you do not need to calculate or import them manually.
Because this product has a double-view setup in the editor, you work across two surfaces simultaneously. The front surface carries the gilding layer — this is where Popecho's editor exposes the foil overlay so you can position your foil zones directly on the canvas. Treat that overlay as a mask: the areas you mark will receive the foil die, and the rest will be standard print. The back surface has no gilding layer, making it the natural home for postcard utility copy — address field, message area, social handle, QR code, or ISBN. Keep text and key art at least 3 mm inside the finished cut line on both surfaces.
Export at 300 DPI minimum in CMYK. Popecho accepts PNG, JPG, or PDF.
Surface and Production Decisions
Gilding placement is the lever that changes the final result most. Holographic foils (gold and silver) produce a rainbow-shifting sheen under light — any printed artwork placed beneath those zones will be obscured. Design around this: use holographic areas for decorative framing, large type, or background fields rather than detailed illustration you want readable.
Polka-dot foil variants apply a dotted-texture pattern rather than solid metallic coverage. If your design expects a continuous reflective fill, polka-dot gold or silver will read differently — closer to a halftone shimmer than a mirror surface. This is not a defect; it is the correct output of that foil type. Design with the dot pattern as a texture element rather than a substitute for solid foil.
Fine linework below approximately 0.5 pt may not transfer cleanly through the foil die. Keep foil areas bold and well-defined — thick letterforms, geometric shapes, and wide border strokes hold better than hairlines or delicate crosshatching. The 400gsm coated stock provides strong adhesion for the foil layer, so colour vibrancy on the printed base is high; prepare your base art in CMYK to avoid hue shifts from any RGB conversion.
Popecho's production lead time for this product is 12 days.
What Trips Creators Up
Treating polka-dot foil like solid metallic coverage. The dotted pattern is the product — not a print error. Review the foil variant name before ordering and factor the texture into your layout rather than expecting a mirror finish.
Placing readable detail inside holographic foil zones. Holographic film obscures whatever is printed beneath it. If your character's face or key text lands under a holographic overlay, it disappears. Map foil zones around your focal content, not across it.
Forgetting the foil colour is locked per SKU. Each foil variant is a separate order. If you want the same design in holographic gold and in pink, those are two orders. Plan your foil selection before you scale up quantity.
Leaving the back surface as an afterthought. The back has no foil layer, but it is half the card. A blank or placeholder back misses the postcard's utility as a mailable reward insert or Kickstarter add-on. Design both surfaces in Popecho's editor before you submit.