CleanMyBed Card artwork and print

Design your card, leave one square blank, and we do the rest

There is no way to get this wrong. We check every file before it goes anywhere near a printer, so if something needs fixing we catch it before it costs you anything.

Design › Leave the square › Send it › We add the code › Print ready

Doing this yourself, or handing it to a designer? Either way works. If someone else is putting your card together, a designer, a friend or a print shop, just forward them this page. Everything they need to build it right is here.

Design the card as you normally would, leave a plain white square where the code belongs, and send it to us. We drop the real code into that square and hand the file straight back, print ready. Nothing else on your artwork is touched, and none of it is ever redrawn.

Three things to get right. None of them are hard.

Part 1

Building the card

Size, safe margins, and the empty square.

Part 2

Sending it to us

How to export it, and one file per design.

Part 3

What happens next

How the code is added and proved.

Before anything else

Send one card first, not the whole set

Build a single card exactly as below and send it over. We will check it opens correctly and that the code lands where it should, then you can run the rest of your designs through the same recipe, knowing it works. One card checked beats seven redone.

Part 1 · Building the card

Start a custom size, not the business card preset

Create a design → Custom size → mm

Enter 88.9 wide by 50.8 high, in millimetres.

Canva's own business card preset is a different shape and would come back trimmed wrong, so this has to be typed in by hand.

Keep the important things away from the edge

Backgrounds and colour blocks should run right off the edge of the page. Type, logos and anything that must not be cut should stay at least 4mm inside the edge, because the guillotine at the printer moves about a hair either way on every card in the stack.

Add the code box: one white square, 18mm, nothing in it

Select the square → Position → Size → 18 × 18

Draw a plain white square and set it to exactly 18 by 18mm. Put it in one of the four corners, 4mm in from the edge of the card.

  • Leave it completely empty: no placeholder QR, no logo in the middle, no type running over it. The code fills the square, so anything inside is covered up.
  • Keep it white. The code needs a clear white surround to be readable, even where the card behind it is violet.
One thing we need from you Which corner you used. That is it. We set the code against that card once, and every reprint lands in the same place.
bottom left bottom right top left top right
bleed bottom right top left top right 18 mm 4 mm 88.9 mm 50.8 mm

Above Drawn to scale. Bottom left shown filled, the other three shown faintly. The 4mm is measured from the edge of the card, not from the outside of the bleed.

Why 18mm?

Any smaller and the printed code gets too fine to scan reliably, in low light, at arm's length, on a card that has been in someone's wallet a while. 18mm is the smallest size that always works, first time.

Switching from an older card? If your current square is 10.2mm, treat the new one as a fresh design rather than a quick resize. The caption next to it will usually need to move too.

Part 2 · Sending it to us

Front on page one, back on page two

One design per file. Only the front is stamped, and the back comes back untouched in the same PDF.

Export it with these five settings

Share → Download

SettingChoose
File typePDF Print
Crop marks and bleedTicked
Flatten PDFNot ticked
Colour profileCMYK
PagesAll pages, front first
No CMYK option on your Canva plan? Just let us know before you send it. We would rather sort it together than have the colour land differently to what you expected on screen.

Send one PDF per design, named after the design

Separate files, not one document with every card in it. Each file is attached to one card and one code, so keeping them apart is what keeps each card paired with its own code.

Before you send it

  • Page is 88.9 by 50.8mm, typed in as a custom size
  • White square is 18 by 18mm, in a corner, 4mm from the edge, completely empty
  • Front is page one
  • Exported as PDF Print, crop marks and bleed ticked, Flatten PDF left unticked, CMYK
  • One file per design, named after the design
  • You have told us which corner

Part 3 · What happens next

Your file gets tied to its own code, permanently

It is attached to its own campaign, so that design and that code become one record and stay that way.

We check the code opens the right page

The code is checked against the live site before anything is printed, so the one about to go on a card is known to open the right page.

The finished card comes back print ready

It is shown on screen, then downloaded for the printer. The code is drawn as vector squares in single-plate black, so it stays sharp, rather than placed as a picture, which prints soft at this size.

One thing worth knowing Every CleanMyBed code is ours, not a third party link shortener, so it can always be repointed if something changes, and it never goes dead because a subscription lapsed somewhere else.
If your artwork changes later Just send the whole card again. The code is placed by the square, so a new design needs a new file rather than a note about where it moved.