Anatomy of a Postcard That Gets Read

This blog has spent a lot of words on what to write to a voter and almost none on the object that carries it. This is the first of four posts on the physical postcard, written for the program lead ordering stock in July and getting volunteers ready to write in September. This week covers how a card is laid out and how much fits on it. Next week is pens, ink, and legibility. The week after is card stock, printing, and what a postcard actually costs. The last post is timing: when to mail so the card lands when it should.

Start with the mailbox. Someone pulls out a stack, walks to the kitchen, and sorts it over the recycling bin. Our rule of thumb is that your card gets about three seconds in that sort. It does not get read in those seconds. It gets classified as mail from a person or mail from a machine, and the machine pile goes in the bin unread. Everything about the card’s design should serve that one decision.

The front matters less than you think

Most programs spend their design energy on the printed front: the photo, the slogan, the logo. A glossy front with a stock photo and a tagline is exactly what a machine-mailed card looks like, and the voter has seen a thousand of them.

The side that wins the three seconds is the message side, and it wins because it is obviously handwritten. Real ink, uneven lines, a name at the bottom. Nothing printed can fake that.

So order the front in whatever you like, but keep it simple and keep the message side plain. A clean front with a short line of text and a small logo works. A plain card with no printed front at all also works, and it costs less. What you should not do is print a message on the back and leave a small box for a volunteer to sign. The voter sees the print first and sorts the card as machine mail before they ever reach the signature.

The layout of the message side

Here is the layout we recommend for a standard 4x6 card. Print it on the back as a template, or hand it to volunteers as a sketch. Hold the card horizontally. A vertical line down the middle, slightly right of center, divides it into two zones.

The left zone is the message. It runs from the top edge to roughly five-eighths of an inch above the bottom. Volunteers write here and nowhere else.

The right zone is the address block. The voter’s name and address go in the middle of that zone, with the lines stacked and left-aligned. The stamp goes in the top right corner.

The bottom strip, the last five-eighths of an inch across the whole width of the card, stays empty. USPS sorting equipment prints a barcode there, and anything you write in that strip can confuse the scanner and slow the card down. The USPS Domestic Mail Manual defines the clear zone as the bottom five-eighths of an inch across the rightmost four and three-quarter inches, which on a 6-inch card is nearly the full width. Keep the whole strip clear; it is simpler than explaining the exception. Draw a faint line there if your volunteers keep drifting into it.

That is the whole layout. Message left, address right, stamp top right, bottom strip clear.

How many words fit

A 4x6 card has roughly a 3x4 inch message zone once you respect the margins and the clear zone. In ordinary handwriting at a size the voter can read, that holds 40 to 60 words. Not 100.

If your script is longer than 60 words, cut it before the writing party, not during. A volunteer who runs out of room will shrink their letters, crowd the lines, and spill into the address zone. Every one of those fixes makes the card harder to read, and a card the voter cannot read is worse than no card. We covered the writing side of this in the primary postcard post: the date and the method in the first sentence, one line of stakes, a sign-off with location. That is a 45-word card.

Leave white space on purpose. A card that is half empty reads as calm and personal. A card packed edge to edge reads as a flyer.

4x6 or 5x7

A 5x7 card looks nicer and holds more. It also costs more to mail, and that is the deciding fact.

The USPS postcard price applies only to cards no larger than 4.25 by 6 inches (and no thicker than 0.016 inch), per the Domestic Mail Manual. Anything bigger is charged as a letter. As of July 12, 2026, that is the difference between a 65-cent postcard stamp and an 82-cent letter stamp, or 17 cents a card. On 5,000 cards that is $850 you spent on the bigger card and nothing else. Check USPS’s current prices before you order, because they change.

Stick with 4x6. The extra room on a 5x7 mostly gets filled with words the voter will not read.

What to do this week

Decide whether you are printing a front or going blank. Sketch the layout above on one 4x6 card and write your current script on it in your own handwriting. If it does not fit with white space to spare, the script is too long. Fix it now, before you print 5,000 cards.

Next week: which pens smear, which hold up, and how to set a legibility standard without policing anyone’s handwriting.