Designing a Business CardWhat to include| 00:00 | Gone are the days when you can just
put your name and a phone number on the
| | 00:03 | business card. There are so many ways
of reaching us these days that we have
| | 00:07 | loads and loads of information to
include on our business card and we need to
| | 00:11 | decide which pieces of
information to actually put on the card.
| | 00:15 | Obviously we want the company name and
logo, the company tagline that explains
| | 00:20 | what the business is, your name obviously.
Address, now here is one where maybe
| | 00:27 | we don't want the address. But ask
yourself this. Does not including your
| | 00:31 | address make you seem unreliable or
perhaps a little bit flighty? Phone number,
| | 00:38 | we want to include the phone number,
obviously. Mobile phone, almost certainly.
| | 00:42 | Maybe there is only one phone,
maybe someone has only a mobile phone.
| | 00:47 | In the UK, you can tell whether a
phone is a mobile phone by it's first five
| | 00:52 | digits. That's not the case in the US.
Does having just a mobile phone, if
| | 00:56 | that's what you decide, does it make
you seem like you are a bit fly-by-night?
| | 01:00 | Fax. If you have one and you use it
then obviously you want to include it.
| | 01:04 | E-mail, website, definitely. And then
things like Skype and AIM, do we want to
| | 01:10 | include these? Probably not. But if you
are doing business a lot through these
| | 01:15 | media then maybe. So we have here
a lot of potential information.
| | 01:20 | You need to decide which of these
elements are appropriate to your business.
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| Sizing your business card| 00:00 | Now when we say business card,
we tend to think of a 3.5 x 2 inch rectangle.
| | 00:05 | But it needn't necessarily be that way.
Your business card doesn't even
| | 00:10 | need to be a card at all.
| | 00:12 | Maybe it's going to be a clothes peg,
or a playing card, or a card that someone
| | 00:17 | constructs, or a glider. Or maybe it's
going to come as a blister pill pack or
| | 00:23 | a pop-up thing, or be printed on metal
or rubber or have some wool attached to it,
| | 00:29 | or a business card that tears in two.
These are all brilliant, brilliant ideas,
| | 00:35 | but we are not going to do this.
We are going to go for a standard
| | 00:39 | 3.5 inch X 2 inch business card, or reverse
those dimensions if you want it to be vertical.
| | 00:45 | But these are all things worth considering.
So we are going to play it safe,
| | 00:50 | we are just going to have a purely
functional business card. Now I have said
| | 00:56 | a 3.5 x 2 inch rectangle, but there
are variations. Business card sizes vary
| | 01:02 | around the world and this diagram
has the common business card sizes.
| | 01:08 | In continental Europe it may be a credit
card sized or in an A8 sized rectangle.
| | 01:13 | But I'm going to be working with
the standard US size, 3.5 x 2 inches.
| | 01:20 | So now that we have determined our size,
the next thing we want to think about
| | 01:23 | is the orientation of the business card.
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| Selecting orientation| 00:00 | Now this series on designing a
business card follows on from the series of
| | 00:04 | designing a logo and we left off there
with this as our finished logo design
| | 00:09 | for the company Deep Green, which is
a garden design company in Britain, UK.
| | 00:15 | So, using this logo we are now going
to design a business card for the same
| | 00:19 | company and we are going to determine
whether or not we want our business card
| | 00:23 | to be landscape
orientation or portrait orientation.
| | 00:28 | So here are two quick mock-ups of wide
or tall. Typically business cards are wide,
| | 00:35 | but there is nothing that says
that you can't have a successful tall
| | 00:39 | business card. The only problem with
a portrait or tall business card is that
| | 00:44 | some people like to store their
business cards in file folders and they are
| | 00:49 | horizontally orientated. So if you give
them your business card, they are going
| | 00:54 | to turn it around so that it fits into
the holder and then in order to view it
| | 00:58 | they are going to have spin that
around or they are going to put it in their
| | 01:01 | wallet and of course that's
horizontally orientated as well.
| | 01:04 | We live in a kind of landscape
world in terms of business cards. So
| | 01:10 | I'm thinking that I'm going to conform to
that. Although depending upon on the kind
| | 01:14 | of logo that you are working with,
a vertical card maybe a completely viable option.
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| One- or two-sided?| 00:00 | Something else to consider. Do we want
one-sided business cards or two-sided
| | 00:03 | business cards? What are the pros and
cons? Obviously, two-sided costs more.
| | 00:09 | But with two-sided you can have as I
have here, some kind of graphic on the back,
| | 00:13 | maybe an additional kind of tagline
or more information. Perhaps some bio
| | 00:18 | or some important nugget of information.
You have got that second side, you may
| | 00:23 | as well use it. Unless you want to keep
that second side deliberately blank so
| | 00:29 | that people can make notes on it.
| | 00:31 | Some people like to make notes on the
business card and rather than scroll over
| | 00:36 | your contact information, they have got
the back side to write on, maybe some
| | 00:40 | kind of reminder of having met you,
when they met you, where they met you,
| | 00:44 | etcetera. So those are the pros and
the cons of one and two-sided business cards.
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| Setting up the template| 00:00 | Now we have decided on what information
we are going to put on our business card,
| | 00:04 | whether we are going to have one-
sided or two-sided, whether it's going
| | 00:07 | to be landscape or portrait, we are
next going to decide what tools or tool we
| | 00:13 | will use to create it and as with the
logos, because of its vector graphic
| | 00:18 | capabilities and its strong typographic tools,
I'm going to be stick with Adobe Illustrator.
| | 00:23 | But you could also, if you are
more comfortable there, use InDesign.
| | 00:27 | Or, not as good a choice, but again
if you are comfortable there, that's
| | 00:31 | probably the most important thing, you
could also use Photoshop. But I'm going
| | 00:35 | to do it in Illustrator and Illustrator
actually comes with some business card templates.
| | 00:41 | So to open one of those, I'll go to the
File menu and choose New From Template.
| | 00:47 | And then from the Basic folder,
from the Blank Templates folder,
| | 00:51 | I'm going to use this one. We've got four
different business card templates to choose from,
| | 00:55 | I'll use the first one. Let me just
maximize that window and here we see
| | 01:03 | a crop area set to 3.5 inches X 2
inches, standard US business card size.
| | 01:10 | These green things are the crop area rulers.
They are a little bit distracting but we
| | 01:14 | can turn those off if we want to and
our Document Setup has the artboard set to
| | 01:22 | 3.5 inches X 2 inches. So we did want
to get rid of those green rulers, come to
| | 01:27 | the Crop Area tool and then click on
the Open Crop Area Tool Options and
| | 01:34 | we'll just uncheck that right there.
| | 01:38 | So working with one of the templates
that comes with Illustrator is one way,
| | 01:42 | another way is to create your own template.
| | 01:46 | I'm going to create a new document
| | 01:48 | and I want to make sure that I have a
print profile for this. Now I could setup
| | 01:54 | my artboard to be 3.5 inches X 2 inches,
but I'm going to live with it for the
| | 01:59 | time being as letter size because I
prefer to work in a standard sized document
| | 02:04 | and then copy and paste all the
elements when I'm finished into a 3.5 X 2 inch
| | 02:11 | document. And since we are thinking in
inches at the moment, I'm going to switch
| | 02:18 | my unit of measurement to inches.
| | 02:24 | I'm going to draw three rectangles on
top of each other. One is going to be the
| | 02:29 | 3.5 X 2 inch rectangle of the business
card dimensions and then I'm going to
| | 02:33 | draw an outer rectangle, which
represents the bleed area, and that is going to
| | 02:38 | extent beyond the bounds of the
business card by one-eighth of an inch and
| | 02:42 | then an interior rectangle that is
going to represent the inner margins of the
| | 02:47 | business card, what I'll call the
safe area, and I want to keep most of
| | 02:52 | my elements, certainly my type
elements within that area.
| | 02:56 | So I'm going to use my Rectangle tool
and just click on my page and specify
| | 03:02 | that I want a rectangle of 3.5 X 2
inches and I'll move that right about there.
| | 03:13 | I'm going to turn my rulers on,
Apple or Ctrl+R, and just draw myself some
| | 03:19 | guides that mark that center point.
Then come back to my Rectangles tool and
| | 03:25 | Alt-click on that point and first
of all I'll do the bleed area.
| | 03:31 | Now the Bleed is one eighth of an inch so
I'm going to add a total of one quarter of an
| | 03:37 | inch to both dimensions.
| | 03:44 | Since I held down the Alt key, that
new rectangle is going to be centered upon
| | 03:50 | the rectangles I just drew. What I
didn't take into consideration is that both
| | 03:55 | rectangles have a fill, which I don't
want. So I'm going to come and make the
| | 04:00 | fill of both of them None and then
once again, back to my Rectangle tool,
| | 04:06 | Alt-click on the center point and now
I'm going to remove a quarter of an inch
| | 04:14 | from both dimensions, so 3.25 X 1.75.
And now what I'm going to do is select
| | 04:27 | all three of those, then go to my
View menu and choose Guides > Make Guides.
| | 04:33 | So I'm going to convert all three of
those rectangles into non-printing guides
| | 04:40 | and I know that the middle one represents
the actual dimensions of my business card,
| | 04:45 | the outer one my bleed and any
element that I want to print to the edge
| | 04:51 | of the page, I make sure I continue
it to this bleed guide and then the
| | 04:56 | interior guides are my inner margins
and I'll make sure that I have no type
| | 05:00 | element that goes beyond those guides.
| | 05:04 | So then just before moving on to the
next section, I'm going to save this.
| | 05:11 | Let's save in our exercise files on the
Desktop and I'm just going to call this
| | 05:20 | businesscard and I'll leave it as a
native Adobe Illustrator format and then
| | 05:28 | click OK to move through the options.
So whether or not you use one of the
| | 05:34 | Illustrator templates or whether you
make your own that's entirely up to you.
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| Working with type| 00:01 | Let's talk about how we are going to
incorporate type into our business card.
| | 00:05 | But before we do that I'm going to
place our logo and for this I'm going to copy
| | 00:11 | and paste it from the finished
version of the logo that I worked on in the
| | 00:16 | earlier series of movies on creating a
logo. Since I want my logo to bleed off
| | 00:24 | the edge of my business card, I'm
going to use this version of it, the bleed
| | 00:29 | version, I'm going to copy that.
Apple+C or Ctrl+C and then come back here,
| | 00:38 | paste it. And then I'm going to scale
it into position holding down the Shift key
| | 00:47 | so that I keep the scaling proportional.
| | 01:09 | Like so.
| | 01:10 | I'm making sure that the logo extends
to the bleed guide, the outer most guide.
| | 01:20 | So that if there is any inaccuracy
in the trimming of the card from the
| | 01:25 | sheet then we are not going to see any
white edges of the paper. By the way
| | 01:31 | I have on this preference, Show
Hidden Characters. That's why I'm seeing
| | 01:38 | those character returns. Let's
just turn those off for a moment.
| | 01:43 | Okay, now here is my type. Just as
one type block and this is currently in
| | 01:53 | Helvetica 12-point. But I need to
change this. I want to use a more appropriate font
| | 02:00 | and I want the type to be quite a
lot smaller than it currently is. Now
| | 02:05 | the font that I'm using on my logo is
Myriad Pro. So for that reason that's
| | 02:10 | what I'll be using for the type in my
business card as well. So the first thing
| | 02:16 | I'm going to do is change that to
Myriad Pro. Now if you are working on your
| | 02:21 | own business card, use a typeface
that is going to be in harmony with the
| | 02:25 | typeface in your logo. Don't necessarily
just follow what I'm doing, but in my case,
| | 02:31 | for what I'm doing here, Myriad Pro
is appropriate and let's open up my
| | 02:36 | Character panel for more type options.
| | 02:40 | Now 12 point I think is far too big,
so I'm going to come down to 9 point and
| | 02:48 | the Leading, the space between the
lines, is currently set at Auto-Leading and
| | 02:52 | I think it's probably fine, maybe let's
just nudge that up to a whole number,
| | 02:57 | make that 11 point. Now I have decided
this, in consultation with my client,
| | 03:04 | we have decided that the information
that we want to include, obviously the
| | 03:11 | person's name, the telephone number,
the address, the email address, and
| | 03:17 | the website. There is no fax, there is just
one telephone number. We're not worried
| | 03:26 | about Skype, we're not worried about
AIM or iChat. This is what we want. Now
| | 03:33 | the exact details of what you put on
your business card is going to vary
| | 03:38 | according to how you want to be
contacted and what kind of business you are.
| | 03:44 | Now this interior guide here is the line
that I'm using as the safe area for my type.
| | 03:51 | So I'm going to position my type
like so and I think I would like to
| | 03:58 | separate the name and the telephone
number from this type block. So I'm going
| | 04:03 | to select those two lines and cut that
from there, hold down my Apple or Ctrl key,
| | 04:10 | click outside of that type block,
make a new text insertion point and
| | 04:17 | paste. So let's bring that back down to
there and possibly we want the name and
| | 04:26 | the telephone number to be bigger.
Let's go up as big as -- is 12 point going
| | 04:34 | to be too big? I think maybe it is.
Let's have 11 point and then I'm going to
| | 04:41 | make just the name in
bold as opposed to regular.
| | 04:49 | Now I want to align my type with the logo.
So I'm going to draw myself a guide there,
| | 04:56 | put the baseline of the type on
the logo and then bring the baseline of
| | 05:02 | the name down to that point. Some
fiddly things relating to type. When working
| | 05:09 | with numbers, if you are using a
typeface that is an Open Type typeface,
| | 05:13 | perhaps you have the option of using
different numbering styles. Let's explore that.
| | 05:21 | So I'm going to select the
telephone number, which is obviously a fake
| | 05:25 | telephone number there. So I'm going to
select those numbers and then from the
| | 05:29 | Window menu, come down to the Type
option in the flyout menu and choose Open Type.
| | 05:37 | And here Figure. I can use these
different numbering styles and I'm going
| | 05:43 | to use Proportional Oldstyle, which is
going to give my numbers ascenders and
| | 05:50 | descenders so that they just blend in
a lot better I think with the regular
| | 05:56 | text and having done that there I also
need to do the same thing there and in
| | 06:03 | my postcard.
| | 06:06 | One another fiddly thing that we might
want to consider is the telephone number
| | 06:10 | style that you use. Now maybe you
are going to put the area code in
| | 06:13 | parenthesis, maybe you are going to
separate it with a period or with a dash.
| | 06:18 | Whatever you do just be consistent
about it. In this case, I'm not going to do
| | 06:23 | anything. I want to keep as minimal as
possible and perhaps maybe I just want
| | 06:30 | to go very minimal, and not have any
punctuation at all. I think on reflection
| | 06:37 | I will -- I'll keep that.
| | 06:39 | But this symbol, the @ symbol, can
tend to look a little bit too big I think
| | 06:45 | when seen in the context of the other
characters. So if I really want to get
| | 06:50 | into the nitty-gritty, perhaps I'll
scale this down just a fraction by one
| | 06:58 | point and I think it just blends in a
little bit better at that size and I want
| | 07:05 | to make sure that this and this share
the same left-hand edge and just to be
| | 07:12 | sure of that I can use my Align panel
and click on Align Horizontal Left and
| | 07:20 | then that needs to nudge down a bit and
I think we have got our type in place.
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| Choosing alignment| 00:01 | In this video, we are going to talk about
aligning the elements of our business card
| | 00:07 | and of course there are more
options than just these but I'm going to
| | 00:10 | break it down into left, center,
right and what I'll call four corners. Now,
| | 00:17 | with my particular logo that I want to
bleed off the edge, my options are in
| | 00:22 | some ways determined by the type of
logo that I'm using. Of course, working
| | 00:27 | with your logo you are going to have
different possibilities to me.
| | 00:31 | I'm talking about the alignment of the
type specifically. So here we've got the
| | 00:36 | type left aligned and I think this
gives us a pleasing amount of white space up
| | 00:42 | in the top right-hand corner, so that
things don't look too cramped and
| | 00:47 | the type doesn't need to be that big.
I think it's quite readable at this size.
| | 00:52 | I have clustered the information into
groups that at least make sense to me.
| | 00:58 | I put the name with the telephone
number and then a small space between
| | 01:02 | those two clusters of type and
then all the other information.
| | 01:08 | Far less successful in that I think is
the center alignment where because of
| | 01:14 | the length of the lines I have had to
put two pieces of information on each of
| | 01:19 | these lines, which is fine, but it just
creates an odd amount of equal spacing
| | 01:26 | either side of the logo and the name
and the card loses any kind of tension or
| | 01:33 | dynamism that comes from the nature of
the logo itself, where it's coming out
| | 01:40 | of one side and then that is undermined by
putting the whole thing in the middle I feel.
| | 01:47 | Down here we have the logo in the same
position but the text right-aligned and
| | 01:52 | that works okay but because we are so used
to reading-- you know, we have been doing it
| | 01:58 | since birth practically, reading from
left to right, then reading with a ragged
| | 02:04 | left edge albeit for just a few
lines, is still a little bit visually
| | 02:09 | jarring I feel. Slightly different from
that is taking the different pieces of
| | 02:17 | information and scattering
them to the four corners.
| | 02:20 | Now two of our corners are already accounted
for by the logo, so that only leaves
| | 02:24 | these other two. Not dramatically
different from the one on the right, but this
| | 02:29 | actually works better than I was
expecting it to but I think we generally want
| | 02:34 | to resist the temptation to put
things in all of the four corners of our
| | 02:39 | business card. It's okay and often I
think preferable to have white space in
| | 02:45 | the corner. So I don't think this
works as well as this or even as this.
| | 02:51 | Now in all fairness to the center
alignment, I'm not saying don't ever use
| | 02:56 | Center alignment and I'm not saying
don't use any of these options either, they
| | 03:01 | can all work in the right context.
I don't think any of these three are the
| | 03:06 | right context here, but in terms of the
center alignment to be fair to it, if I
| | 03:12 | were to work with a vertical business
card and then center the information,
| | 03:18 | I think that works a lot better. I'm
still not sold on it and I wouldn't do it,
| | 03:22 | but it looks a lot better in a vertical orientation
than it did in a horizontal orientation.
| | 03:29 | But basically to summarize, generally
speaking it's preferable to avoid center
| | 03:35 | alignment. Right alignment is hard to
read or harder to read and avoid the
| | 03:42 | temptation to fill up all of the four corners of
your business card; instead go with white space.
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| Using color | 00:00 | Let's talk about color. I have my
business card setup as being a two color
| | 00:05 | print job, Black and Pantone 369, and
that was the color that was chosen when I
| | 00:11 | designed the business card. But these
days it doesn't cost to me more to print
| | 00:16 | in full color using digital printing.
There are many, many online vendors where
| | 00:21 | you can go and get some amazingly
cheap and very good quality business cards.
| | 00:26 | I'm using only two colors more as an
aesthetic choice than a cost factor.
| | 00:34 | But if I did want to have these printed at
a quick printers where they only had a
| | 00:39 | two color press then I would need to
make sure that I had all the elements in
| | 00:44 | my business card
specified as one of my two colors.
| | 00:49 | So the fact that we can print in color
now on business cards opens up a whole
| | 00:55 | new range of possibilities and maybe I
might want to consider on the back side
| | 01:02 | of my business card having a color
photo. Or maybe you want to include a
| | 01:07 | photograph of yourself.
| | 01:09 | One other point I want to make and that
is best off avoiding screens of colors.
| | 01:16 | Try wherever possible to print your
color at 100%. That way your reproduction
| | 01:22 | will be much crisper. By that I mean
if you decide that you want your text to
| | 01:28 | be in gray rather than black, don't do
this. Don't select your text, come to
| | 01:34 | your Color panel and use a percentage
of black. Instead use a spot color gray.
| | 01:50 | Like so. Or-- and if I just move down
here a fraction, open my Layers panel,
| | 01:59 | turn on that Screens layer. Here is
another version of my logo in a different
| | 02:05 | Pantone color, in Pantone 357,
but it's actually 357 at 60%.
| | 02:12 | If I really wanted it this color, and
I don't, but if I really did I would be
| | 02:18 | much better off choosing a Pantone
color that looked like this at 100% rather
| | 02:24 | than choosing Pantone 357 and making it 60%.
If I put that back to 100% of its value,
| | 02:41 | we see that it looks radically different.
| | 02:46 | So my points here are: avoid using screens,
consider color printing, maybe just
| | 02:52 | restrict it to two colors to keep it simple.
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| Choosing paper| 00:00 | The paper that you choose for your
business card is a major design element of
| | 00:04 | your business card. If you are
printing using an online digital printing
| | 00:08 | service then perhaps your options are
going to be limited to glossy or matte.
| | 00:12 | If you are using offset printing then
you have a wealth of options available to
| | 00:16 | you and you want to consider the
weight and the texture of your paper.
| | 00:20 | Above all, and I can't stress this
strongly enough, we want to avoid
| | 00:25 | perforations from those business cards
that you create at home in your Inkjet
| | 00:29 | printer and then tear out. Although,
it is possible to produce decent quality
| | 00:35 | business cards at home, for the most
part we are talking here about using a
| | 00:40 | commercial printer.
| | 00:41 | We want to make sure that the paper
that you choose is appropriate to your message.
| | 00:45 | So if you are an environmental group,
you are more likely to go with
| | 00:49 | an uncoated stock. If you're a sleek
technology company then maybe a coated
| | 00:56 | stock or a glossy stock is going to
be preferable. Not all paper has to be
| | 01:01 | white and not all white papers are
the same. There are different types of
| | 01:05 | whites and there is always colored
paper. Using colored paper is going to
| | 01:10 | expand your color palette. The paper
itself being used as a color design element.
| | 01:16 | Although you are never really sure
how things are going to turn out when you
| | 01:21 | are printing on colored paper because
any proofs that you will be printing
| | 01:25 | yourself are most likely going to be
on a different kind of paper stock. So
| | 01:29 | there always is something of a leap of
five between your proofs that you can
| | 01:34 | print out on your own printer at home
and what you will actually receive from
| | 01:39 | your commercial printer.
| | 01:40 | Of course, consider recycled papers.
There is a misconception that using
| | 01:45 | recycled paper limits your choice and
that's not true in any way these days and
| | 01:51 | there is really no reason to not use
recycled papers. An obvious point but
| | 01:57 | the nice papers cost more money. So
consider your wallet and these kind of things
| | 02:02 | are impossible to represent on screen.
| | 02:05 | So, don't just trust any kind of
screen representation of how things look
| | 02:10 | printed on a certain
paper stock. Request samples.
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| Printing extras| 00:00 | Some business card extras or add-ons to
consider. Raised printing to raise the
| | 00:06 | type or any other elements on the
business card, using either thermographic
| | 00:11 | printing, embossing or engraving. Foil
stamping to add a metallic leaf to parts
| | 00:19 | of your artwork. Specialty inks,
neon inks, metallic inks, inks that aren't
| | 00:25 | available in the Pantone
coated or uncoated swatchbook.
| | 00:30 | Lamination, either to a part of your
business card to give a varied texture to
| | 00:37 | the business card, spot lamination, or
to the whole business card and that will
| | 00:42 | protect it from smudging from
fingerprints. Rounded corners, which may
| | 00:48 | contribute to your business card
being a bit warmer and friendlier. All of
| | 00:53 | these options you should discuss with
your printer and ask for samples and of
| | 00:59 | course, they will come at a price.
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| Prepping for print| 00:00 | So my business card is done. I have
considered the size of my card,
| | 00:05 | the orientation of my card, whether or not
I want one side or two sides printed,
| | 00:11 | the placement of my elements, their
alignment relative to each other. I have
| | 00:15 | made sure that I have accounted for a
bleed as demonstrated by this outer guide here,
| | 00:22 | one-eight of an inch outside of
the edge of my card, which is represented
| | 00:28 | by this inner guide. I have considered
the color and my printing options and my
| | 00:33 | paper options and now I need
to send my files to the printer.
| | 00:37 | You may remember that I opted to work
with my own template rather than using
| | 00:42 | one of the Illustrator templates. The
advantage of doing that was being able to
| | 00:46 | design the front and the back side on
the same page. I just found that more
| | 00:50 | convenient. But now is the time when
I need to copy and paste each of these
| | 00:56 | into a separate document.
| | 00:58 | So I'm going to select the front side
and I also want to take with this
| | 01:04 | the guides as well. So I need to unlock
my guides and then make that selection
| | 01:10 | again and I'll also select the guides.
Copy and this time I'm going to use one
| | 01:16 | of those Illustrator templates rather
than reinvent the wheel myself. File >
| | 01:22 | New from Template. In the Basic folder,
in the Blank Templates folder, I'm going to
| | 01:28 | use this one, Business Card 1.
| | 01:32 | So we are seeing this at quite an
enlarged percentage, 302% in my case.
| | 01:39 | The black line represents the edge of our
artboard, which has trim marks around it.
| | 01:47 | So I'm now going to paste my artwork,
which is on the Clipboard, and then drag
| | 01:53 | that down and dock that into position,
which is right there. See things without
| | 02:00 | my guides for a moment. And yes, I have
my element bleeding over the edge of the
| | 02:07 | artboard and that all looks good.
| | 02:10 | One final step and we did this with
the logo as well and this is just an
| | 02:15 | insurance really just in case the
printer doesn't have the fonts that I have.
| | 02:20 | Now I want to save this and then
working on a copy, I'm going to select all,
| | 02:30 | Create Outlines. That way there
aren't going to be any font substitution
| | 02:35 | issues. Typically the printer is going
to want to receive your files one up,
| | 02:40 | i.e. just a single business card on
a 3.5 X 2 inch artboard. But some may
| | 02:47 | prefer that you gang up the
business cards eight to a page.
| | 02:52 | Let's see how we can do that. So in
this instance, I'm going to create a new
| | 02:58 | document, a letter sized document. This
is how we can create multiple business
| | 03:04 | cards on the same page. I'll paste
my first instance in the top left-hand
| | 03:13 | corner of the page and then move over
slightly because I need room to add some
| | 03:21 | crop marks to that.
| | 03:22 | Then I'm going to zoom-in, my guides
are locked so I'm going to unlock them.
| | 03:31 | I'm going to select this guide, which
represents the edges of my business card, and
| | 03:37 | then from the View menu -- remember
we began by drawing that as a rectangle
| | 03:41 | that we turned into guides. I'm now
going to reverse that, choose Release Guides.
| | 03:46 | Having done that, I want to make sure
that this rectangle has no stroke on it.
| | 03:51 | So I'm going to make that None. With
it still selected, Filter menu, Create >
| | 03:58 | Crop Marks. So it's drawn crop marks
around that rectangle, which is now
| | 04:04 | invisible because it has no fill and
no stroke. So I'm now going to zoom out.
| | 04:15 | make sure I have everything selected
but I will at this point lock the guides
| | 04:19 | because I don't want to duplicate
those as well. And then I'm going to come to
| | 04:25 | the Effect menu and choose
Distort & Transform > Transform.
| | 04:32 | First of all, I'm going to create
multiples down. I want three copies.
| | 04:41 | Now the size of my business card is two
inches but by the time I factor in the space
| | 04:46 | allowed for the crop marks as well,
I think I want to move down about two and
| | 04:51 | three quarter inches and that needs to
be a minus number, -2.75. Let's turn on
| | 05:00 | my Preview and see how that's going to
look. That looks just right. Click OK.
| | 05:10 | Now I'm going to come back to
Transform and this time I want one copy
| | 05:18 | but I'm going to move it horizontally this
time. The width of my business card 3.5
| | 05:24 | inches but by the time I factor in the
crop marks, I want to move it 4 inches.
| | 05:29 | Turn on my Preview. Let's go a
little bit more, 4.25. That looks good.
| | 05:39 | So there on single A4 page are my
eight ganged up business cards. Now using
| | 05:46 | that technique means that if I were to
discover in one of them that I had made
| | 05:52 | a typo, then if I come back to the
master file, make the change there, you will
| | 05:58 | see the change gets made in all of them.
| | 06:01 | Now, whether or not that's what your
printer is going to want, I can't say.
| | 06:06 | You'll have to ask them. But we have seen
there a couple of different techniques
| | 06:10 | for preparing your business card either
as a one up document, just one card or
| | 06:16 | in this case, ganged up
as eight to a single page.
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