How to Design A Print Ready Business Card!
Adobe Illustrator is very useful for creating print designs such as Business Cards and has fantastic tools already available for creating them.
Here are few quick simple techniques to create one.
We will start with laying out the design by first setting the cards dimensions (margins and bleed), then laying out the design with background pattern and adding some textual information and finally sending it to printer.
Lets get started!
Step 1:
(A)
First create a brand new document.
The size of the card I'm providing is 88x55mm, 'Number of Artboards': 2; Bleed: Top=Bottom=Left=Right=3mm; Color Mode is set to CMYK.
(B)
Go to->View->Show Rulers (or cmd+R) to view rulers.
(C)
Now drag the guides and align them with the outlines of the card (black outline) vertically and horizontally respectively, as shown in the screenshot below:
STEP 2:
a)
In Front Art board: Draw a rectangle on top of the card and fill this with desired pattern ( I have used a rich maroon pattern ).
[Tip: To add this pattern, just click on the desired pattern in Swatches palette and it will appear inside the rectangle selected].
B)
In Back Art board: Similarly draw a rectangle such that its covering the entire art board (as shown below) and fill it with the same pattern (create another rectangle at the center and fill color to white).
STEP 3:
Now to start filling the textual information, select the 'Type tool' to enter name and other details ( I have used Myriad Pro font, Regular, 12pt)
Step 4:
Final step is to send this card to the printer; hit CMD+A to select all and then use CMD+Shift+O to convert all fonts to outlines, to avoid any font related problems with the printer. Now, Goto File--> Save As and select Adobe PDF.
In the PDF options, Select the 'Trim' and 'Registration marks' check boxes and press 'Save PDF':
Now open the final created pdf file to give a final check and to be emailed to your printer of choice!
