Business cards help

March 19, 2006 10:33 PM

I want to make my own business cards in Photoshop. Nothing fancy, just some text in B&W, so that part I can do myself. But the layout's proving a bit tricky. Any good tutorials on making your own business cards? My end product should be an A4 sized, 8-up or 10-up, in PDF format that I can run over to Kinko's and have them print out and cut.
posted by zardoz to work & money (12 comments total)

I wouldn't use Photoshop for a bit of b&w text and some crop marks. It's the wrong tool for the job. Either an illustration program (Illustrator, Freehand) or a page layout program (Quark, InDesign) will be better, allowing you to place the crops with specific precision.

First, make your design precisely inside the correct size of box. A North American business card is exactly 3.5 x 2 inches, but since you mention A4 you're probably dealing with a slightly different standard. In any case, use the application's guidelines to draw up a grid, and then use its step-and-repeat command to place crop marks appropriately. Then again, use step-and-repeat to place the design exactly within the grid-delineated spaces.

This is harder to describe than it is to do. You basically just have to do a bunch of measurement calculations and then be precise about applying them.
posted by zadcat at 10:57 PM on March 19, 2006

I think Illustrator would be easier although photoshop does have decent-ish text layout tools these days. I always make a full 8x10 sheet with crop marks and lay out one card, then copy it to the cells, usually something like 10 per page I think. Take that to the printer and away we go. Get one who does a good job of the cropping. I just put the crop marks on the top page, for reference, otherwise you get marks on your cards.

Kinkos, etc, seem to suck at cutting paper into business cards. Make sure they actually cut on the lines. So many uncentered cards I've got from them.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:59 PM on March 19, 2006

I've found that you'll get better quality (i.e. centered) cuts from the folks at Staples...
posted by fvox13 at 11:04 PM on March 19, 2006

I've never had a problem using Word, printing to Avery business cards. They come 10 up on a sheet, are laser cut so there are no rough edges, and Avery provides Word templates free.
posted by Marky at 12:20 AM on March 20, 2006

I have had bad business card print jobs at both Kinkos and Staples. Overnight Prints is a good and inexpensive resource for printing.
posted by madamjujujive at 1:04 AM on March 20, 2006

I second Marky. The Avery business card sheets are excellent. They're cheap and you can print on them with any ink-jet printer. I've used them several times and producing them was quite painless.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:03 AM on March 20, 2006

It is quite a bit of work in Photoshop. I usually do it there but I have some photos and other tricks I want to use that Photoshop has. I third using a word-processor like Microsoft Word. It has a template you can use to make a sheet of cards, which is about as simple as you can get for a purely text card. You can then take the file on a disk over to Kinko's and print it off one of their computers.
posted by JJ86 at 5:48 AM on March 20, 2006

Vistaprint.com has templates for use when uploading your own art for business cards. My wife and I have used them numerous times and like them, but the template may be of use to you as well.
posted by terrapin at 6:03 AM on March 20, 2006

There are templates for this in Openoffice which can export to .pdf for kinkos as well. I have used it to make shipping labels and business cards among other things.
posted by psychobum at 6:34 AM on March 20, 2006

I shudder to think of doing typography in Word. Anything but that.
posted by zadcat at 9:39 AM on March 20, 2006

I got decent results by laying out a single regulation-sized instance in Illustrator and saved it as PDF. I took that file to Kinkos and they did the tiling, printing, and cutting for me. I did not get so fancy as to include crop marks and the like and got a usable set of business cards for fairly cheap. By usable I mean they are all standard sized, cut with straight edges, etc. The placement is not 100% exact throughout the set but each card alone looks fine. This would suggest using ample margins and off-center placements if you choose to go this route. Also important, especially if you use Photoshop, is to use a DPI setting of at least 300. That web-based 72/96 dpi stuff may look crisp on a screen but will look like sludgy crap when printed. I know this from experience.
posted by Fezboy! at 10:54 AM on March 20, 2006

If you want your business to appear competent and professional, you really ought to hire a professional designer. It's not expensive. Simply owning Photoshop or Illustrator doesn't make you a good designer, anymore than owning Word makes someone a good writer. Prospects will judge you -- and the quality of your work -- by those cards. Invest a few bucks and get it done right.

Second choice: Vistaprint or some place similar. But pay the $25 or whatever it is. DON'T let them print their name on the back (which makes them free). Here's why.
posted by wordwhiz at 4:35 PM on March 20, 2006