![]() ![]() I want a black background for my card design, so I’ll grab the rectangle tool and draw a shape that covers the entire bleed area, clearing out the stroke to leave just the fill colour.Ī black background sounds simple enough, but there’s a whole plethora of different black colours that can be printed. You can highlight this area using guides, or create a rectangle at the correct size, then right click and select Make Guides. The size of the safe zone is entirely up to you but 5-10mm shifts your elements inwards enough to look neat. This not only makes sure your important elements like a name or logo aren’t too close to the trim area that they risk being chopped off, it also helps balance your design by applying some margin around the edge. ![]() It’s also wise to highlight a safe area within your document. The red outline indicates the bleed area which any backgrounds will need to extend to. The main white area of the artboard is the finished business card size, also known as the trim size. This will create two business card layouts side by side, rather than have to create two completely separate documents. Most business cards are double sided, so increase the number of artboards to 2. We’re designing for print, so select the CMYK color mode so we’re working in Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks as opposed to RGB light. It ensures that you don’t end up with tiny slithers of white paper along the edge of your prints if the machine isn’t lined up exactly. ![]() Bleed is basically some padding around the edge of the design which is cut off during the printing process. The print firms I’ve used in the past required 3mm bleed, so enter 3mm in one of the bleed fields and press Tab to apply it to all sides. If you’re in the US, you’ll probably find the measurements are in inches rather than millimetres. A common business card size is 88x55mm, but again, make sure you check with your printer first on their exact product specs. Create a new document and enter the dimensions of the business card in the artboard size settings. The overall design will be composited in Illustrator, so we’ll start there. We’re going to use a mix of Illustrator and Photoshop to make the most of each application’s strengths. Every company has their own preferences, so the settings I’m using in this tutorial might not match up exactly to what your printer wants, but at least you’ll know what they’re referring to when they say stuff like trim size and bleed size. Business cards are a common printed product that are fairly simple to design, but before you start, make sure you receive specific artwork instructions from the print house you’re going to use. ![]()
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