How to Design a Greeting Card in QuarkXPress

This is the back and front of a completed birthday card.

While it’s a little like using an ocean liner to go fishing, making greeting cards in QuarkXPress is a quick way to make professional-looking personalized cards for any occasion. Familiarity with QuarkXPress will help make it quick and easy. You can start with a solid idea, or simply experiment to get the look and feel you want.

Things You'll Need

• Macintosh computer
• QuarkXPress (any version will do; the examples are in QXP6)
• Graphics (photos or art)
• Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3
• Photo-quality printer
• Photo paper

Instructions

1. 

   Find the graphics you need--photos, drawings, paintings or clip-art--before you begin layout. Open each of them in Photoshop and resize them to 300 dots per inch (dpi) resolution in the Image menu under "Image Size." This is the best compromise resolution for nearly any application. It is the standard most magazines use. The higher the dpi, the better the quality, but the bigger the file. You can go as low as 200dpi, but much lower and images will be fuzzy or jagged.

2. 

   Design your main title for the card in Photoshop, if possible. Card greetings such as “Happy Anniversary,” “Happy Birthday” or “With Deepest Sympathy” all will look better if done using the Type tool in Photoshop, then using the Styles popup under the Windows menu. Again, save these titles in 300dpi as tiff files or jpegs.

3. 

   Open QuarkXPress. In the "File" menu, select "New." A popup will appear to create the document. Choose the landscape (sideways) format under "Orientation." Choose "11 by 8.5 inches" and set all the margins to 0.5 inches. Under "Column Guides," choose two columns with a 1-inch gutter. This will give you a 1/2-inch margin around both front and back pages.

4. 

   In the "Page" menu, choose "Insert." In the popup menu, choose to insert one page after the page you already have (page 1). The first page will be your card’s back on the left and the card’s front on the right. The second page will be the inside left face of the card, with the right side as the main message section.

5. Create a picture box on the right half of the page inside the margins, about an inch down. Import the title you created in Photoshop. Draw another picture box to insert clip art or another image. In this case, we have used a wrap-around photo that covers the front and back of the card with the title layered over it. This can be done in either QXP or Photoshop.

6. 

   Decide whether you want anything on the inside left cover. It’s open space, and can be left that way without a problem, or a simple statement or graphic can be added. The reader of the card will not see it first, so it is not the best place for the main message.

7. Import the inside title text, add whatever graphics you chose and write your message. Print page 1 first, then reverse the paper in the printer to print page 2 on the back side. Fold the paper in half. Sign the inside right page and your card is finished.

Tips & Warnings

• It’s best to use only a couple of different fonts for most items. It makes the card less distracting and makes it appear cleaner.

• Use double-sided photo card stick paper for best results.

• This will produce a 5.5-by-8.5 inch card. It will fit in a standard 9-by-6 inch envelope, but not a standard greeting card envelope.

• You can change the size of the card to fit in regularly sized envelopes, but you will need to print to standard paper and then cut it down.