How to Use InDesign for Printing Cards
Use Adobe InDesign CS5 to create greeting cards and business cards that reflect your personality and the tone or sentiment you are trying to convey. The templates make designing your cards simple, and the variety of colors and other elements to choose from allow you to add a personal touch to your design.
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Instructions
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Greeting Cards
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Open a new file in InDesign. Create two pages, with the sizes set as 11 inches by 8 1/2 inches, which is a letter-sized landscape page. Under the "View" menu, choose "Show Rulers." Then select "Grids and Guides" and "Show/Hide Guides." Click on the left ruler and drag a vertical guide to the center of each landscape page. This creates two halves on each page.
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Design the front of the card with your message and art on the right half of your first InDesign page. Leave the left half of the first page blank --- after the page is folded, it will be the back cover of the card. On the second page, also leave the left side of the page blank, as it is the inside cover of the card. On the right half of the second page, write your message to the recipient. Download online templates from free sites such as The Online Printer (see Resources) to help with your layout. You can download a variety of free online templates for greeting cards.
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Select a light-colored card stock so your design will show easily.
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Position your card stock in the printer's tray. Refer to your printer's manual if necessary to decide whether the printable side of the paper should be face up or face down, or whether manual feed would be best for card stock. Click on the "File" menu and then choose "Print."
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Flip over the paper after the first page is finished printing. Place the blank side in the correct position to be printed and load it in the printer. Click on "File" and "Print." To the right of "Pages," type "2 to 2." Click "Print."
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Fold the paper in half to finish your greeting card. Your final card size will be 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches.
Business Cards
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Lay out your business cards. Business card templates are available in InDesign, or you can download an online template that matches the perforated paper from the manufacturer's website. Alternatively, measure the perforations and create your layout using InDesign's ruler and guides.
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Place graphics and type your text into the card at the top left of the template. Use "CTRL" and "A" to select all the image and text boxes. Use "CTRL" and "G" to group the boxes, and "CTRL" and "C" to copy them. Press "CTRL" and "P" to paste the grouped boxes. Click on the newly pasted group and move it to the second business card space in the template. Repeat this procedure for each business card space, until the template is full.
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Align the grouped cards to make sure each card is placed correctly when printed. Shift-click on each group in the top row. Under the "Window" menu, choose "Object and Layout," and then "Align" to open the align panel. Choose the "Align Top" icon. Select and align all the rows, and then choose each column separately and use "Align Center."
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Load your perforated business card paper into your printer. Use a light-colored paper to ensure your logo and text stand out prominently. Although it typically doesn't matter which side you print on, one end may be designated the top of the finished page. Check the instructions included with your paper for clarification. Click the "File" menu and select "Print."
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Bend your business card paper at the perforations several times before gently pulling them apart.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Andrew Olney/Digital Vision/Getty Images
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Comments
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HOW TO DOWNLOAD BUSINESS CARD TEMPLATE.
