How to design your own cards in MS Publisher.
We use Microsoft Office 2003, but I think 2007 or 2010 will not differ very much from these pictures and steps to be taken. This tutorial explains to you the way to design and format your cards to have them printed to look like your design and not something totally different, which so often happens when we have'nt got the same font or we can't copy and paste your word Art, or your picture or photo suddenly resizes itself.From many years of experience, you won't believe all the things that can go wrong between your design and the final printed product.
When you open Publisher, this is the page you should see. You are asked to select an option. Select the Publications for print.
Now click on Business Cards and on the right you now have some templates you can choose from to design your card.
Choose a template and fill your details in the text blocks by replacing the existing text. You can also insert your own logo or a photo by using the insert function on the menu.
The template size is not the correct size for our business cards, so you need to change the size by clicking on File - Page Setup. This window opens where you can edit the sizes.
In the Width and Height blocks, change the settings to 9.4 cm wide and 5.4 cm high. The window will switch to Custom and Landscape automatically. Click on OK.
You then get a warning that the page size and orientation has been changed and would you like to keep the setting. Click on YES, because that is the standard size of a South African business card.
Your business card template now has the correct size for going to print, which includes the bleed. All your text and photos must now be filled in not nearer than 0.5cm from the edge of the card, to make up for differences in the cutting process.
When you have finished with your design and you want to send it to us for printing, click on File - Save As and this window opens with the default extension of .pub. Click on the down arrow or on the blue filled region to open the type of file to save to. Click on JPEG File File Interchange Format (*.jpg).
The window will then show you where to change the dpi of your card. In the little window that opens on the left, click on the setting Commercial Printing (300 dpi). Click on OK.
Now give your business card a name, or name it Business Card and click on save. Attach this .jpg file to your e-mail to us and we will take it from there. If we have a problem with anything on the card we will notify you immediately, otherwise we send the card for printing.
This tutorial only shows you the very basic steps of designing a card which can be printed to meet your design requirements. Following all the steps in this tutorial, your end product will be the same as your design, without any problems such as wrong fonts, Word Art not applied, pictures suddenly resized and sometimes even more unforeseen problems.
