Quickly design business cards to meet changing needs

A new employee is going with the marketing manager to meet a client tomorrow. Business cards will be exchanged and it's important that the new employee be part of the team. Creating confidence and a professional impression are key. This is clearly a situation where you'll need a quick way to generate business cards. There are numerous other examples. For instance, an employee might get a new title, move to another office, or change phone numbers. Often, you don't need 1,000 business cards. For employees who need cards only a couple of times a year, large-quantity orders can eat up office supply budgets. Creating business cards on a laser or inkjet printer is a perfect solution for employers who need to quickly react to new employee information. Employees can have business cards almost immediately without the hassle of going to an outside printer. Printing the cards in-house is an economical way to produce low volumes. We'll show you how to make a professional-looking business card that includes a graphic, such as the one shown in Figure A.

Figure A: Business cards produced on your printer can look professional and save time.

Example overview

Standard business card size is 2 inches by 3.5 inches. There are business cards available as micro-perfed sheets, designed to be used with laser or inkjet printers. For this example, we'll use Avery Laser Business Cards Number 5371. The cards are laid out with two columns of five and separate easily after being folded back and forth along the perforation lines. In the box with the cards is a practice sheet. On the front is some information about printing and the back is blank showing the perforation lines. Make several copies of this so you can preview the layout of your business cards without wasting stock on mistakes.

Once you've obtained the appropriate card stock, you're ready to create the cards. We'll produce our cards in four steps:

1. Create three text boxes.
   • Setup the card and enter the business information in the first.
   • Insert a WordArt object in the second.
   • A clip art picture is inserted into the last text box.
2. Combine the elements and convert them to AutoText.
3. Use Word's label feature to set up the card document.
4. Print the cards.

Before getting started, make sure that you have the Drawing toolbar visible on your screen; you'll use it extensively throughout our example. (The Drawing toolbar is accessible by choosing View/Toolbars... and selecting the check box for Drawing.)

If you'd like more information or detailed instructions, follow the step-by-step method below.

Creating the text box elements of the business cards

To begin setting up our sample business cards, open a new Word document. Then, you can produce the card in three sections: business information, WordArt text, and the graphic design.

Begin by making the primary text box

On the Drawing toolbar, select the Text Box button and draw a text box on the document. We'll size the text box now and then group the other elements with this text box to complete the design.

First, you need to size the text box to be slightly smaller than the finished size of a business card. Select the text box and then, from the Format menu, choose Drawing Object... to access the Drawing Object dialog box. Later, when we're placing other text boxes on top of this text box, it will be easier if you put some temporary borders around the box now. If you can't see the borders around the text box when it's deselected, you'll need to change an option to add borders. To do so, select the Line tab and choose the Custom option button. The default line size is fine, so click OK.

Next, select the Size And Position tab. For our example, the information in the Position section can be ignored. In the Size section, shown in Figure B, set the Height to 1.9" and the Width to 3.25". In the Internal Margin text box type 0 and then click OK.

Figure B: Size the primary text box by setting the size information as shown in the Drawing Object dialog box.

One more bit of formatting is needed to align the text on the card. You still need to set tabs for the text box. Because the text is both right- and left-justified, we'll control our margins with tabs. Click in the text box before setting the tabs. Pull down the Format menu and select Tabs... to display the Tabs dialog box. To create the first tab stop, enter 0.13 in the Tab Stop Position text box and click Set. (The default alignment setting is Left, which is fine.) To set the second tab, enter 3.12 in the Tab Stop Position text box, select the Right option button in the Alignment panel, click Set, and then click OK. Figure C shows the tab settings you'll use.

Figure C: You'll control the alignment of the text on the card by setting left- and right-aligned tabs.

Now, you'll enter the address and phone number information shown at the bottom of the business card. To format the text for the card, select Format/Font... from the main menu. On the Font tab, change the Font, Font Style, and Size to Arial, Regular, and 8, respectively. Click OK to close the dialog box.

To position the insertion point, press [Enter] 10 times and then press [Tab]. Now, type 100 Sandstone Drive, press [Tab], and then type (716) 798-1234. Press [Enter] and then [Tab], and type the second line of the address, Medina, NY 14103, and press [Tab] again. Type the E-mail address, miller@eswitch.com, and press [Enter]. Now, to center the last line of text, select Format/Paragraph... and then choose Centered in the Alignment dialog box and click OK. (You can also select the Align Center button Enter the text, Member - American Translators Association. Your text box should now look like the one in Figure D.

Figure D: Your text box is now ready for the graphics.

Next, create the WordArt and its text box

The next step is to draw another text box. Again, the initial size isn't important because it will adjust to fit the WordArt. Using the Text Box button, draw a text box on your Word document in a different location than the primary text box. Make sure that the insertion point is in the text box by selecting the text box. To create the WordArt, select Insert/ Object... to open the Object dialog box. Next, select Microsoft WordArt 2.0 and click OK.

You'll notice that the toolbars are different. When you insert WordArt, Word automatically goes to the WordArt editing mode. There are three text boxes with dropdown list boxes on the toolbar. In the first box, select the first shape in the third row of the grid, which is displayed when you click on the current selection, Plain Text. The box window reads Arch Up (Pour). Now, change the font to Arial in the second text box. Finally, where you see Best Fit, change the font size to 16. Now you're ready to type in your text, Laura Miller - French Translations, in place of WordArt's placeholder text.

To "flatten" out the design so that it fits on the card, you'll need to use WordArt's Special Effects feature. On the WordArt toolbar, click on the Special Effects button. In the resulting Special Effects dialog box, change the Arc Angle to 100. Click on Update Display and your document should look like Figure E.

Figure E: The completed Word Art text box should look like this.

Click OK. To exit the WordArt editing screen, click anywhere on the workspace.

Insert the graphic into the third text box

To insert the leaf design on our sample business card, draw another text box the same way that you drew the first two. Next, specify the size of the text box by selecting Format/Drawing Object... and choosing the Size And Position tab. Again, we only need to modify the Size section and set the internal margin. Type 0.75 in the Height text box and 1.4 in the Width text box. Next, change the Internal Margin to 0 and click OK. With the insertion point in the text box, choose Picture... from the Insert menu. For this example, we'll use the MSOffice\Clipart\Leaf.wmf clip art file that comes with Office 95. (If you didn't select the Clip Art option when you installed Office 95, you can run Setup to add the clip art files to your installation. Of course, you're not limited to using Office 95 clip art files when you create graphics.) Select Leaf.wmf from the list box and then click OK.

That's it. You're done creating the components of the business card that are shown in Figure F. The next step is to put the different parts together to form one design.

Figure F: The three parts of your business card design are complete.

Combining the components into one design

To combine the elements of the card that you created, you'll first place the text box with the Word Art Object on the first text box that you made. Then, you'll place the text box with the leaf graphic in position. You'll group the objects and then create an AutoText entry.

Create the final design and group the text boxes

To begin, select the WordArt text box and drag it into position as shown in Figure A. Next, select the text box with the leaf graphic and position it so that it's overlapping the WordArt text box. Your card should now look like the example in Figure G.

Figure G: The three text boxes you created earlier are overlapped to create the design.

Even though our card looks complete, you need to modify it slightly so that it's easy to transfer to the business cards. First, remove the black line around the large text box. To do this, press and hold [Shift] while selecting the WordArt object text box, the clip art text box, and the primary text box. Now, from the main menu, choose Format/Drawing Object... and click on the Line tab. Select the None option button and click OK.

Figure H: After removing the borders, the three text boxes are selected and ready to be grouped.

At this point, you'll group the three elements of your design. From the Drawing toolbar, select the Group button.

In order for your graphic to transfer to the business card looking the same as it does now, you need to convert it to a Microsoft Word Picture Object. Just select the grouped card elements and from the Edit menu, choose Cut. Again, from the Edit menu, choose the Paste Special... command. When the dialog box opens, choose Microsoft Word Picture Object from the As list box. Now, click OK to insert the converted picture object in your document. The image will reappear without any border.

Create an AutoText entry

By making an AutoText entry for the business card contents, you'll be able to take advantage of Word's label feature to quickly generate your cards. To create the entry, select your completed design by clicking the middle of the card. A black line should appear around the card. From the main menu, select Edit/AutoText... to display the AutoText dialog box. Now, type a name for the entry (we chose Business Card) and click Add.

Using Word's label feature to set up the card document

After you've created an AutoText entry for your card contents, you're ready to produce the cards. Start by choosing Envelopes And Labels... from the Tools menu and clicking the Labels tab to access the options shown in
Figure I.

Figure I: Word will present these options when you click on the Labels tab.

As you can see, the Labels tab provides a diagram of the currently selected label style. To change this selection to our business card style, click on Options... to open the Options dialog box. The Label Products dropdown list offers a choice of several manufacturers' labels. For our example, choose Avery Standard. Scroll down the Product Number list box until you find 5371-Business Card. Click OK to return to the Labels tab.

In the Address text box, right-click and select Paragraph... from the shortcut menu. When the Paragraph dialog box opens, select Centered from the Alignment dropdown list and click OK.

Type the name of the AutoText entry you created, Business Card, and press [F3]. Now, click on New Document and Word creates the sheet of business cards, as shown in Figure J.

Figure J: Word creates a sheet of business cards as a new document.

Print the cards

Once you've created a card document, you can print it. Choose Print... from the File menu and click OK. We recommend that you use one of the copies you made of the practice sheet before using the card stock. When you're satisfied with the results, you can feed the real card stock into your printer. After you've printed your cards, separate them on the perforation lines. If you gently rub your finger along the edges, they become quite smooth.

When done, you can save the business card document that has the business information in each cell (card). This sheet of cards is now a separate document from the design document that you created. You may save or delete the label document without affecting the original document.

Notes

This technique will work for other types of graphics, too. You could include clip art or a picture on your business card. Your company may already have its logo available to be inserted into the text box. Experiment with your business card design. There are many different layout styles used in business today. Using tabs, internal margins, and other layout tools, the design possibilities are limitless.

Perhaps, while scrolling through the label options, you formed ideas on customizing labels for your business using graphics. The same general technique of creating a label will work: changing it to an in-line picture and then creating an AutoText entry. 

Conclusion

The method given in this article offers an easy way to "save the day" when new business cards are needed now. The ability to create and print low volumes of business cards almost immediately saves time and money. It's a valuable tool that can increase flexibility in any business.