Illustrator Template Tutorial (Business Card)

This tutorial will show you how to create a template for a business card in Illustrator. Although I’ll be using a business card for this tutorial, you can use the same techniques for almost any type of print and web work. The template we’ll be creating will be 3.75″ by 2.25″ with a 1/8″ bleed and a 1/8 safety. This tutorial will take between 15-30 minutes depending on experience.

Files

Start off by creating a new document in Illustrator. Your settings will need to be the same as mine.

1. We’ll start of by setting up our guides. The goal is so have them look like this when we’re done. The next steps will show you how to do this.

2. Create a square, the size and location doesn’t matter yet, but make sure it’s a color that you can see. Do not use a stroke, just a fill color. You’ll notice the diagonal line going across my screenshot. That’s the smart guides feature of Illustrator and although I’m not using them yet I will be soon so you can turn them on if needed by going to View > Smart Guides, or Ctrl+U. Also go to View > Snap to point if it isn’t checked already.

3. Select your square and you’ll see the width and height at the top. Set them both to 0.125 in. Make sure you’re not setting the X and Y by mistake. Also you’ll need to turn off Constrain width and height proportions, which is the icon to the left of the blue H. If your rulers are not on turn them on by going to View > Show Rulers (Ctrl+R). If you’re measurement units are in pixels or another unit right click on the ruler and set it to inches.

4. Deselect your square (click the background), then move the mouse over the top left corner of the square until the smart guides show “anchor”.

5. Drag your square to the top left corner of the document. Don’t let go until the smart guides show “intersect”.

6. When the square is selected notice the X and Y are at what seems like random values. To fix this we’ll reset the 0 point. If you look at the rulers you’ll see a white box in the top left where the 2 rulers meet. Drag from the box until you get to the top left of your square. It will say “anchor” with the smart guide. When you let go the rulers will update and 0 is now the top left of your document.

7. You’ll see that when you have the square selected the X and Y are both set to .063, this is because the reference point is the center of the square. Although it doesn’t matter for this tutorial if you wanted to change it, it’s the set of buttons to the left of “X:”. You can see when I set it to top left my X and Y show 0.

8. Lets move on, change your reference point back to center. Click your ruler and drag a guide to the right side of your square. Don’t let go until the smart guides show “path”. Drag a second guide from the top ruler to the bottom of the square.

9. When you’re done it should look like this.

10. Now we’ll do the same thing for the bottom right of the document, but instead of dragging the square using smart guides I’ll use the align tool for the sake of variety. If your align palette isn’t open go to Window > Align (Shift+F7). Before you click anything you’ll need to turn on “Align to Artboard” which is the icon on the bottom right of the align palette. Now click horizontal align right and then vertical align bottom. If you’re not sure which icon is which you can hold the mouse over an icon and it will tell you what it does.

11. Now that it’s at the bottom right create guides just like we did before. Remember to use the smart guides and snap to the edge.

12. Select the bottom right corner of your square (smart guides will show anchor) then drag up and left so the bottom right corner of the square is where your guides meet. It will say anchor again. Drag a guide to the top and another to the left side of the square.

13. Next repeat the same step for the top left. After you place your guides it will look like this.

14. Your document should now look like this. The area between the artboard or edge of the document and the first guides (outer) is the bleed. The first guides (outter guides) represent the crop line. The inner guides represent the safety.

15. Make a large square, bigger than your artboard. It should be around 3x the width and height of your artboard. It doesn’t need to be precise in size or location.

16. Bring up the pathfinder. Go to Window > Pathfinder or Shift+Ctrl+F9. Make another square in the inner part of your first guides. Have a look at my screenshot, remember to use the smart guides when creating your square.

17. Now we’ll use the pathfinder to cut the green area out of the larger blue area. Select both the green and blue square, then press the Subtract from shape area button under Shape Modes: and then press the expand button. Change the fill color to white. You’ll see the layer is now called “<Compound Path>”.

18. There’s nothing on the business card yet, but I added a few things so you can see what we made in action. Here’s my mock up business card, you’ll see the image in the background is going outside of the area of the card. Although you can design a card like this it’s very hard because visually you’re seeing a very inaccurate representation of the card.

19. Now I’ll turn on the Compound Path we made, I currently have it hidden. You can see with it on all of the content outside of my business card is now not showing. Make sure your compound path layer is at the very top and isn’t under anything. Also, notice that my text is going to be way too close to the edge of the card, almost hanging off.

20. Now I’ll turn my guides back on (Ctrl+;). You can see even though I moved my text already it’s still outside my safety (inner) guides so I’ll need to move it in more.

21. I moved my text back into the safety, I also was getting annoyed with the artboard (black box). You can turn it off by going to View > Hide Artboard. Also, notice how my layers are organized. I generally keep my overlays on top and keep them locked so I don’t move them by mistake. Lastly I always keep my guides on there own layer. If your guides are scattered throughout many layers you’ll end up deleting them by mistake when you remove a layer you don’t want.

As I said at the start this tutorial is for a business card template, but you can use these same techniques in a few other adobe applications like Photoshop (with the marquee) or InDesign. In addition, when I create a website I always use the these same techniques for creating my template in Photoshop.