A Double Sided Business Card Mini Brochure

A Mini Brochure



So I was needing to update my promotional materials and I thought this would be a good time to use a really cool technique to Create a mini brochure Business Card size.
Let's go thru the process.
Personally I'm an instant gratification type of girl and I like to be able to print my stuff myself and not wait until I've sent my docs off to the printer to see how it works, so I test drove some of the new features in Illustrator CS4 to Set up the card and print it.
In the newest version of Illustrator it is very easy to set up double sided printing because they give you the use of multiple artboards on your screen.
For this card you need to set up the document to have multiple Artboards and you do this from the New Document screen.



Where it says number of Artboards change that to 2. In the width and height change that to 4 inches wide and 3.75 inches high. This will create two art boards that are double business card size. You can size these up a bit to fit your purposes.
Inside of Illustrator you will find two art boards side by side that are constrained to your specified size. The next step is to start on your design. Turn your rulers on and set up your guides for bleed and for the fold at 2 inches on both boards and begin laying out your design.
The front of your document should be on the left artboard with the front cover actually on the right and the back cover actually on the right. On the second Artboard the text for the left inside should be on the left and the right inside text will be of course on the right.
Complete your design and then go ahead and print it out using the illustrator print options.
You need to have some knowledge of how your printer handles double sided prints. For me it was easiest to print the cards one at a time and flip the paper each time to get the print on the back.
When you are ready to get really fancy you can create a new document and layout multiple cards using copy and paste but your placement needs to be precise. Use your rulers and remember to place each front and back in exactly the same place on each artboard, re sizing each artboard when finished to remove any dead or negative space. Your finished product will look something like the finished product below. If you are sending to a printer to print the rest it is best to convert all of your text to outlines to avoid text issues and save as an EPS and then distill it to a single PDF document. I hope this helps anyone who designs on how to get a proof printed at home with double sided printing

The Anatomy of a Logo

Ok so I have gotten a few comments on the Logo and I figured this would make a really good blog post. Some people find text based logos overdone and boring but I would like to just say pish posh. You know all those really cool decorative fonts that are just lingering on your computer that you've horded looking for the right place to use them? This would be the time to dust those bad boys off and have a go at creating a refreshingly simple logo.

For the Shes So Crafty Logo I started with a sketch of intersecting Ss and a looping scripted C that ties them together. I think the sketch is the most important part, granted you could just sit down and fiddle with your letters till you get em right but, starting with a basic sketch lets you know where to start and streamlines your process. Once I had the sketch done I spent some time in my font viewer software hunting. I wanted a very ornate font for the intersecting Ss and a pretty simple scripted C to tie them both together.

I contemplated several choices for the Ss and finally decided on VTKS Revolt, For its nifty flourishes but simple easily readable letter styles.

Next step was the layout in Illustrator. I decided that the second S should be reversed, which gave it a kind of quirky feel. Now I needed a Scripted C that was less ornate but still fit with the flourishy touches of the S.

I settled for an oldy but goody AT Mahogony Script with its simple curves and the loop on the scripted C which gave the logo balance. I centered the C in the middle of the two S Coverted it to outlines so that I could further manipulate the C to intersect in the right spaces. I kept the C in just outlines to balance the heavy color of the flourishes in the Ss. And Voila. A fresh take on the standard Text based Logo. Most of the time when you think text based logo you are thinking of something more utilitarian, but as you can see this result is fresh and elegant yet simple in its conception. Dust off those fonts and give this new take on a graphic design classic a whirl!