DESIGN YOUR OWN BUSINESS CARDS

Transcription

1 DESIGN YOUR OWN BUSINESS CARDS USING VISTA PRINT FREE CARDS I m sure we ve all seen and probably bought the free business cards from Vista print by now. What most people don t realize is that you can customize those cards. You are not stuck with the design, or the art, or the information that Vista Print suggests. I've been able to customize both the basic and the premium cards with no increased charge (i.e., the cards are free, I only paid $450 for postage) However, in this example, we re going to be looking at the premium cards. If you are patient, you ll soon receive an offer to upgrade to premium business cards for free. So if the customizing seems too complicated on the free basic cards don t worry. Free premium cards are just around the corner. You ve probably gotten an like this from Vista Print. Usually there are 6 or so offers for free stuff business cards, magnets, postcards, brochures, etc. The customizing works more or less the same way for all of them. Once you understand how to customize the business cards, you'll be able to customize magnets or postcards or whatever you want. If you haven t gotten on Vista Print s mailing list which you can do by ordering from them you can still get some free offers by following an affiliate link. Cindy s site, CloverCitySells has a link that looks like this. Just click on it and you re on your way. Once you order something, you ll get regular s. So don t worry about taking advantage of every offer. If they aren t selling something you want, let it go until you see something you can really use. 1

2 If you clicked on the Free Premium Business Cards link in the we just saw, it would have taken you here to Vista print s Business Card Template page. By default, this is all pretty simple. Click click click and you have a business card but your card looks like every other Vista print card and it may not tell anyone the things you think are important about your business. Remember it s YOUR business. Vista Print s template is only a suggestion. You don t have to add a line of text that they suggest to this card. You don t need to use their fields or fonts or color schemes. Also don t be too linear. Most business cards, it s true, are longer than they are tall (that s called landscape orientation) DON T ALWAYS DO THE EXPECTED Maybe VERTICAL is better But that doesn t mean all business cards need to look that way. Depending on the information you are trying to get across to your customers, a card that is taller than it is wide i.e., one in portrait orientation may be more effective. For instance - you may want to say you are selling the hottest new items, or that you re selling at Fire Sale prices. 2

3 Begin by changing the layout style from Horizontal (which is the default) to VERTICAL The cards will be oriented automatically, and all the print fields will be resized and lined up on the fly to take advantage of that orientation. This is a very nice feature, because it can be a real pain trying to move everything around if you just want to see what one type of card looks like vs. another type of card. By switching between these two choices Horizontal and Vertical you can visually double check your idea before you get too far into the design Here s a card that works well as a vertical card. By making the card tall, the flames seem to leap higher. It s not necessary to have this sort of graphic for vertical cards to work. But if you do have a picture that looks best when it is tall and thin, try making a vertical card. You might find that in certain circumstances it works very well. But in this demo, we re going to use a traditional horizontal business card. There are two was to find graphics for you card on Vista print. The most obvious way and the one most people use is the Browse Designs By Categories link box on the left hand side of the page. This will give you lots of graphics, and they will be arranged in a sensible way. 3

4 If you have an idea of what sort of graphic you d like and if it is tied to a particular field or industry go ahead and click on the link and browse through the choices. The Styles tab isn t really very useful. There aren t that many styles, and when you browse, you get a lot of overlap. I d recommend ignoring that option unless you really like to just browse aimlessly. FIND MORE DESIGNS Search by KEYWORDS Instead A better way to find things on Vista Print is to do the same thing you do on ebay or Google or most internet sites SEARCH BY KEYWORDS. At the top of the page is a Search Designs box right above the Horizontal / Vertical radio buttons. Type your keyword in there and click Go The keywords don t have to be very specific or clever. You are searching through photos and clip art not actual text so you want to use simple, concrete names of things, like computer or keyboard or mouse A search for something like ebay isn t likely to turn up a graphic on Vista Print. Even auction is pretty nebulous. But Gavel might work. So try to think of every day words or activities to get the best selection of art to choose from. You ll find many, many graphics that don t come up when you search using the Browse Designs links 4

5 Joni has agreed to let me use her ebay store, Joni s Red Onion, for our sample business card. My first search was for patterns which didn t turn up anything usable it actually just turned up geometric patterns. Needles got a very creepy bunch of acupuncture pictures which I guess means naturopaths use Vista print a lot. So I ended up using Sewing as my search term There were 5 or 6 pages of possible cards. If you can t see the design very well because the pictures are too small, double click on the picture of the card Then you ll see a larger image. That s also how you begin customizing the card. When you see the design you want, double click on it. If you double click and don t like the design, just use your browser s back button to go back to the big selection of designs and keep looking through them until you find one you do like IT S YOUR BUSINESS CUSTOMIZE So let s begin to really customize a card 5

6 Under all the information fields on the left hand side of the screen, you ll see a link that says I want to customize Click on it Occasionally, you ll see a different style link because Vista Print has so many options and designs. You may, instead, see the Customize Now button in the lower right hand side of the screen. 6

7 Click on it AN OLD FRIEND The Formatting Toolbar And above the graphic you ve chosen for your business card, you ll now see the formatting toolbar. 7

8 Even if you ve never customized a card on Vista Print before, this toolbar will be familiar to you. It is set up with the same icons and commands as most web formatting toolbars. It s pretty much the exact same toolbar as you see on the ebay Sell You Item Form or on any web editor (AOL or Yahoo or Google or Hotmail) You can change fonts with the drop down font box (which will also let you preview a font before you choose it) You can add bold and italics. You can center or right or left justify text, or change the size of the text. Next to the font drop down list to the left you can see the familiar undo/redo arrows (Grayed out here, since we haven t done anything yet) So don t be afraid to try different things, or to just click on buttons to see what they do. You can always undo anything As you type, the words will start appearing on the business card. Remember this is your business card, not Vista Print s. You do not have to fill in the information they ask for. If you don t want your company name on the first line, don t put it there. In this example, I actually did use Joni s store name as the company name and I added her name and a message in the boxes where Vista Print suggested. But when I got to Job Title I entered her ebay ID (or what we ll pretend is her ebay ID I mistyped it. If you are searching for Joni on ebay, her ID is chalupa348 ) Job Title is a meaningless line for an ebayer. But they ve already added a text box to the template so use it however you like. 8

9 Now look at the card itself. It s an awful jumble Here s a close up. The slogan is too big and it runs over the name. In fact, even if it didn t wrap to a second line, it would be too big. The slogan is taking over the card it has taken on more importance than it actually has Let s start by making the font smaller. Double click on the words that you want to change. A text box indicated bylines drawn with slash marks and drag handles at the corners will appear. When that happens, the formatting toolbar will change from this 9

10 to this. Notice how all the information about the text is now visible. You can see that the font is Arial. You have the option to change the font size and color. When you start making changes the text box frame changes from the gray hash marks to a broken red line. Click on the drop down arrow next to the font size. You ll get a long list of possible font sizes. Click on the one you want If you want to make other changes to the text, go right ahead while the box is still active. You can use the bold and italic, or the paragraph alignment You might even want to use the character map to add symbols that aren t normally found on your keyboard, like a Trademark symbol or a copyright symbol. The character map looks like dice with some runes on it. Click on it. 10

11 The available high ASCII characters which you usually get to through some super secret keystroke combinations are displayed. Click on the one you want and click insert. The character will be added to your text. We ve made the slogan smaller. Let s also change the color and style of the font used for the store name. First I made it bold and italic by clicking on the B and the I Then, to change color, I clicked on the A with the colored underline. That pops up a palette with suggested colors, already keyed to match well with the other colors in your template. Usually, one of these colors will work. But if you re really going wild, or if you have a special shade of blue or red or whatever associated with your business, click on the More colors link at the bottom. The full 16 million color Windows palette is available. If you know the colors RGB values (i.e., black is 0,0,0 white is 255, 255, 255 everything else is somewhere in between), you can even enter them, to get an exact color match. 11

12 COLOR OUTSIDE THE LINES! YOU decide what information is important Add anything you want Make the text meaningful for YOUR business So we ve got the name of the store, which we ve changed to an italic, red font. We ve made the Message line smaller so it doesn t overwhelm the card. Where Vista Print suggested job title, we typed in ebay ID: chalupa348 Now comes the address. You certainly could add your address but your store s address is not that important. No need to add it right away. How about, instead, adding a small message for your customers, like Thank you for your business? Again we customized the font by changing the size and color. The Vista Print palette suggested shades that matched the graphic, so I picked one of them. 12

13 Don t let the field labels determine what your card looks like. Play with it. Go ahead and just try anything that comes into your head. BRAINSTORM!! Add ideas as you get them Place the text where it does the most good Don t be bound by text box labels Remember Vista Print knows what looks good in general. On Average. They don t know you and they don t know your business. They certainly don t know your customers. You don t have to ignore their suggestions completely but you don t have to be bound by them, either. Experiment. Maybe you were planning to use the address lines for your store s URL. But when you actually see it on the card, you realize it would have looked better by your ebay ID. You don t have to delete text just to re-enter it somewhere else. Click on the text as though you were going to edit it. Then hover your mouse cursor. See how the cursor changes to the 4 headed arrow cursor? You can now click and drag the text box to any location on the card that you choose. Let s move it up immediately under the ebay ID line. Drag it by single clicking with your left mouse button and holding the button down while you drag. Then drop it in the new location by releasing the mouse button. 13

14 Vista Print supplies handy visual clues to let you know if you are trying to place text in an area that won t print. Do you see how the cursor has changed from the 4 headed arrow to the No sign (circle with a slash through it)? That means you can t drop it in that area. You can drop the text box anywhere when the cursor looks like a normal arrow cursor. We ve quickly changed the placement of the URL without having to go through the bother of retyping the text. 14

15 The Vista Print cards appear to have a predetermined amount of information, with the fields on the left side of the screen. That isn t true. KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU RE SATISFIED If you have something more to say Add Additional Text Boxes You can add additional text boxes and place them wherever you want. This is especially useful if you want to mix a bold type or a colored type with a normal type in a block of information. On Vista print, you can t mix type faces inside a text box. If your paragraph is Arial 10 pt, Normal, then every word is Arial 10 pt Normal. If you want to add a line in bold just add a new text box. Under the font drop down box, you ll see the Add Text Box symbol. Click on it. A new box, bounded by the gray hash marks, appears - usually somewhere you don t want it. 15

16 Don t worry about placement yet. I ve found that if you drag the new text box to a clear area, you frequently lose it. You can t see it when you want to use it. So just start typing wherever the box appears, and place it when you are done You can change the type style here just as you would anywhere else. When you are done, drag and drop the new box into place. 16

17 Here s the custom card so far. Almost done! ADD COLOR AND STYLE Use an additional font for sub headings So far, we ve only used the default font which is Arial. You can dress up your card by adding a second, decorative font for the subheadings. IT S A BUSINESS CARD NOT A RANSOM NOTE Don t go overboard with fonts But please limit the number and types of fonts you use. Remember it s a business card, not a ransom note. 17

18 To change fonts, click into the text box and then just choose a new font from the font drop down menu. You don t have to highlight or choose the text. The font will automatically be applied to all the text in the text box. As you can see, the name of the font displayed using the actual type face, so you can see the font before choosing to use it. Here s the default business card. This is what we would have ended up with if we d just followed Vista Print s input suggestions And here is a customized one. When you give it to a customer, they are going to have exactly the information they need to find your store or your auctions the next time they log on to ebay. 18

19 Here are the two cards, are side by side. Let me say again there is nothing wrong with the default. But it doesn t say anything special about you or your business. This one looks a little more personal. But maybe, after getting this far, you decide that you really hate the image and you should have used a different one after all. You do not need to go back and start over from the beginning. Double click on the image itself, and then click on the third radio button, Search and choose from a gallery of thousands of photos and illustrations. Then click Next. 19

20 Fill in a keyword You ll see a gallery of images, much like the one you saw when you first searched. Double click on the picture you want to use instead of the original one. And it is inserted into the business card without disturbing any of your customizations. That s better! 20

21 The same principles apply throughout Vista Print. You can just as easily customize return address labels. ADDRESS LABELS LEAD DOUBLE LIVES Labels can have any information you want them to have Labels can be great advertising And just as you did with the business cards use the labels for whatever purpose suits your business. They do not need to be return address labels. They can have your store and user ID and address, and be used to close packages. They can be affixed to whatever you are selling, if a label wouldn t diminish the value of the item. They can go over store labels and price tags. Use your imagination Pick a graphic, exactly as you did with the business cards. Then click on the Customize Now! button 21

22 Fill in your information, using anything that is relevant. Don t worry yet about line wrapping and font size. Just figure out what you want to say. Do you like the graphic but hate the color scheme? Is that maroon background NOT a color you want for your store? Click on the Change color scheme link in the lower left. You ll get a drop down box showing well over a dozen different color schemes. Click on a name to apply one, then change that by clicking on a different one, until you find a background that you like. You can always change the color of the fonts independently of the background by using the text tool. But you have to change the background color by using the Color Scheme tool. 22

23 The same, familiar formatting toolbar allows you to change the text to any font face, size, and color. Just as you did with the business card, double click on the text box to choose it, then customize it. Here s a return address label that makes sense for an ebay store. It s not for the convenience of the Post Office it s for your ebay customers. The Post Office can find you through the packaging that a customer will just throw away. A sticker like this, somewhere on the item or the inside wrapping might be kept. And the customer can find you again. Anything you can do to turn a customer into a repeat customer is good and 140 of these labels cost under $

24 WHAT DO YOU NEED? Don t be trapped by canned ideas Don t always do the expected thing Use your imagination Keep your name in front of your customers It s your store, your ebay identity. Market it market yourself. Don t just accept templates and defaults when they can be easily changed to unique images and text that will showcase your products and services. 24