Use PowerPoint to design and print business cards. Size and resolution adjustment are the key points
Want to design your own business card? Usually, you need to use professional software, such as Coreldraw or illustrator, when designing business cards, but professional tools are not only expensive, but also only for the design of business cards, it is more cost-effective to purchase the software directly. Is there any other way to design a business card? Yes, in fact, as long as you use PowerPoint, you can easily design, and you can also adjust the size and resolution to the printable size and quality, so how do you do it? Next, I will tell you in two parts!
What are the requirements for sending and printing business cards?
Before starting to talk regarding business card design, let’s share the requirements for sending and printing business cards. Whether it is online printing or physical printing, the most important thing is size and resolution. Usually, the general business card specification is 90x54mm, but a bleed width of 1mm is required on the four sides, so the image file to be provided is 92x56mm; and the resolution part , the minimum requirement is 300dpi. Under these two basic requirements, PowerPoint can be used to achieve it, but in fact there is a requirement for color accuracy, which requires professional tools. This article will not mention the consistency of screen color and printed color.
Start designing the first step is to set the size
The first step to design a business card is to determine the size before finding suitable materials for the design. In this step, it is necessary to pay attention to the setting of the bleeding line. The purpose of the bleed line is to avoid inaccurate cropping and the content will be cut off, so no important patterns or information should be left outside the bleed line. In addition, in order to avoid leaving white edges, it is recommended that the pattern or background color outside the bleed line be the main image extension. Next, let’s design your business card step by step:
1. Add a blank presentation following opening PowerPoint
2. In Design Options, select a slideshow size
3. Click Customize slide size
4. Set the width and height, please note that the width of the bleed line specified by each printing factory is different, so if you want to print a 54x90mm business card, the bleed line is 1mm, please remember to add 2mm to the length and width, that is, 56x92mm to ensure A 1mm bleeding area can be left around.
5. Choose to ensure the optimal size, which can avoid blurring caused by over-enlargement of the image with insufficient resolution. This can also reduce the large image to a suitable range, so that the slideshow can accommodate the image, which is convenient for subsequent editing work.
6. To set the bleeding line method, you can use the method of inserting a rectangular pattern.
7. After inserting and dragging the size at will, right-click on the graphic directly to select the size and position.
8. Then adjust the size in the size section, please note that the size here does not include the bleed area, so we set it to 54x90mm. In addition, it is necessary to set the position of the bleeding area, which is 1mm, and directly adjust the horizontal and vertical positions to 0.1 cm at the lower position.
9. Don’t leave following setting the size and position. There is an icon of a paint bucket on the left side of the size. Click No Fill, and it will become a blank work area. By the way, the newly added title can be deleted directly It’s okay to drop. In addition, you can also set the bleeding line as a dotted line, just select the dotted line type in the line option below.
10. The last step is also a very important step, to lock the bleed line, because we will drag the image or text box during the drawing process, and it is easy to pull the bleed line, then just lock it. Click the right mouse button directly on the frame line, you can see the lock, just press it directly.
11. If you want to ensure that important information does not exceed the bleeding line during design, you can move the layer up or down at any time to know whether the current design exceeds the line. Next, I will leave it to everyone to develop creative designs, but it is not over yet. The next stage is to share how to export image files.
Export high-resolution image files
After the business card is designed, the business card is still in the form of a slideshow, so it is necessary to export the business card as an image file at this time. It is actually very simple for PowerPoint to export slideshows to image files, but it is a bit troublesome to export high-resolution image files. So the next steps are a little bit complicated, but fortunately, you don’t have to worry regarding it once you set it up once.
Export image file method
1. Click on the file
2. Under File Options, select Export
3. Click to change the file type, select Portable Network Graphics, and finally save a new file. However, it should be noted that before the high resolution is set, the exported pixel density is only 96dpi, which is completely unable to meet the printing resolution of 300dpi, so the next step is very important.
Set up high-resolution export
The next steps may seem a little complicated, but it’s easy to follow along.
1. After pressing the Windows Icon, there is a search on the top, enter regedit in it, you can find the registry editing program, and directly press it to enter.
2. After entering, you will see a large data box. The easiest way is to copy the long string of paths below and paste them directly on the top. By the way, I am using Office 365, different Office versions will have different folder paths, and so on will help you explain the paths of other versions.
Copy this –> HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice16.0PowerPointOptions
The paths of different versions of Office are as follows:
Microsoft 365、PowerPoint 2019、PowerPoint 2016
– HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice16.0PowerPointOptions
PowerPoint 2013
– HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice15.0PowerPointOptions
PowerPoint 2010
– HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice14.0PowerPointOptions
PowerPoint 2007
– HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice12.0PowerPointOptions
PowerPoint 2003
– HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftOffice11.0PowerPointOptions
3. After opening the file box, you will see a bunch of things that you don’t understand. These are login procedures, but you don’t need to understand them. Next, you just need to click the right mouse button on the blank space below those files, and Add will pop up, and then click DWORD (32-bit) value (D).
4. After adding, change the file name to ExportBitmapResolution, which means to set the export resolution.
5. The last step is to open the file that has just been renamed, select 10 in it, and enter 300 in the value information. 300 means 300dpi.
6. After setting up the login editing program, you can re-export the picture. For example, a 300dpi picture of 56x92mm has a size of 1086×661 pixels. This completes the export of the picture, and then it can be delivered directly for printing.
postscript
Although making business cards with PowerPoint is not as powerful as designing business cards with professional software, it is quite enough for ordinary people. What’s more, the aesthetic feeling has nothing to do with the software. As long as you have the aesthetic feeling of arranging the layout, you can easily complete the production of business cards with PowerPoint.