Creating a Template in Illustrator

I am going to show you how you can assemble your 10 business card designs together on one page.

1. Using Adobe Illustrator, you should open a letter sized print document 8.5 x 11.
2. Then select "Show Rulers" under the "View" menu.
3. Find centre of the document. Create guide lines by clicking inside of the rulers and then dragging a grid line onto your document (these are only imaginary lines, they will not print out). First create a vertical centre line pull the line to 4.25 inches and then a horizontal centre line pull the line to 5.5 inches so you should have the lines crossing in the very centre of your document.
4. Draw a top guide line and a bottom guide line on your template 0.5 inch from the top and 0.5 inch from the bottom.
5. Create the side guides 0.75 of an inch in from both vertical sides of the document.
6. Open your business card files and select all- Control+A or "Select" menu and "Select All". then group all of the parts Control+G or "Object" menu and "Group". (You may want to draw a temporary 2" x 3.5" border around your business card so you can place each card correctly on the template).
7. Copy your card design and then Paste into the template
8. Repeat steps six and seven ten times to fill the template.
9. "Save As" the document "10business cards.ai".
10. Convert the file to a "jpg" to add to your blog. "File">"Export">"10business cards.jpg"
11. Then select your best design out of the ten different ideas and assemble 10 on one page to print them out.
12. "Select All" then "Delete" the 10 different card designs from the template.
13. Repeat steps six and seven, but this time paste the same design onto the template 10 times.
14. "File">"Save As" your document so you create a new file.
15. Print your 10 same designs onto business card paper using the Epson printer.