How to make business cards in LaTeX
When we set up our company, we needed some business cards.
VistaPrint will make business cards from a PDF file made according to the following specifications: “Full Bleed Size: 90mm x 52mm; Document Trim Size: 87mm x 49mm”.
I prefer doing typography in LaTeX, so I just needed to set this up properly.
I had a few problems with the margins, but with some help from DK-TUG’s mailing list, I came up with the following:
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{memoir}
\setstocksize{52mm}{90mm}
\setpagecc{49mm}{87mm}{*}
\settypeblocksize{43mm}{81mm}{*}
\setulmargins{3mm}{*}{*}
\setlrmargins{3mm}{*}{*}
\setheadfoot{0.1pt}{0.1pt}
\setheaderspaces{1pt}{*}{*}
\checkandfixthelayout[fixed]
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{color}
\begin{document}
\pagecolor[cmyk]{...}
...
\end{document}
The “[fixed]” option is very important here, but it is only available in the newest versions of memoir, so you might need to upgrade this package if you have problems getting it to work.
After designing the actual business card, I ran it through pdflatex and uploaded the resulting file to VistaPrint, and it worked beautifully, as can be seen on the photo.
Comments
11 Responses to “How to make business cards in LaTeX”
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could you send me an complete example of your business card? I like it, but what i tried with your hints did not compile.
Greetings from TroLUG
Hi TroLUG,
I’ve put a small compiling example here: http://widmann.org.uk/businesscard-template.tex
If that doesn’t work for you, I think you need a new memoir class installed.
Many thanks for this, it saved a lot of time. I’ve added lines (using epic) & graphics (using graphicx) to emulate a design that had originally been created in someone else’s copy of MS Publisher.
One of the (many) advantages of this new design is the fact that with comments, it’s self-documenting. This is very useful as we need to make changes only very rarely and it was a pain to have to re-learn Publisher every time.
I am using a very recent version of the Memoir class (24 July 2009, v1.6180339h), and the “fixed” option is not working:
Any suggestions?
Never mind the previous post. Apparently Latex was still using an old version of memoir despite my having installed a newer one.
Hi Thomas,
thanks for sharing that example! I could compile it with TeX Live 2009 (pretest version). I just wondered about a warning, overfull \vbox (13.49998pt too high), but it’s not detracting.
Best regards,
Stefan
I have used Vistaprint too for a business card but it seems to me that from their web site they only do light cards, like 200gsm?
I had mine printed on 100-lb (265g/m²) Premium Matt Paper by Vistaprint.
Would like to explain me the code so I can obtain color on the edge on my document.
Thanks
On the edge? Do you mean on the actual edge, so that the cards have a colour when stacked? Or do you want the card to be framed?
If it’s the former, it would depend on the printer, and Vistaprint can’t do it AFAIK.
If the latter, Vistaprint aren’t guaranteeing enough precision to make this look good, so it wouldn’t be advisable.
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