ImposeIQ Business Card Creator guide

Overview

Business Card Creator designs a card on the card itself, shows it in 3D with its foil and gloss catching the light, and writes the print PDF, a proof and the imposed press sheets. Any element can print as a foil, a hologram, Spot UV or a blind emboss; those are written the way Gilder reads them, so Open in Gilder shows the finished card and makes the embellisher's files. Open it from Home and pick a card type or a sample; Cards… brings the start screen back.

Cards and sizes

• Standard card: US 3.5 × 2″, Europe 85 × 55, credit card (CR80), Japan, Australia, slim, square and mini, or any size; landscape or portrait (Turn); square or rounded corners. Front only or both sides.
• Die-cut card: circle, oval, leaf, arch, ticket (scooped corners), clipped corners, hexagon or a rounded tab. The bleed is the cut grown by the bleed all the way round, and the safe area follows the shape. The die line goes out as a CutContour spot colour.
• Fold-over card: twice the size, scored and folded along the top (a tent) or the side (a book), with a front, a back and two inside faces. Folding along the top, the back prints upside down above the front so both read once folded, and the inside is laid out as opened and backs up turned 180°.

Designing on the card

• Pick a face at the top left of the preview. + Text, + Image, + Box, + Rule, + Circle and + QR code add an element; click one on the card to select it and drag to move it. Eight handles resize it: the corners both ways, the sides one way, with the opposite edge staying put; Shift on a corner keeps the proportions (an image always does). On text the side handles change the wrap width and the top, bottom and corners scale the type. Arrow keys nudge (Shift = 5 mm) and Delete removes it.
• Text takes any of the bundled fonts, a size in points, bold, italic, capitals and left, centre or right alignment, wrapped to its width. Copy to other side puts an element on every face.
• Classic, Centred and Bold lay every face out again with the usual fields; the images stay.
• Images: the logo and any pictures, PNG, JPEG, SVG or PDF (a PDF stays vector). A face can also have a background colour and a background image, with bleed.
• The guides show the cut (red), the bleed (dotted), the safe area (blue, following a die shape) and the fold (green). The checks warn about type outside the safe area, type under 5.5 pt, foil on type under 7 pt and a QR code under 15 mm.

Foil, Spot UV and Gilder

• Prints as sets what an element is: ink; ink with Spot UV over it; Spot UV alone (clear); gold, silver, rose gold, blue, red or green foil; a rainbow, prism, sparkle or pinstripe hologram; or a blind emboss or deboss. A foil or emboss takes the place of the ink.
• Background pattern (on the Face card): dots, scattered dots, stripes, pinstripes, chevrons, waves, grid, crosshatch, checkerboard, diamonds, honeycomb, scales, ripples, triangles, repeating text (with «fields») or the repeating logo, over the whole face and its bleed, under the elements. Set the repeat, the dot or line size and the angle; it prints as Spot UV alone to start with, and can be any finish or ink. The presets give a starting point. The checks warn when a line or dot is under 0.4 mm, which a Spot UV or foil may not hold, or so heavy it closes up.
• An image or a QR code in a finish uses its dark (or, for a transparent PNG, its opaque) parts, so a black logo becomes a gold one.
• Every finish is written into the PDFs in its own overprinting spot colour, named so Gilder reads it back as that finish (“Gold foil”, “Spot UV gloss”, “Rainbow hologram”…). The Finishes card lists them.
• Open in Gilder hands the card over: Gilder opens it with the finishes already picked, shows them in the light and writes the CMYK file and the plates for the embellisher. Press sheets in Gilder does the same for the imposed sheets.
• The 3D view shows the card with its thickness, the foils as metal, holograms with their rainbow, Spot UV as gloss and emboss raised; move the mouse to swing the light across it.

Variable data and vCards

• Open a .csv or Excel file whose first row names the columns, or try Use the sample staff list. Type «Name» (or click a column) in any text and it fills from each row; an empty field drops its line.
• A QR code can hold a vCard made from the fields — name, title, company, phones, email, website and address — so every card carries its own contact; or a web address or any text, with fields.
• Print only when… prints an element only for records where a column matches (equals, contains, is empty…).
• ◀ ▶ at the bottom step through the records. The print PDF writes a card per person in the range.

Printing, press sheets and cutters

• Print PDF: a page per printed side of each card, with bleed, trim and bleed boxes, crop marks and a slug; the die line can go in as CutContour. Proof PDF shows every face flat with its cut, for approval.
• Press sheet: the sheet (12 × 18 takes 21 US cards), gap, margin and turning; One card, repeated for one person's run, or A different person in each place for a staff list. The backs back up work-and-turn at the mirrored place.
• Cutter marks: pick the machine the sheets go to. The sheet carries only that cutter's marks, only its options show, and the margins move so no mark lands on a card (the checks say so if one does, or if the machine does not take the sheet).
  • Crop marks — guillotine: crop ticks round the grid, one pair per cut.
  • Duplo DC card cutter: the REG mark at the top-right of the lead edge and the job barcode for the DC job number (DC-618, DC-648, DC-746). The DC cuts straight lines, so the checks stop a die shape going to it. With the DC-648 chosen, two more options appear, drawn as the OMR Generator draws them: Skew Mark — a 10 mm bar at the lead edge, 50–60 mm in from the right, that the DC-648 uses to check the sheet fed square; and Shrink Mark — a second L like the REG mark, its corner 9 mm in from the right edge and 370 mm down from the lead edge by default (Shrink mark from the lead edge), from which the DC-648 measures how much the print has shrunk or stretched. On a short sheet the shrink mark moves up to stay 25 mm clear of the trail edge; the cards move in from the right edge to keep clear of it.
  • Duplo UD-320 rotary die cutter: the X / Y register marks the Cover Builder and the Folder and Envelope Creators use — a 3 × 100 mm Y bar centred 5 mm from the lead edge, and a 3 × 25 mm X mark 100 mm from centre on the front and 76 mm on the other side on the back (both faces are marked). Y mark only moves the Y bar to 10 mm and drops the X mark; X mark (front) chooses its side. Turn the artwork 1° clockwise turns the cards (not the marks or slug) about the sheet centre to match a die that cuts a touch out of square. Sheets 210–390 × 297–520 mm.
  • DSM-1000 platen die cutter: the Digital Die Cut registration bars — 3 mm bars 12 mm in from both side edges, 198 mm from the lead, and the conveyance bar at the trail on the reference side. Reference (belt) edge picks the side that runs on the conveyance belt; nothing is cut within the Reference margin (28 mm or more) of it. Sheets 279–530 × 279–750 mm.
  • Digital die cutter: only the locator marks the cutter's camera reads — black circles or crosses (Locator mark, Mark size 3–20 mm) round the sheet, placed as the Digital Die Cut engine places them, with no crop ticks or DC marks.
  With a UD-320, DSM-1000 or digital die cutter (or a die-cut card) Cut file PDF writes the die lines of each card on the sheet in CutContour.
• Slug: every press sheet, in the preview and the PDF, carries a line along its bottom edge naming the job, the card size, the number up, the sheet, the cutter (with the DC model and job number), the face (front or back, and sheet n of N) and the date.
• Templates keep the card, every face and the press settings — and the images under 4 MB — on this PC; Export writes an .iqcard file with every image. Output from an unlicensed copy is marked DEMO.
• Samples: Ridgeline Print Co., a leaf die-cut florist card, a circle kraft coffee card with a blind emboss, a black card in silver foil and hologram, and a fold-over salon appointment card. The names are made up.