Design Postcards in InDesign to Connect

Make sure your message is delivered by laying out and printing postcards correctly.

Since the mid-1800s, postcards have been a comparatively inexpensive way to send a short message. But with so many modern options for flashy digital interactive messaging, how does the humble printed postcard survive? The reason is simple: You can’t avoid physical mail. Even if you just pick up the postcard on the way to the recycling bin, chances are you’ll see something on it.

As designers, our job is to use our skills to use that brief encounter to convey real information and, hopefully, prompt an action. By following a few design strategies and production criteria when creating postcard layouts, you can offer your clients an effective, lower-cost vehicle to get their messages across.

You can let your imagination run wild on the front of a postcard (as long as nothing can be mistaken for an address or indicia). However, the back side and the card’s overall dimensions must adhere to several layout rules and ink and paper choices if the cards are to be delivered as quickly as possible for the lowest possible cost. These strictures vary across the world; in this article, I’ll focus on United States postal regulations, but two tables do include information on postcard sizes and rates around the world.

How to Design the Best Backs

Whichever side holds the ship-to address is Design Postcards to Connect considered the mailing panel (more commonly, the “back”) and has the most restrictions for positioning of graphic elements. My recommendations in this article will, for the most part, result in a postcard back readable by the Post Office’s scanners. That lets you take advantage of lower automation or bulk rates.

The address must be parallel to the longest side, so that it’s readable when the postcard is horizontal. (Cards that are square, round, or die-cut shapes can ignore this regulation, since they’ll be hand-sorted by the Post Office.) The rest of the graphics on the mailing panel can be the same orientation as the address or rotated, as long as they don’t interfere with the postal scanning.

In any print project, there are three edges to be aware of: trim, bleed, and live. The trim area is the most obvious, being the finished size of the printed piece. The bleed area is larger and extends past the trim, allowing images to appear right up to the cut edge. The live area is the inner safety zone for important images and information, where there’s no risk that they’ll be shifted too close to the trim and risk being cut off.

Keep the Clear Zones Clear

There are no special printing considerations for setting up the trim, bleed, and live areas for postcards, but there are definitely mailing guidelines for where ink is permissible.

“Clear zones” are locations that are reserved for postal use, so don’t place text or graphics in those areas. Ink coverage less than 10% density is allowed, so very light screened-back photos and tint colors might be OK, but it’s safer to keep these areas entirely free of printing.

To qualify for the lower presorted standard and bulk rates, you must keep the postage, address, and barcode zones clear of any unrelated printing. (First- Class mail is less strict about the clear areas required but does cost more to send.)

The upper right corner—1.25″ down from the top and 1.25″ from the right edge—is a postage clear zone reserved for the indicia (mailing permit imprint), metered postage, or stamp.

The lower right corner—2.75″ up from the bottom edge and 2.75″ from the right edge—is the mailing address area where no other visuals except the shipto address may appear. Because the indicia must be positioned to the upper right of the delivery address, the top of the address must start lower than the 1.25″ postage clear zone from the top edge.

An area at least 0.625″ (5/8″) across the bottom (longest) edge of the mailing side should be kept unprinted for the sorting barcode. The Post Office will print a barcode here if the area is clear, or slap on a barcode label to cover the area if there is any printing. Either way, any artwork in that space will get covered up, or worse, make your postcard unmailable.

Make the Address Machine-Friendly

The mail-to address is critical to delivery. Follow the recommendations below so that automated postal equipment can read and understand the address text.

• Face: Serif and script typefaces may be difficult for pre-sorting scanners to read, so the Post Office recommends sans serif.
• Case: Uppercase letters are more evenly shaped and easier to scan, so use all-caps whenever possible.
• Size: 10 to 12 point is optimal for the postal scanners to read, so make that cap-height your minimum.
• Spacing: Overlapping characters caused by too much tight kerning/tracking can confuse the scanner, but extreme letterspacing can be a readability problem,
• too. Keep the horizontal letterspacing so that each character stands alone without overlap.
• Leading: If you don’t use all caps, overlapping characters can happen between lines of text as well, so leave enough vertical space clear between lines.
• Underlines: Additional ink near the letters can confuse the character shapes, so no underlines.

The address locations are also important to scanners. Including a return address is a great opportunity for branding and providing contact info, but be careful with the positioning of the return address in relation to the mailing address. The relative position of To: and From: will determine which address the Post Office uses for delivery. Use the wrong return address position, and all of your postcards might mistakenly be sent to the sender!

Any text within 2.75″ of the bottom edge will be scanned as a potential mailing address, so keep your return address above this area. Also, be sure your message can’t be mistaken for an address—don’t include state or ZIP code in your text, or it might be misinterpreted.

Create Mailing Permit Indicias

An indicia is text that tells the Post Office the details of how the mail delivery is being paid for. (The U.S. Postal Service calls it a “Mailing Permit Imprint,” but for simplicity’s sake, let’s stick with “indicia.”) It should be in the same upper-right location where you’d put a postage stamp. Indicia text should be 10 to 12 points, all caps, and a sans-serif typeface. The indicia imprint can be four or five lines, as needed to fit in a compact area, and can be enclosed in a box or not (designer’s choice).

An indicia for outbound mail has several required text elements, in this order:

1. The RATE MARKING, showing the mailing service used.
2. The words “U.S. POSTAGE PAID”, usually with “PAID” on its own line.
3. The CITY and STATE where the mailing permit’s held.
4. The words “PERMIT NO.” and the mailing permit number.

Depending on the mail services you use, indicia Rate Markings can include any combination of First-Class, Standard, Bulk, Pre-Sorted, Non-Profit Organization, and/or Customized Market Mail. A mailing permit has registration costs and minimum quantities that may be too much expense for a small client or project, so many printers and mailing houses will let

Postcard Sizes

Cards that qualify for the postcard mailing rate start at 3.5″ x 5″ size (the smallest allowed size of any U.S. mail piece) and go up to a maximum of 4.25″ x 6″. The most common postcard trim size is 4″ x 6″.

Any piece larger than 4.25″ x 6″ up to 6.125″ x 11.5″ is charged the First-Class rate, even when it’s a flat, unenclosed card. Some standard trim sizes that mail as First-Class include Large 5″ x 7″, Deluxe 6″ x 8.5″, and Super Size 6″ x 9″ postcards.

International Postcard Sizes

In addition to width and height, depth (thickness) also has minimum and maximum limits. A ¼” is the maximum thickness for a standard piece of mail, including postcards larger than 4.25″ x 6″. A card thicker than that is considered a flat or large envelope, with different postal rates. Standard mail has a 0.009″ minimum thickness if the piece is 4.25″ x 6″ or larger, but mailers sized smaller than that are allowed to be slightly thinner. Postcards within the 3.5″ x 5″ to 4.25″ x 6″ range can be as light as 0.007 inches thick, and up Design Postcards to Connect to 0.016″ thick. Less than that is just too thin and flimsy to go through the mailing equipment. See Table 2 for these numbers at a glance.

Proportion matters, too: The aspect ratio has to fall within a certain range to be mailable at regular postage rates. The aspect ratio (length divided by height) has to fall between 1.0-to-1.3 and 1.0-to-1.25 inclusive, or it’s considered non-standard. Anything non-standard must be processed manually, which costs more. Square or skinny shapes outside of this range won’t go through the automated postal equipment, so those get a manual-handling surcharge.

Figure 2: A free template from the Post Office helps check mail piece dimensions. To get an actual template, contact a Postal Business Service Center.

You can quickly evaluate your project against all of these size criteria by using a free template from the Post Office. The Dimensional Standards Template (Notice 3A) is an easy way to check for minimum size, proper height to length ratio, and thickness of your mail piece. Just align your design sample over this white plastic card and see if the corners fall within the recommended dimensions (Figure 2). There’s even a slot to test the maximum thickness of your design sample; if it fits through, it’s OK to mail. Pick up a template at your local Post Office.

Reply Mail

Subscription cards inside magazines are an example of Reply Mail—postcards meant to be sent back to the source. The Post Office has a few options for these kinds of postcards: Business Reply Mail (BRM) and Courtesy Reply Mail (CRM). If your postcard is sent BRM, the sender pays for return postage. If the postcard is sent CRM, senders have to add their own stamps. The Post Office delivers BRM and CRM postcards faster than standard mail, giving a possible business advantage of several days.

A third option, Meter Reply Mail, uses preprinted metered postage affixed to it that doesn’t get charged until it arrives at the originator. But since the MRM format has no special limitations to design around, I won’t cover it in this article.

There are so many restrictions on BRM and CRM card layouts that it’s best to use the official

Post Office digital templates (Figures 3 and 4). You can download Mac and Windows files in several trim sizes at http://pe.usps.com/mpdesign/mpdfr_addl_all.asp. These well-structured documents have an Instructions Layer, Working Layer, and Dimensions Layer. They’re available as Illustrator, Acrobat PDF, and Freehand files, but unfortunately not as InDesign files.

There are more detailed layout guidelines for BRM in Quick Service Guide 507 and for CRM in Quick Service Guide 507b. Check your postcard project against all of these criteria by using the free Automation Letters Template (Notice 67).

Figure 3: Layout guidelines for Business Reply Mail are in the Dimensions Layer of the template.

Figure 4: The Dimensions Layer of the CRM digital template shows the layout guidelines.

 

Shapes: Beyond the Standard Rectangle

So far I’ve covered rectangular postcards within a fairly narrow range of size and proportion. But you can send almost any flat shape through the mail. In 2005, the USPS started the Customized MarketMail (CMM) program, which allows for die-cut “shaped mail” to be sent through the postal system. The first oversized specialty die-cut postcard mailed was shaped like a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

Don’t worry that odd postcard shapes will be tangled in the mail sorter. Because these pieces are sent express to each ZIP code distribution center and then hand-sorted by the final postal carrier, they don’t ever go through any automated machinery. Minimum dimensions of 3.5″ x 5″ and 0.007″ thick still apply, but the maximum size for CMM is 12″ x 15″ x 0.75″ with a top weight limit of 3.3 ounces. Uniform thickness is not required, and attachments up to ¼” thick are allowed. That means you can glue things onto your postcard, such as a product sample. The only shape limitations are the die-cutter tolerances at your print finisher.

CMM materials can be anything semi-rigid that fits within the dimensional criteria. That means materials that would otherwise be considered unmailable are now open for consideration: clear or semi-transparent; mirror-reflective; rough and heavily textured; furry; fluffy; and spongy surfaces are all fair game for CMM.

Having your odd postcard shapes gently handled by people during every step of the delivery process has its price, and some benefits. Between the express delivery and the prioritized hand sorting, CMM can actually be faster than First-Class mail. The postage itself is not bad, but the cost of organizing and drop- shipping each CMM ZIP-zone batch can add up. Note: Due to the additional expense of drop-shipping to each postal station, CMM is more cost-effective when targeting specific ZIP codes than when sending to scattered addresses across the country.

Because of the multi-stage delivery process, CMM won’t be returned to the sender, so you must include “Carrier-Leave If No Response” on CMM pieces in the location of the return address or under the return address, in a minimum 8 pt font size. Be sure to leave a 3.375″ x 2.5″ area to include the mailing address, optional return address, indicia, and “Carrier-Leave If No Response”.

Not just any mail house can participate in this specialized delivery process. The postal service requires the sender to be registered with certain mailing capabilities confirmed. Check with your printer to see if they have the die-cutting and mailsorting capabilities required for CMM shipments. The special standards for designing Customized MarketMail are in Quick Service Guide 705a.

With a huge size, almost any shape, and minimal restrictions on materials, Customized MarketMail is the place where creative postcard inspiration can flourish. CMM will cost you extra, but the dramatic impact of sending attention-getting shapes in the mail may be worth the expense (Figure 5).

Printing Postcards

Postcard printing is fairly straightforward. You can output at your local press or find lots of affordable options from online printers.

Base Stock

If you want the Post Office to process your cards automatically, the stock must be between 0.007″ and 0.016″ thick, and bar-coded pieces more than 4-1/4″ high or 6″ long (either dimension) must be at least 0.009″ thick. Rigidity is also an issue; make sure the stock isn’t too flexible.

In general, avoid patterns, textures, and colors of more than 10% density from white. Within these guidelines, there may be plastics or other non-paper materials that qualify for postcard or letter rate. If you use a stiffer plastic or heavily laminated stock, the rigidity may bump it up to an “automated flat” rate. Check stock samples with the Mailpiece Design Analyst at the nearest Postal Business Service Center, because only they can make the final call.

As you discovered in the section “Shapes: Beyond the Standard Rectangle,” paying a little extra for a “flat” rate or manual handling opens up many more options for mailing postcards made of different materials.

Varnishes

Flood varnishes or coatings can add a nice look and feel to the finished card, but that’s not everything to consider. You may want to keep the postcard surface uncoated or matte so it’s easier to write on, especially if it’s a survey or appointment card. For a calendar or reference postcard that’s intended to be kept and handled repeatedly, adding a heavy laminate or UV coating will make the card more durable.

Inks

Don’t use metallic inks for addresses, because the reflection makes the text unscannable. Also be sure to keep the address color darker than the surrounding area, with a color contrast of at least 15% from the base it’s printed on. Black ink for addresses is the safest choice, and what the Post Office recommends.

Color Control

There are amazing deals online for printing large quantities of color postcards. Many times, these cards are batch-printed with other orders, so your postcard may be one small section of a ganged-up press sheet. You may not have the opportunity for exacting color adjustments and can reasonably expect to get “pleasing color” results only. If your project needs precise color execution, beware, but if pleasing color is acceptable, then by all means give these options a try.

Tempting Templates

With all of these production criteria to consider, optimal postcard design might be more complex than you originally thought. It’s tempting to use a template for guidance. Postcard templates are available from printers and the postal service, and as part of support files that ship with InDesign and Illustrator. But beware that each source has its own agenda. Printers are most concerned about where the ink hits the paper, the Postal Service is simply enforcing pre-sorting and automated mail processing, and the design programs encourage creativity without worrying about critical aspects for mailing (Figure 6).

Figure 6: When you overlay the postal guidelines for positioning text and graphics, it’s clear that this InDesign postcard template is not a good layout example to follow.

Get commercial postcard printing templates and US Mail layout guides.

As I’ve mentioned in previous sections of this article, the Postal Service offers working template files for BRM and CRM, and plastic templates with measurements and guidelines. These are your best bet to ensure that your design qualifies for the lowest possible rates and the most delivery options.

Adobe’s InDesign and Illustrator postcard templates are problematic because they don’t follow the best practices described in this article. In fact, as Figure 6 shows, some of them wouldn’t even be mailable! However, they’re fine for visual inspiration before you get into production setup.

InDesign CS3 and CS4 templates are in Library > Application Support > Adobe Templates > InDesign in their respective version folders, with a postcard example in the Business Sets folder. You can also navigate to the InDesign examples by choosing File > New > Document from Template. In Illustrator CS3, check out Cool Extras > Templates to find folders with Basic and Inspiration examples, and in Illustrator CS4 look in the Cool Extras > en_US > Templates for a few options.

Better Postcards by Design

Based on its dimensions and setup, a mail piece can qualify as a postcard, letter, automated flat, Customized MarketMail or package. Add in lower rates for pre-sorting and bulk quantities, discounts for Non-Profit Organizations, and surcharges for manual handling, and there are lots of factors that determine the actual cost of mailing. Don’t worry, there’s a friendly neighborhood Mailpiece Design Analyst (MDA) to check your work and make sure it fits the criteria. Run a sample of your project past the MDA at any Postal Business Service Center for a free mailing evaluation, find the one nearest to you at https://tools.usps.com/go/POLocatorAction!input.action

As designers we can create postcards that people may glance at and toss out, or that catch their attention with immediate visual impact. Beyond the design of your message, there are plenty of ways to layout your postcard for optimal results. With a very straightforward printing process and a fraction of the cost of other delivery options, these little mailers can be valuable communicators.

From InDesign Magazine. Each issue gives you tips, techniques, and time-savers by an all-star cast of industry experts.

Build a Calendar in InDesign

I’m always amazed at how many people need to make calendars: big calendars, small calendars, one-month calendars, full-year calendars. Fortunately, InDesign offers a “make me a calendar” feature… no, sorry, not really. But it’s so easy to make a calendar in InDesign that it’s as though the program did have such a feature. The trick is to download a template or script that does a lot of the work for you.

Use a Template

One of the best and easiest ways to make a calendar is to use a template designed by someone else. Search for the word “calendar” in the InDesign section at the Adobe exchange and you’ll find a number of free templates. While most are year-specific, there are a couple called “25-year calendars,” such as the clever one rusty Wright built. these contain 28 different master pages, each of which reflect one possible month layout. For example, if January 1 begins on a Monday, you’d apply that particular master page layout to your January document page. You can also find calendar templates for a small fee. Chuck Green’s The InDesign Ideabook includes several calendars on its accompanying disc. note that most of these templates have paragraph styles for each calendar element, so changing the typefaces and overall look and feel of the calendar is typically as simple as editing a few styles.

Use a Script

If you need more flexibility than a template offers, consider using a script to build your calendar for you. One of the most popular and easiest scripts available is called Calendar Wizard, written by Scott Selberg (based on ideas and code written by Jan Suhr, Robert Cornelius, and Steve Nichols). Here’s how it works.

1 – Download, install, and run

Calendar Wizard is available here. After you download and unzip it, install it by putting it inside the InDesign > Presets > Scripts folder (in CS2) or inside the InDesign > Scripts > Scripts Panel folder (in CS3). Note that this gives you four files: the script to make the calendar, a script to realign the calendars, a script to fit a calendar to a frame, and a readMe file with lots of good information on how the script works and how to use it. After installation, you’ll immediately find it in InDesign’s Scripts panel (Window > Automation > Scripts). To run it, double-click on it in the panel (Figure 1). If you get an error at this point, simply open a document, then double-click on the script again.

2 – Choose the Date Range

The first two items in the Calendar Wizard dialog box (Figure 2) are straightforward: They let you choose the starting and ending months and year(s) for your calendar. You can pick any year from 2004 to 2017. If you were hoping for 2018, you’ll have to wait until next year; the script looks only 10 years ahead.

3 – Pick the Calendar Options

You can choose English, German, French, or Spanish from the Language pop-up menu to change the way the text appears (Figure 3). Next, pick whether you want the left column to be a Sunday or a Monday. Note that some months take up only five rows and some take six. (If February 1 lands on a Sunday, it’ll take 4 rows.) In general, you should choose Auto from the Date Rows pop-up menu, but if you want to force all the months to the same number of rows, you can choose that here. If you turn on the Include Mini-Calendar checkbox, you’ll get small versions of the previous and next month’s calendars inset into each month’s calendar. This takes longer to build and creates many more objects on your page, but it can be a good addition to one-month-per-page wall calendars.

4 – Choose Layer Options

One of the coolest things about CalendarWizard is that it can make good use of the Layers panel. If you turn off all the checkboxes in the Layer Options section, the whole calendar is placed on Layer 1. However, I prefer to turn on all three checkboxes to produce the following:

5 – Pick a Page Setup

The last settings in the dialog box control how calendars are laid out on the page. You can pick how many months should fit on each page, whether the page layout should be portrait or landscape, and whether to create a new document or fit the calendar into the current document (Figure 4). If you had a text frame selected on your page when you launched the script, you can also choose Current Text Frame from the Page pop-up menu. In that case, the script places the calendar (but only a single month) into that frame. That’s particularly handy when you need a calendar to fit a specific size and position on your page. When the pop-up menu is set to Auto, and you have a text frame selected, the script automatically places the calendar into that frame.

6 – Create the Calendar

When you click OK, the script jumps into action and builds the calendar (Figure 5). This can take up to a minute or more (especially with minicalendars), so be patient.

Unless you’ve targeted a text frame for a singlemonth calendar or you have a text frame selected in your current document, the script builds a new document for you. The size and margins of that document are based on the last-used document preset (that is, whatever you last chose in the Document Preset pop-up menu in the New Document dialog box).

7 – Add Custom Text

This script creates calendars as tables inside text frames. The numbers and text are in the cells of one table, and—if you added a calHoliday layer or a calText layer—you’ll find one or more duplicate tables on other layers. If you want to insert additional holidays into the calendar, open the Layers panel and Option/Alt-click on the lock column next to calHolidays layer (Figure 6). This locks all the other layers, and leaves this layer unlocked. Now you can click with the Type tool inside a table cell and type the holiday. Similarly, to add to the Text layer, Option/Alt-click next to the calText layer to lock all the other layers.

8 – Format the Calendar

The calendars that CalendarWizard creates aren’t exactly beautiful right out of the box. Fortunately, the script builds a number of paragraph styles, table styles (CS3 only), and color swatches. Edit the styles and your calendars update to look far better. If you’re going to print your calendar, check the color space of the three color swatches it creates: DayCellBackground, DayTextColor, and Holiday. In the publicly available version .9, they’re all specced as RGB colors. If you use the script attached to this PDF, they’re likely in CMYK mode. But if they’re RGB, then right-click (or Control-click with a one-button mouse on a Mac) on each of these colors in the Swatches panel, choose Swatch Options, and set the Color Mode to CMYK. The two DayCell swatches control the color of the text and the cells behind the day names (“Monday,” “Tuesday,” and so on). The Holiday swatch controls the color of any holidays you type on the calHoliday layer. The first paragraph style you should change is the “cal_base” style, on which all the other styles are based. By default, the font is set to 12-point Times. Change this font, and it will change throughout the calendar. If you’re using Calendar Wizard 2.0 in InDesign CS3, you can also edit the styles in the Cell Styles and Table Styles panels (Figure 7). For example, if you want the cell containing the month name to have a particular fill color, change the cal_header cell style. To change the border around the frames, change the table style called “calendar.”

Laying out a Document Vertically

InDesign is so flexible, you’d think it would be easy to lay out a spread vertically instead of horizontally—so that the spine is at the top and bottom, which many wall calendars require. Unfortunately, it isn’t easy. However, Anne-Marie Concepción came up with a great workaround you can read in full at InDesignSecrets.com. Here’s the gist:

1. Lay out the entire spread on a single page. For a 12-month calendar, you’d create 12 tall pages, each containing the image and calendar (Figure A).
2. Save the InDesign document.
3. Create a new InDesign document at the finished page size (half the height of the calendar).
4. Place the original InDesign document into the new one. (If you’re using CS2 or earlier, you’ll need to export a PDF of the tall document first and import that instead.) The first page of the new document should contain the top half of the tall document; the second page contains the lower half; and so on. If you used bleed guides in the original, full-height document, you’ll need to adjust for that in the Import Options dialog box when you import it.

In this model, you design in the tall document and print from the half-height one (Figure B). Then, whenever you edit the tall document, update the modified links in the Links panel of the print version.

By the way, if you’re making more than one calendar, just set the styles in one document and then choose Load Paragraph Styles in the Paragraph Styles panel menu to copy them from one file to another.

9 – Resize or Realign the Calendars

When you’ve created holiday and text layers, it can be frustrating if one of the grids gets out of alignment (Figure 8). Let’s say you change the height of the month name to be too large for its row. You can use the Type tool to adjust the row height, but now the holiday and text tables are out of alignment. Simply turn to a second script called realignCalendarTables.js, which comes with CalendarWizard. Double-click the realignCalendarTables.js script to launch it. If you have one of the tables selected, it assumes that the selected table is the master—the one all other tables should match. If no calendar frames are selected, the script asks which calendars you want to realign (I usually choose All) and which layer should it assume is the master calendar. This script is easy and painless and saves a huge amount of time (Figure 9). If your frame size changes, you’ll want to use the fitCalendarToFrame.jsx script, which does pretty much exactly what it says: The calendar stretches out to match the new frame size. Note that if you’ve adjusted rows or columns, those changes are lost—all the cells are of equal size after you use this script. Figure 7: CS3’s Cell Styles and Table Styles panels.

Cool Calendars

Building calendars will never be a snap, but with these tools you can change it from a painful, time consuming chore to one you can accomplish quickly. Whether you use a template or a script, you’ll no longer curse under your breath when a client needs a new calendar.

David Blatner is the Editorial Director of InDesign Magazine, the co-author of Real World InDesign CS3, and the co-host of indesignsecrets.com. More InDesign Tips and Tutorials. Get instant pricing on full color calendar printing from your InDesign file.

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Edit PDFs in Adobe Illustrator

For years, editing PDFs was discouraged. There were too many things that could go wrong. Ideally, edits are made in the original application to avoid any compatibility issues and the potential nightmare of keeping track of changes between formats.

But improvements to the PDF format (thanks to Adobe Acrobat’s ever-increasing functionality) in recent years has meant much more flexibility in editing workflow.

So which Adobe programs can you use to edit a PDF? Because other Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Adobe Illustrator can also save as the PDF file format, it’s understandable that you’d assume that “any CC program goes” when it comes to editing PDFs.

But while Adobe Illustrator is the gold standard of vector graphics programs, and while it can handle both graphics and type, it’s not a dedicated PDF editing application.

Yes, if you have a native Illustrator file and you’ve simply generated a PDF from that source file and checked “Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities” when saving it, you’re pretty much safe making additional edits in Illustrator.

Much of the time, though, Acrobat is the way to go.

Making PDF Edits in Adobe Acrobat

If you’re going to edit a PDF in Adobe Acrobat, launch Adobe Acrobat Pro and then open the file you need to edit.

Once the PDF document you’d like to edit is open, you can either click “Edit PDF” in the right hand pane:

…or use the Edit menu to choose “Edit Text and Images” from the dropdown:

Now, you’ll see that bounding boxes have appeared around any sections of editable text.

Once you select (click on or within) a bounding box, you’ll notice that the greyed-out text options are suddenly populated and active.

You can highlight the text you want to change and use the font dropdown to choose a new font.

You can change the font size, the paragraph alignment, and the leading and line spacing. You can also change the color of the type by clicking the square next to the type size (which is in this case white because the text is white) and then moving the color sliders to get the new color you’ve chosen.

Adobe Acrobat Pro is a robust PDF editor and has numerous editing capabilities. That said, Acrobat hits a wall when it comes to editing vector and raster graphics. Acrobat alone isn’t the best choice if you want to edit images.

When your document images include vector artwork, Adobe Illustrator will be your best friend. You’re probably going to feel like you’re taking the long way around, but trust us. We’re going to give you the safest way to make spot changes and keep your document’s integrity intact.

How to Edit a PDF in Illustrator

What Adobe Acrobat can’t handle is complex graphic edits. The good news for us all is that, assuming you’re using the Adobe Creative Cloud, you’ll be able to make edits pretty seamlessly across the Adobe Cloud applications. Over the years, Acrobat has learned how to talk to Illustrator and Photoshop, and even when edits can’t be made directly in Adobe Acrobat Pro, the appropriate applications can be launched (and edits made) without ever closing your PDF file.

To get an idea of how seamless this process can be, first launch Adobe Acrobat Pro and then open a PDF that’s stored on your computer. Here, we’re opening a PDF cover spread for a coloring book. Once your document is open in Acrobat, click “Edit PDF” in the right hand panel.

Now that the edit functions have been activated, click around your document to select items that you might want to edit. As you do this, start to compare the available editing options. Notice that with some elements, the editing features in the right hand editing panel remain greyed out and inactive.

This is a case where, for vector graphics, Illustrator can come to your rescue.

To edit any vector graphics in your PDF with the Illustrator program, first make sure a relevant graphic has been selected (click on the graphic to select it). Then, right-click on the graphic, or control-click on a Mac, go down to “Edit Using” and choose “Adobe Illustrator” from the flyout.

Note: you may see a warning dialog box. If you accept the risks, then go ahead and proceed. Please click “Yes.”

If Illustrator isn’t already open on your computer, it will now automatically begin to launch, and a document containing the graphic you’ve chosen to edit will open within the Illustrator interface. What has happened is that you’ve now extracted editable content from Adobe Acrobat.

You’ll probably notice that the artboard looks huge — it’s taken on the dimensions of your Adobe Acrobat file, and your editable artwork has also carried over its same positioning within the larger artboard space.

The size of this artboard is extremely important. Keeping these artboard dimensions will ensure that any edits you make in Illustrator will seamlessly be written back into your Acrobat file.

Don’t change the bounding box, either, if you want your positioning to stay intact within the original PDF. (Yes, there’s a lot going on here, but as long as you take the proper steps, your artwork and files — and all your hard work — will be safe.)

You also may notice that when Acrobat launched Illustrator, it created a new file with a crazy name made up of random letters and numbers. The file that has been generated and appears in Illustrator is is called a “touch up file,” and only exists in your computer’s memory. This means it’s not saved locally at the moment (but can be, of course, with the File –> Save As command).

From within Illustrator, go ahead and make your changes to this touch up file.

We’re going to change the color of this logo background box.

You may notice some odd behavior when you’re making your changes. Because we’re communicating back and forth between two programs, that’s totally normal — it just takes some getting used to.

When you’re done with your vector edits and ready to head back to Acrobat, you’ll go to File –> Save. Remember, you’re in the touch-up file, so you’re saving these changes right back into Acrobat, NOT onto your hard drive.

Do note that if you think you might need your changes on their own for use in the future, you can also choose File –> Save As and create a standalone vector file, saved on your hard drive.

For our current purposes, though, simply saving will immediately export your changes back into your Acrobat document without requiring any additional steps.

Here’s a summary of the steps if you need to harness Illustrator’s vector editing power:

• Open your PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.
• Choose “Edit PDF” from the right hand panel.
• Select the vector artwork you’d like to change.
• Right- (or control-) click and edit using Adobe Illustrator.
• Make your changes to the graphic without changing anything else about the touch up document as launched.
• Save your changes.
• Confirm your changes in your open Acrobat document.

How to Edit PDF Text in Illustrator

If you’re going to edit text in a PDF, it’s usually best to stick with Adobe Acrobat. As we mentioned earlier, Adobe Illustrator is more dedicated to graphics (specifically, vector artwork).

That said, if you’re going to open your PDF file in Illustrator to edit the text, you can go to File –> Open and select your PDF file. Then, if it’s a multi page PDF, you can choose the page range you’d like to open.

Once the pages are open, you can click on the text. On this particular document, you’ll see that the text isn’t editable, because it was converted to outlines in Illustrator before the PDF file was generated.

If this is the case and you still want to edit the text, you’ll need to have the original font on your computer and retype it.

If your text is editable, though, you’ll see a line or a text box appear when the text is selected, instead of individual letter shapes.

In that case, make the text changes you need and then re-save the PDF file. Make sure it’s saving as a PDF and not an .AI file when you do this.

If you need help with getting your project ready for print, PrintingForLess can help! Learn more and place your order with Printing for Less here.