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Graphic Design

Business Forms and Invoice Form Samples

Business Forms and Invoice Form Samples

These printed examples from different industries show a variety of ideas for designing your own invoice, receipt or business form. A carbonless 2 part form is the most commonly used, but a 3 part form is also popular. 4 part, 5 part and 6 parts are also available for those needing more copies of a business invoice.

A common invoice printing format is black ink with one PMS color for a company logo or title that adds some color and highlighting for not much additional cost. But use 4 color process for a form that will really stand out and reinforce your brand to those using your forms, as well as improved usability with color coded sections or elements.

8.5 x 11 Full Color Forms

These good looking 4 color forms all use color printing to achieve a more visually interesting and functional design, significantly enhancing the user experience and making a more professional impression that can help increase sales and customer retention.

2 part full color NCR form 3 part full color NCR form 2 part color NCR form  3 part color NCR form full color work order form full color sales form full color purchase order full color invoice form construction work invoice form 2 part service order 3 part 4 color purchase order 3 part 4 color business form

 

One or Two Color Forms

These forms all use 1 color black printing or a PMS ink as a primary or second color. Screened areas and images can make a 1 or 2 color form look better and easier to use.

2 part application form project form 2 part PMS color form black ink form with images 2 part order form auto detail form order form invoice form repair order form PMS color invoice form order acknowledgement form 2 part form

 

Half Size Forms

These compact, roughly 5.5 x 8.5 forms are half the size of a standard form and are useful when less information is needed. They are less expensive to produce so are great for a tight budget.
half size business form half size form 5 x 8 business form business form half sheet 2 color form
 
 

Non-Standard Size Custom Business Form Samples

These forms are slightly smaller or larger than the standard 8.5 x 11. The two inside examples are narrower and the outside wider than normal. Custom invoices or forms can be made in many sizes and formats to meet your specific business needs.
custom size form custom invoice form custom size invoice form custom dental work form
 
 

11 x 8.5 Horizontal Format Form Examples

The landscape format is a great option for forms that have longer input fields needing longer descriptions. One popular use for business forms is the dental form shown on the right. The forms in the top row are all 4 color forms and show how much nicer they look than just black ink.
4 color horizontal invoice form 4 color horizontal form horizontal dental work form bid sheet form work order form horizontal receipt form
 

8.5 x 14 Legal Size Forms

These larger size forms are used when more information needs to be collected and stored. The extra colors help a lot with better usability when more elements are required.

3 part legal size form custom legal size form legal size invoice form

Need help with a form printing project?
Talk to one of our experts at 800-930-2423.
 
Free business form, invoice form and receipt templates
Lots of downloadable business forms from Office Depot
 
Form Pricing and Ordering
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Business Card Size Specifications

How to Create Standard Business Card Sizes

Printing for Less also offers business card printing and design services. We’ll take care of the details and design so you don’t have to!
 
Once you know the standard dimensions to use, it’s easy to produce a professional-looking business card using whatever software tools you have on your computer. You can start from scratch in any layout program, including Microsoft Word, Publisher or PowerPoint as well as traditional graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. You can also get a fast start by using customizable templates provided by services such as Canva or you can download business card templates from our expert designers.

Business Card Size and Setup

The standard dimensions of a printed business card are 3.5 x 2 inches. That’s the finished card size.

Many printed designs include bleed. The “bleed area” is an extra 1/8 inch of space for design elements or backgrounds that extend beyond the finished edges of your card. A business card design with bleed is printed slightly oversized and then cut down to size, giving the appearance that the printing “bleeds” off the edge of the card, rather than having white borders.

When creating your business card design file, use these sizing tips:

Template for standard 3.5” business card size

  • Make the document page size equal to the card size plus the bleed area, or 3.75″ wide x 2.25″ high, to be trimmed down to the finished size after printing. If you aren’t planning to include bleeds, the bleed area isn’t necessary, so set the document size to the finished size, 3.5 x 2 inches.
  • If you’re designing a vertical card with the long size up, simply switch the page width and height so you won’t have to rotate the card to see the design the way you intend it.
  • In the metric system, the standard business card size is 8.9 x 5.1 cm (centimeters) or 88.9 x 50.8 mm (millimeters).

Play it Safe Near the Borders

Because cutting may vary ever so slightly, it’s a good idea to keep all of your valuable text and logo information within the design safe zone. This zone is the 1/8 inch around the margin of your card. Make sure your text is within the 3.25 x 1.75 inch area of your card. You wouldn’t want to have the last digit of your phone number trimmed off!

Designing with borders can be tricky. Thin borders outside the safe zone that are less than 1/8th inch thick may not trim evenly. To avoid an “off-center” look, keep border lines or other thin lines away from the edge of your business card, within the safe zone.

Two-Sided Business Card Sizes and Custom Business Cards

Using double-sided business cards is a good idea when you need more space to work with or want to provide a special offer or extra info about your company or product. Create a separate page in your file for the back side, keeping each page with the size specifications above. There are many options available for commercial printing of custom business cards including round corners and custom printing effects. Our team of print experts can help you with some of the technical aspects of using these effects. Send us your file and we can give you advice on how you can enhance and improve the design to stand out from the crowd.

Request a Quote to get a price on custom options.

Sample Custom Business Card Designs

Round corner business card.
Round Corners

Plastic business card with round corners.
Plastic Cards

Foil business card.
Foil Cards

 

Embossed business card example.
Embossing

Die cut business card.
Die Cutting

Popup die cut business card example.
Die Cut Popup

 

Folded Business Card Sizes

folded business card exampleAnother popular option is a custom folded business card or tent card. At twice the printable area of a standard business card, they can be used as handy mini brochure or greeting card. For folded business cards, set your file size to 3.75 x 4.25 with bleed, or finished size of 3.5 x 4 without bleed. Create two pages in your file, the first for the outside (front and back) of the card, the second for the inside. For both vertical and horizontal cards with long, short and offset fold layout specifications, see our Folded Business Card Templates with Design and Layout Instructions for examples and downloadable free templates.

Need advice or help with your business card design or layout?

Give our helpful printing experts a call at 800-930-2423, or

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Business Card Examples, Printing Samples and Design Ideas

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1 Sided Business Cards Samples

These design examples show how well designed business cards with professional quality printing can have more impact and be remembered more than a plain card, enhancing the success of your branding, marketing and sales efforts.
 

business card sample business card example color business card sample full color business card sample full color business card example business card design idea biz card sample picture business card printed business card example business card sample 2 sample business card business card example 3 business card sample 3 printed business card business card idea

Double Sided Business Card Samples

These design ideas show how doubling the real estate and presentation space with a two sided business card gives you a lot more opportunity for making the case for your business services or product.
 
2 sided business card sample double business card sample 2 sided business card 2 sided color business card 2 sided business card example sample 2 sided business card double business card example double business card exmple

Vertical Business Card Examples

Full color vertical business card designs allow for different design presentations and can be more unique and interesting.
 
vertical business card sample vertical picture business card vertical business card design vertical business cards sample vertical business card example vertical business card vertical business cards example printed vertical business card

Folded Business Cards Examples

Get four times the space to share your business information and marketing message. These can be used like a mini-brochure or catalog, getting a lot more information into the hands of your prospective clients and contacts.
 
folded business card folded business card sample
 
Special Printing Effects Video – Add Pizzazz to Your Business Cards
 
Custom Business Cards Video
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About RGB and CMYK

Important Information About RGB and CMYK

Many graphics software programs give you the choice to work in either RGB or CMYK. These are called “color spaces”. Scanners, phones, and digital cameras create images using combinations of just three colors: Red, Green and Blue (called “RGB”). These are the primary colors of light, which computers use to display images on your screen. Printing presses print full color pictures using a different set of colors, the primary colors of pigment: Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black (called “CMYK”). This is “4-color process” or “full-color” printing that comprises the majority of magazines and marketing materials you see every day.

 

It’s Best If You do the RGB-to-CMYK Conversion of Your Images

You will have more control over the appearance of your printed piece if you convert all of the images from RGB to CMYK before sending them to us. When we receive RGB images, we do a standard-value conversion to CMYK, which may not be perfectly to your liking. We want you to be happy, so please, take the time to prepare your file properly. We cannot be responsible for sub-par results if you furnish your images in RGB. Even though monitors always use RGB to display colors, the colors you see on your monitor will more closely match the final printed piece if you are viewing them in the CMYK color space.

Be aware that it is possible to see colors in RGB that you can’t make with CMYK.

They are said to be “out of the CMYK color gamut”. What happens is that the RGB-to-CMYK translator just gets as close as possible to the appearance of the original and that’s as good as it can be. It’s something that everyone in the industry puts up with. So it’s best to select any colors you use for fonts or other design elements in your layout using CMYK definitions instead of RGB. That way, you will have a better idea of how they will appear in your printed piece. Here’s a common example: many programs translate the 100% Blue in RGB into a somewhat purple-looking color in CMYK. We recommend a CMYK value of 100-65-0-0 to get a nice clean blue. Working in the CMYK color space allows you to select the CMYK recipe, or “screen build”, that gives you the results you want.

 

Here are some examples of how various RGB colors to CYMK:

 

rgb colors

rgb colors
(what you see on screen)

cmyk colors

cmyk colors
(printing inks will do this)

how rgb colors print

rgb colors
(what you see on screen)

how cmyk colors print

cmyk colors
(printing inks will do this)

 

 

 

You most likely won’t notice this kind of color shift in a color photograph.

It is more likely to happen if you pick a very rich, vibrant color for a background or some other element of your layout. It probably won’t look bad, it just won’t look exactly the same. But it may not be noticeable at all either.
To purchase a color guide with over 3,000 process colors and their CMYK screen percentages visit the CreativePro Pantone store.

 

Converting to the CMYK Color Space

Here is a list of several common programs with instructions on how to make sure you are working in the CMYK color space. If your program or version is not listed here, don’t worry. Most of these instructions will apply to all versions of a program. If at any time you need further help, please call us for assistance. We are happy to talk you through the steps needed to get your document into the CMYK color space.

Microsoft Publisher 2000

Microsoft Publisher defaults to RGB. It is easy to convert everything to a CMYK color space or to start a new document using the CMYK color space.

Use the following menu options: Tools/Commercial Printing Tools/ Color Printing and select Process colors (CMYK). Please note that all images incorporated into a layout need to be linked and not embedded in order to maintain the CMYK color space within the image. Using the following menu options does this: Tools/Commercial Printing Tools/Graphics Manager and highlight the embedded image. Click Link and click Browse to locate the original file and link to it. You will then need to send both the images and the layout file to us for printing.

Microsoft Publisher 2003-2007 or later

Select File Tab, then select Info. Select Commercial Print Settings. Select Choose Color Model, then Select Process Colors (CMYK)

Adobe Photoshop

If the file already exists select the following menu options: Image/Mode/CMYK When starting a new file select CMYK for the mode before clicking OK.

Corel Draw

Select each object you want to convert. Select the Fill tool and click Fill Color Dialog. Make sure the Color model is CMYK. For each object with an outline: Select the Outline tool and click the Outline Color Dialog. Make sure the Color model is CMYK.

Adobe Illustrator

Select File/Document color mode/CMYK color

Quark Xpress

Use the following menu options: Edit/Edit Colors/Show Colors in Use/Highlight Color and click Edit. Change model to CMYK and deselect Spot color. Remember to send us your layout and linked images!

Adobe InDesign

Use the following menu options: Window/Swatches and Window/Color. Double click color in Swatches Change color mode to CMYK and color type to Process. Any colors created in the document that are not in the Swatches palette, need to be changed to the CMYK color space. Select each object you want to convert and make sure the Color palette reflects the CMYK percentages. Click top right arrow in the palette to change to CMYK if necessary. Remember to send us your layout and linked images!

Adobe Pagemaker

Use the following menu options: Window/Show Colors. Double click “colors” in palette and select Model to be CMYK and Type to be Process. Please be advised that Pagemaker does not successfully represent CMYK color on the monitor.

The following programs do not have the capability to convert to CMYK. No worry, we will convert it for you free of charge!

Adobe Photoshop LE
Adobe PhotoDeluxe
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Powerpoint
Microsoft Works
Microsoft PhotoDraw
Picture It Publishing


If you do not see your program listed here, or are having difficulty converting RGB to the CMYK color space, please call us at 800-930-2423 for further assistance.

For more info on color see: Guide to Using Color and Ink in Commercial Printing

 

 

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Build a Calendar in InDesign

Build a Calendar in InDesign

Everyone needs a calendar sooner or later. Learn how to easily build one inside InDesign using a script we’ve provided for you.
by: David Blatner

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 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.
 

InDesign Scripts panel1 – Download, install, and run

Calendar Wizard is available here.InDesign Scripts panel
 
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.
 
InDesign Calendar Wizard
 

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.
 

Adding Holidays to Your Calendar

While version .9 of Calendar Wizard is on the Adobe Exchange, the script’s author, Scott Selberg, has provided us with the newest version of Calendar Wizard at http://downloads.indesignmag.com/ supportfiles/. Version 2.0 has several new features, including creating and applying table styles and the ability to insert the names of holidays into the proper date locations automatically.
 
The trick to adding holiday names to your calendar is to type them using a special format into an InDesign text frame. Each holiday should be on its own line, and in this format:
1-1:New Year’s Day
2-14:Valentine’s Day
 
Don’t put a zero at the beginning of each month! Just the month, hyphen, then date.
 
You can find lists of holidays on the Web at timeandate.com and on Wikipedia.
 

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:
  • The calendar grid (along with numbers and text) on a layer called “calendar”
  • An empty duplicate of the grid on a layer called “calText,” which lets you easily add text at the top of each calendar cell.
  • An empty duplicate of the grid on a layer called “calHolidays,” which lets you easily add the names of holidays at the bottom of each cell. If you add holidays automatically (see the sidebar “Adding Holidays to Your Calendar”), this layer is always created for you.
 

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.”
 
InDesign Calendar layout example
 

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.
 
InDesign Calendar Page Examples
 

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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