Making business cards with Scribus

Often we gather software tools a little like a would be mechanic or woodworker. Perhaps like the fellow with a hammer who fashions himself a contractor (or like me, a fellow with a keyboard that fashions himself a webmaster) we see a package bright and shiny to the eye with a promise of transformation of our meager talents into true art and we stuff them into our tool box (disk drive) where they fade into  obscurity.

But we really need a few items of marketing collateral, one of them being the business card. Let us ignore the fact that we can select a predefined layout, drop in a few words of text and order them on line for $10 or so. Why would anyone do that when you can agonize for days and slay that turkey yourself.

Undoubtedly more to it, but I will make do with a logo, a text area for name and address and a text area for a message. I could do this with Microsoft Word or Open Office and a template found in precut labels at Walmart but  since I am prone to strike my thumb with a hammer, a light weight hammer is advised.

I was struggling with CSS, BOOM and Kompozer when Steve said why not Scribus? Of course Steve owns a keyboard but rarely lights up a word processing program; he is a "qualified" expert and I might resemble him if I do not try his recommendation. 

Scribus meets my minimal requirements - it's free and works on a variety of operating systems. A quick web search for scribus business cards locates - http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/How_to_make_business_cards

I made a few adjustments and amplifications.

1. Create new document (8.5 x 11 inches and .5 inch margins, default unit *inches*)
2. Page -> Manage guides:
3. Add Horiz. Guides at 0.5, 2.5, 4.5,6.5,8.5.10.5 - 5 high with 0.5" margins, top and bottom.
4. Add Vert. Guides at 0.5, 4.0, 4.5, 8.0 - two wide with 0.5" margins, left, center and right. Consistent 0.5" margins makes cutting easier
5. View -> show guides
6. Page -> snap to guides
7. Insert shape (rectangle) to fit in upper left area sized for a typical 2x3.5 inch business card, and resize so that it fills entire region bounded by the guide. You can adjust locations and dimensions with the "Properties box".  Change "Colors" , "Shade:" to zero. In my case the shape auto filled to "black".
8. Now design your card within that region. In my case, I inserted an image frame in the upper left and text frames in the upper right and bottom. I resized my logo externally and adjusted the image frame to fit. Scribus know nothing about "styles" so I created a larger style for name and title and a smaller font size for address lines.
9. Group all the elements of the card together as a single unit. You can select multiple elements with shift-click.
10. <un-check> Page -> Snap to Guides
11. Using the properties box, change the line width to 0 in the containing shape (2"x3.5" rectangle created in step 7).
12. Select the business card
13. Item -> Multiple duplicate -> No. copies = 1, Horiz shift = 3.50, Vert. Shift = 0.00
14. Select the top row and multiple duplicate vertically to fill the page.
15. Item -> Multiple duplicate -> No. copies = 4, Horiz shift = 0.00, Vert. Shift = 2.00
16. Print. I used card stock fed through the front slot on my aging HP 4000 laser printer.  
17. Cut.