Preparing artwork for Spot UV Business Cards

April 23, 2020

The following tutorial can be applied to Adobe Illustrator, Adobe inDesign or Affinity Designer.

 

Step 1)
Create your business card artwork at 85x55mm in size with all standard printing elements on a page 1 and page 2 artboard with 3mm bleed extended past the edge of the artboard. Save this file as artwork_area_only.ai or similar.

 

Step 2)
Now duplicate the above file, change any logos or text that are to be spot UV into 100% black channel only and then delete graphics, text that are not to be included in the spot UV. You should now have a document with a plain white background with only the spot uv elements marked in black. You can now save this file artwork_spot_uv_overlay or similar.

 

Step 3)
In Adobe Illustrator, select the File menu and then the option "save a copy" for both the artwork file and the spot uv overlay file. Set PDF for the filetype with the PDF preset at the top of the dialog window set to "Press Quality". Make sure that trim marks are ticked in the "Marks and bleed" tab along with 3mm being entered in the top, bottom, left and right section of "bleeds".

 

Viola! Your artwork is now ready for Spot UV Printing.

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