October 10, 2008

How Can I Print Pro Designs Without Being a Pro?

By Kara Hiltz

PrinTip: Feeling a Time Crunch? Create Custom Projects Without the Time Commitment

In our PrinTales feature, we have highlighted several talented crafts enthusiasts who create personalized scrapbooks, cards, and more — with help from their printers of course. But what if you don't have the time (or talent)? We found two online services that promise professional results in just a few clicks.

Smilebox Gives You a Helping Hand With Your Creative Projects

Smilebox enables you to customize designs of all types, including scrapbooks, slideshows, cards, photo albums, and postcards. Just select the design you like and then add your own photos, videos, music, and text. Once you finish your project, you can email it, post it on your blog, or print it.

Depending on what you want to do with your design, you have two options: personalize and send the Basic design for free or purchase the Premium design. With the Premium design, you (and those you send it to) can print it, re-use the template later, and view it without ads.

If you find yourself spending a lot of time on Smilebox, a subscription costs a pretty reasonable $5.99/month. With a subscription, you'll have access to an unlimited amount of designs — all with Premium status. That'll put a smile on your face if not your wallet.

StockLayouts Offers Professional Designs for Your Business Needs

Many small businesses don't have a graphic designer on hand. But when it comes to newsletters, brochures, and marketing materials, you need an eye-catching, professional design. Enter StockLayouts, which sells professionally-designed business templates compatible with a variety of software applications.

StockLayouts provides templates for everything from business cards to menus to newsletters — even CD booklets. You'll find templates for QuarkXPress, Adobe InDesign, Corel CorelDRAW, Microsoft Word, or Apple iWork Pages to name a few.

While StockLayouts offers free samples of a chosen design in each category, expect to pay anywhere from $29 to $99 for a design. Fortunately, once you purchase a template you can use it as many times as you like and in as many different software programs as you need.

As with Smilebox, StockLayouts also offers a subscription service. Prices range from $299 for a three month subscription to $1,299 for a two year subscription. With a subscription, you can download up to 50 templates per month. While the price may seem high, it will likely cost less than hiring a freelance graphic designer depending on how often you need new designs.

If you have used these services or any others, please let us know in the comments.

About PrinTips
Sometimes useful, sometimes fun, and always interesting, PrinTips enable you to get more out of your ink jet or laser printer. That said, we don't profess to have a monopoly on printer tips so if you have anything to add, please do so below.

• October 10, 2008 diyser

  One great program I found to design business cards is Business Card Designer Plus from CAM Development (http://www.camdevelopment.com)

  You can start with a business card template or a blank then customize it any way you like. When you are done you can print it or save it as a graphic file to send to your favorite printer to be printed professionally.