Business cards form a central element of the standard identity suite most graphic designers produce for new clients. Along with letterheads and envelopes, they serve as a centerpiece of a cohesive set of materials that can showcase company and individual identity while they provide essential contact information. EPS files can serve a focal purpose in the creation of identity materials because of the flexibility and fidelity with which they can enable you to present critical parts of these designs.
Based on the PostScript language developed by Adobe Systems, the Encapsulated PostScript file format enables you to build graphics that can be included in files you create in other applications, including page-layout and word-processing programs. EPS files can incorporate any combination of live text, vector artwork and bitmapped images. They support spot and process color and can pass their color content on to documents that incorporate them, work in RGB and CMYK color models, and allow for embedded font information to maintain the look of text without access to the original font software.
Whether you're incorporating your company's own logo as the primary identity element on cards for your business or setting up elements of an identity suite for a client, EPS files provide an ideal medium through which to incorporate vector-based versions of these elements. Building a printed project around a bitmapped representation of a logo limits you to using it at its actual size or smaller to avoid the pixelation introduced when you enlarge a TIFF or JPEG. Along with primary identity elements, you may need to incorporate EPS graphics on a business card to include logos that represent professional credentialing organizations.
You can build entire business cards in an illustration program using an EPS-format template file as the basis of a design. Whether you've designed the template yourself, obtained it from a client or found a downloadable asset that offers design elements you like, the file can provide text placeholders, press-ready colors, gradients and background colors. If the original colors in the file don't suit your design theme, you can replace them with the signature colors from an identity system.
EPS files make easy inclusions into larger projects. The logo you use on a business card can appear at a different size on a matching letterhead or #10 envelope. If the EPS file consists entirely of vector graphics, you can scale the identity element without worrying about distortion, loss of output quality or low-resolution results. When you use an EPS file in a program that incorporates rather than produces them, the for-position low-resolution header image built into the EPS format shows you a rough guide to the item's appearance and size. In a program that produces EPS files natively, you can see and manipulate file elements directly rather than simply scaling and cropping them.