The new year is a great time to refresh your business stationery. If you've been thinking about a new identity, look no further than Adobe Illustrator CS, which includes templates for designing business cards, brochures, and other business essentials. As this tutorial shows, you don't need to spend days or even hours coming up with a new design. By adding your individual flair to one of Illustrator's pre-made templates you can whip up a new business card in no time.

All the materials you need, including decorative brushes and standard icons, can be found in the files that install with Illustrator CS. The instructions provide the paths with which you access the necessary files.

And if you don't have Illustrator CS installed, don't worry. Simply extrapolate these tips and techniques to suit your current application.

We've posted this excerpt as a PDF file. All you do is click this link "Design a Business Card in 15 Minutes" to open the PDF file in your Web browser. You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing.

To open the PDF, you'll need a full version of Adobe Acrobat (4 or higher) or the Adobe Reader, which you can download here:

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To learn how to configure your browser for viewing PDF files, see the Adobe Reader tech support page.

Excerpted from "Adobe Illustrator CS Idea Kit" © 2004 Jerome Holder & Barbara Mulligan. Reproduced by permission of Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Peachpit Press. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.