I recently designed a couple of business cards in Adobe Illustrator. The designs were cool, but when i went to the printers in Shomolu to print them, they demanded that they had to redesign them in CorelDraw

.. blah blah blah.

On hearing this, i went back home to do it myself.. i thought; “isn’t there an easier way of converting AI files to CDR?”

The problem:

As simple as the designs were, i didn’t want to redesign them in CorelDraw. And, incase i didn’t mention it earlier; “I hate CorelDraw”. Not that i can’t use it, but I’m like an Adobe fan boy. (Note: the word “Like”)

Another problem was; why aren’t the “printer guys’” flexible with the kind of formats they accept?

As simple as “SVG”:

Let me state here that I’m using Adobe Illustrator CS3 & CorelDraw 12.

1. Save your work from illustrator as an SVG file. (File > Save As)

2. Then from CorelDraw, import the SVG file (File > import).

The difference between this method (using SVG) and opening the AI file directly is that the text is editable and also shape layers.

Also note that; CorelDraw does not recognize crop marks created with Adobe Illustrator, so you might want to crop your work in Illustrator before exporting.

And files may be grouped when imported into CorelDraw.

Final Words:

The guy at the print shop was glad to learn a thing or two, i hope you did? By the way, hope you like the card? ;)

N.B: I skipped a few minor steps. If you have any difficulties, drop them in the comments area.

Post update: Also read Jean-Philippe’s comment below.