How to make event tickets for a party or show

Event tickets are simplest to make from the event tickets template in Publish by Zaweba, which puts four tickets on one A4 sheet. Type in the event name, date, time and place, print as many sheets as you need, and cut them apart. It's free, offline software for Windows with no account to set up.

Tickets for a school play, a quiz night or a charity dinner don't need to be fancy. They need to be readable, the right size to hold, and consistent so nobody wonders if theirs is real.

Setting up the ticket

Create a new publication from the event tickets template. Each of the four tickets has the same layout, so design one and then match the others to it.

Put the event name at the top in the largest type. Below it go the date, the start time and the venue, and perhaps a seat number if your event uses them. Leave some empty space; a ticket crammed edge to edge is hard to read in a dim hallway.

To keep the four identical, finish one ticket, select its pieces and group them, then copy and paste the group into the other positions. Snapping to guides, margins and other frames, plus Align and distribute, line them up neatly.

Adding a bit of style

A picture or a logo lifts a plain ticket. Insert or drag one in and crop it inside the frame. Shapes such as a star or a rounded rectangle make good backgrounds for the date. Two-colour gradient fills and drop shadows work on shapes, pictures and text boxes if you want more depth.

For a headline with more personality, Insert > WordArt has eight styles, including neon and retro, which suit a disco or a concert. It stays real text, so you can fix a typo without starting again.

Named colours in the document palette make it easy to match the tickets to your posters. If you designed the poster in Publish too, use the same colour names and fonts.

Numbering your tickets

If you need each ticket to carry its own number or name, mail merge can help. Make a CSV file with a column of ticket numbers (a spreadsheet saved as CSV does it), then use Tools > Mail merge to place that field on the ticket. A field's label number makes each label on a sheet show the next record, so the four tickets on one sheet can show four different numbers. Preview record by record and export one merged PDF or print merged.

That's handy for raffle tickets or for seated events where each seat has its own ticket.

Printing and cutting

Print through the Windows print dialog. Publish prints at actual size, centred, and only scales down if the paper is smaller than the page, so the tickets stay where you put them. Card stock gives tickets a sturdier feel, but test on plain paper first.

If you're using a print shop, export a print-ready PDF with crop marks and bleed. Remember that colour is RGB only.

Cut with a guillotine or a steel rule and a sharp blade for straight edges. Then count them into piles of ten. You'll be glad of the count on the night.