The ability to create carbon nanostructures such as carbon nanofibers (CNF) and patterns with controlled dimensions, position and ordering, is crucial for engineering all-carbon devices. We present the fabrication of lithographically defined carbon patterns and nanoribbons using a common carbon precursor, polyacrylonitrile (PAN). Thermal-embossing NIL (TE-NIL) is used to directly fabricate PAN films that can be subsequently cyclized and carbonized to yield highly uniform carbon patterns and nanoribbons over a large area. We demonstrate that this technique is reliable and capable of nanofabrication over a large surface area at low cost, compared with current carbon-patterning techniques. The evolution of the nanostructures during heat treatment was studied. Most interestingly, the deformation profile of the PAN during the imprinting process resulted in a distribution of aligned PAN chains within the patterns, which led to a similar anisotropic correlation of the carbon crystallites in the carbonized structures.