In this tutorial, I`m going to show you how to design a business card which can be immediately printed. The tutorial is not too complicated, but you have to pay attention to the preparation of the canvas, in order to obtain a business card which can be printed.

What we`ll be doing today:

Business card dimensions are different from a geographical zone to another so before starting designing a business card, make sure to find out your country business card dimensions. I`m going to use the USA and Canada standard dimensions which are 88.9mm x 50.8mm (3.5×2 inches). This is the first step.

The second step is to allocate 3mm space on each side, space which is called the “Bleed”. Bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming. The bleed is the part on the side of a document that gives the printer a small amount of space to account for movement of the paper, and design inconsistencies. Bleed ensures that no unprinted edges occur in the final trimmed document so allowing this space to the image is a must.

Digital designs which are not for print and only for internet purposes are built on a resolution of 72px/inch or 72dpi but designing for print requires a bigger resolution to obtain a high-quality image and not a blured one. The standard resolution for printing is 300dpi.

Now we can move to the next step, setting up a new document in Photoshop. So, open Photoshop and create a new document of 94.9×56.8mm (88.9 + 3+3 mm x 50.8 +3+3 mm – the 3mm on each side represents the bleed). Set the resolution to 300px/inch and the color mode to CMYK because we`re designing for inks and not for screens. Also, choose the background contents to be set to transparent.

Notice how big the canvas is. This is because of the 300dpi resolution we set.

Grab the Paint Bucket Tool(G) choose the #fbfbfb color and paint the canvas. Now we can start adding some details but firstly drag from the Rulers(Ctrl+R) 4 smart guides and place them where the bleed starts to help you design inside the business card.

I worked with Droid Sans, a beautiful humanist sans serif typeface which can be downloaded for free from Google Web Fonts but you can work with any font you want.

From now on, the things are going to be very simple because I want to let you use your imagination when building the business card. Split the image in two pieces and use the left one for company details and the right one for employer`s details. Let`s begin with the company:

I made a dummy logo(not stupid, I mean something like dummy text “lorem ipsum” see Lipsum.com) using a shape created with the Custom Shape Tool(U) on which I applied a smooth blue gradient overlay style:

Then, with the Horizontal Type Tool(T) I added the company name(#4880b0) and a motto(#4664a8).

Now add the employer`s details on the right side of the business card. You can add name,contact details like phone numbers, emails or websites. Play with the font and colors to make a nice design.

At the bottom, you can add the company`s details like headquarter`s address and a phone number, is your choice.

Believe it or not, we`ve just finished designing this business card. You can use it straight away, after customizing with your own details. More, you can create a front-side of the business card on which you can add the company`s logo.

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, learned something today and I look forward for your feedback, comments or questions!

Related posts:

1. 1500 Business Card Giveaway from Bizcard
2. 30+ Coolest Business Cards to Inspire You
3. How to create a clean and design portfolio layout using Photoshop