Creation of a Business Card

Content of the lesson:

Principles of Business Cards

A business card is very important to create the first impression because the marketing itself is not only related to information publicized by a company but also to the way how it is publicized. Experts say that a partner or a customer decides himself in the first seconds when making a new contact. The form of a business card should therefore be consistent with the principles of corporate image and corporate identity.

There is no tutorial how to make the best business card but you should observe several principles not to make any mistake. Business cards are widely used in our country for more than 20 years and the first ones were black and white containing only the vital information. After that there were cards with golden texts, colored backgrounds and other improvements. Finally, the development has stabilized somewhere between quietness and simplicity because the purpose of a business card is still to provide a simple contact to our company.

A business card should be printed on a heavier paper (at least 150 g/m² is recommended, but much better is 200-300 g/m²). One of the most frequent mistakes is the size of the business card and the font. You should use an optimal size so the business card could be inserted into a business card case.

You should also consider the graphic layout because many companies want to have their logo on a business card and/or want to use the colors of their logo when creating a business card. Very important is the quality of the printing. Also using large single-colored areas is quite risky - these areas can be scraped out when using the business card.

The business card should be clear, original, in line with the corporate image and design and it should attract the viewer. Creating a business card is not easy at all.

You can see several examples of business cards in the following image:

Dimensions of Business Cards

The dimensions are different in countries all around the world. It is usually 6 x 9 cm, but also 5 x 9 cm, 5,5 x 9,5 cm or 4,5 x 8,5 cm. The business cards used in Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries generally have a smaller format (4 x 7,5 cm).

Standard business card's dimensions in our country are 9 x 5 cm so we will use these dimensions.

Creation of a Simple Business Card

Open Adobe Illustrator and create a new document for printing. Using the Rectangle tool to create a rectangle and set its width to 90 mm and height to 50 mm.

The next step is creating a simple business card which will not contain any difficult graphic elements. It will only demonstrate how to work with texts, manipulate with objects, create a background, center a text in an object and other techniques. The whole procedure is demonstrated in the following video, the description is available below the video.

1. Use the border created in the previous part of this lesson.
2. Create a square using the Rectangle Tool (do not forget to hold the SHIFT key).
3. Fill the rectangle with a light blue color without any border.
4. Copy the object (CTRL+C), Paste it in Place (SHIFT+CTRL+V) and move it right next to the previous object. Set the background color a little bit darker then the background color of the previous square.
5. Apply the same procedure for the next two squares and change the background colors.
6. Create the title Zlínský kraj using a suitable font and color and enlarge it.
7. Select all squares and Group them to be able to move them together.
8. Select the group of squares and the headline and select Vertical Align Center option from the top toolbar to center the both objects vertically (do not forget to switch to Align to Selection mode).
9. Group the squares and the text and move it up.
10. Add the remaining texts gradually - the name, function, phone and e-mail. All this texts should be formatted using a suitable sans-serif font. Set a special font for the name to be stressed and better readable.
11. Select all objects inside the business card (group of squares and headline, the text with name and the text with function, phone and email), select the rectangle around the business card (hold SHIFT when selecting multiple objects) and choose Horizontal Align Center from the top toolbar.
12. After clicking this button the whole content should be centered. We can then move the objects up and down as we wish (while holding the SHIFT button to change only the vertical position).
13. The last step is changing the background color - select the rectangle around the business card and change its background color.

Centering and Distribution on the List

We are not going to print one business card on per a list of course. Select all objects inside the business card including the border and Group them. The next steps are shown in the following video:

1. After grouping the objects, Copy (CTRL+C) the group and Paste in Place (CTRL+SHIFT+V).
2. Then select Object > Transform > Move (CTRL+SHIFT+M) from the menu and set 90 mm horizontally and confirm.
3. Group the both objects, and center them horizontally using the Horizontal Align Center but you have to switch the mode to Align to Artboard.
4. Much faster than duplicating and moving objects is automating this procedure. Select the grouped couple and select Object > Transform > Move (CTRL+SHIFT+M), reset the horizontal value, set 50 mm vertically and click Copy instead of OK. The object will be copied and moved at once.
5. The advantage is coming now because we can press CTRL+D (always the bottom couple of business cards has to be selected) - this shortcut is linked to command Object > Transform > Transform Again - and Adobe Illustrator will make the last transformation again which means duplicating the couple and moving it 50 mm down.
6. Repeat the procedure until the business cards fit on the paper.
7. Select all couples, Group them and select Vertical Align Center.
8. The paper with business cards should be ready to be printed.

You can save the final document to the .ai format (Adobe Illustrator) which will not be readable by other programs or to the .pdf format (Portable Document Format) which is much better for publishing and printing.

Select File > Save as and choose the Adobe PDF (*.pdf) option. It is possible to change several parameters, some of them are described here:

• General - you can set the compatibility with an older version of Adobe reader
• Compression - you can manually set parameters as color compressions, sampling and quality.
• Marks and Bleeds - settings for printing (marks for cutting, information, color pallets, bleeds etc.)
• Security - encryption settings (you can set the document to be password protected from opening, copying, editing or printing)
• Summary - the summary of all your settings

After clicking on Save PDF, the document will be printed to PDF and ready to be published.

More Business Cards Samples

You can see several more samples of business cards which are using other designs.

It is possible to create the whole background in Adobe Photoshop - we have to set the dimensions of the document to 90 x 50 mm and the resolution to 300 pixels/inch and then import the image to Adobe Illustrator. The resolution value should be set to 300 pixels/inch (DPI) because we want a quality print.

Background (you can download it) can be easily placed into Adobe Illustrator and aligned inside the business card. The background was created using the Adobe Photoshop, blurring filters, Hue/Saturation adjustment, soft brush and blending. The name of the company was also created in Adobe Photoshop because of the advantage or layer styles.

After creating a background we add a text in Adobe Illustrator (font Arabic Typesetting was used - freeware for a non-commercial use). In case you want to make a commercial project you have to choose another font.

The second example shows a fictive business card of an engine programmer from Suzuki Company. We need to download the Suzuki logo and the Suzuki font (freeware for non-commercial use).

There is nothing difficult in this sample, you have to insert the logo on the left side, the header text on the right side and finally align the remaining texts under the header and center them. The last thing is the www address in the left bottom corner where we use changing of the colors to make it more interesting.

When placing objects we should remember that no object should be placed too close to the border or to another object because this is disruptive. When placing an object in the corner it should have the same distance from the both sides.

The texts and images should be equally deployed so no part of the business card remains blank. The business card still has to remain short, fine and concise to represent the company or the representative person.

Double-sided Business Cards

The last topic is the double-sided cards. Several companies use both sides of the business cards but it is not necessary. Double-sided business cards cost more money and are more difficult to create but can offer additional space for information or for graphics. In case the rear side is created gracefully, it can enhance the whole impression (especially when the business card is darker - white background does not look well).

When creating such a business card you should remember that the paper will be printed from both sides so you should prepare the layout correctly.

There are many objects which can be placed on the rear site - for example a detail description of the company, a current offer, opening hours in case of a restaurant, a map with address or anything else.

Additional Texts

Questions and Exercises

1. Name 5 details which has to be respected by a business card to attract a customer.
2. Browse the links and try to realize what makes the business cards special or unique to gather inspiration.