How to Make a Great Print Ready Business Card in Photoshop

Recently I was asked by someone I knew to make him a business card.  It’s a handy skill to have making business cards in Photoshop, so this tutorial is an example of a great minimalistic business card with flair!

I usually create and output my print materials in Indesign, but you can create something as simple as this print ready business card in Photoshop. In this tutorial you will learn how to get your business card print ready with crop marks and bleed.

Step 1:

First thing is to create a new document. Now I am using a standard business card size of 90mm x 55mm, though check with your printer first what there default size is as it might be slightly different.

I want to introduce you to a few print terms, bleed being one of them. A bleed is basically a space on the edges of your design where your image or color keep going past.  You need bleed so that when they cut your cards and the cut lands a mm on either side you don’t end up having either your main logo/artwork chopped off or white blank space. A good sized bleed is usually 3mm – 5mm, today we’ll use the 3mm bleed in creating the business card.

So set the document to 96mm across (this is taking into account the 3mm on either side) and 61mm high (this is taking into account 3 mm either side also). Now the next thing is to set the document to 300dpi and Color Mode CMYK Color. This is so that the resolution is high enough for print purposes and the color is set to handle print color output.

Step 2:

Once you have created the document to the size you are happy with, we need to add the guides to show us where the bleed starts. Make sure your Rulers are showing (ctrl+R), and if you right click the ruler area you can change the dimensions to mm as the rulers are usually set to pixels. Now you can by all means go and drag out each instance of the guide and place it 3mm, but a nice shortcut is to go View > New Guide and then giving the Horizontal and Vertical Orientations each 3mm guides.

Step 3:

Now the ‘brief’ for my example business card was to make a crisp, clear and minimal design as well as create the business identity. Generally I try and incorporate something that the business does and try to convey this through the artwork. The business I used writes technology patents and the name of the company is Impact IP. The business involves a lot of talking and discussion and so the symbol I wanted to create was a speech bubble that incased the words ‘IP’ – which is an acronym for intellectual property.

First I choose the company colors; blue (#47C8F5) and dark grey (#333333) and decided the speech bubble would be the bright blue. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), make sure the rectangle is set to Shape Layer this is the top left symbol in the options for the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Set the Radius to 30px and draw out a cube, you can constrain it to be a cube by holding down the Shift key while drawing the cube out.

Next draw the tail end of the speech bubble, to do this select the Pen Tool (P), and start from the bottom right corner of the bubble and place points at the start middle and end, this should draw the triangle you need to complete the speech bubble!

Step 4:

So now that the bubble has been created, I decided that the background should be the dark grey (#333333), that way the speech bubble contrasts nicely over a dark background.

Now to start adding the words! After a lengthy font selection process I decided to go with Nobility Casual Regular for the main logo.

I typed out iP in the speech bubble, leaving the ‘i’ un-capitalized and the ‘P’ capitalized. The font was a little on the light side for me, so I increased the stroke by 2 by double clicking the layer and going to the Layer Properties, checking the Stroke option and adjusting the stroke to 2.

Step 5:

Now to add the company name ImpactIP. I added the words underneath the speech bubble, not centered but off center like the name was using the speech bubble. Then I copied the Layer Properties by right clicking the little ‘fx’ symbol in the ‘iP’ Layer and selecting Copy Layer Style. Then select the impactIP layer and right click selecting Paste Layer Style.

Save this file (Ctrl+S) as front.psd, and now we can begin the back!

Step 6:

Copy over the elements from the front; the speech bubble, iP and impactIP Layers.

Now I wanted the information side to be clear and information on white as it conveys better than on a dark background. So here changing the bubble to the dark grey by clicking on the Color square of the speech bubble Layer, this will open up the color palette, change this to the dark grey #333333, also do this for the company text Layer, ‘impactIP’.

Now I wanted to add a small tag line underneath the company logo to convey a small amount of information of what the company does.  I added  ‘Patent Specifications in Information Technology’ underneath the company Layer (I left this layer with no stroke, as it was small enough to read clearly and bold enough for its size).

The only thing left is to add the crucial contact information. I didn’t want to use the same font as it is not as crisp and clear as I liked, so I opted for one called, TheSansPlain; Bold for the name and Light version of the font for the mobile, email and web address.

This as you can see I made a guide to be aligned with the last line of the tag line. To make a guide you click on the ruler area and drag down creating a bright guide under the tag line.

Step 7:

There we have it, front and back done!

But now the preparation of the file beings! So here we want to flatten the layers, go to Layer > Flatten Image; flattening the image preserves the design and so that nothing goes wrong at the printers.

Next go to the Print preferences, File> Print. This will open up a dialog box, here you will add the bleed settings and also the crop marks. To find the crop marks check box, there is a drop down box to the top right and select Output. Check Corner Crop Marks and then select the ‘Bleed…’ button, enter in 3mm (Note that for some reason Photoshop doesn’t let you go much higher than 3mm for bleed), also don’t forget to untick Show Bounding Box click Done!

Now save the back and front as PDFs, Save As> Photoshop PDF. This will open up a dialog box, here drop down the selection and choose [High Quality Print], I usually uncheck Preserve Photoshop Editing Capabilities so that no one can use your pdf to edit and change afterward’s.

Final Thoughts:

So there we have it a great minimalistic design but great Impact! The main thing when designing a business card in Photoshop is to prepare your file properly and get the settings all right to send off to the printer, this will ensure you save time and have clear communication through your files when at the printery!

This card is for a real business so you can’t copy the identity, but anyone needing a technology patent written up should make contact! www.impactip.com

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