Fancy Creating some Business cards today using photoshop? A little old school marketing goes a long way!
Okay so I will be the first to admit I have been a lazy blogger recently. I have had a ridiculously busy summer with a trip to York, weddings, celebrations etc... keeping me occupied. Nonetheless (love that word three words for the price of one!) I am back online and raring to go. This last week my main focus has been updating my CV and making myself more employable for a marketing job! I decided that I needed business cards to help with the old networking and sending with CV's and covering letters etc
I scoured online for ones that I liked on vista print and letterpress but all of the templates for fashion marketing looked a tad naff, they were also very effeminate for me with plenty of lilac and fuchsia going on! So I decided there was no point paying 20 quid for something I can do myself and I get to create my own business card design too. So I thought I would show you how easy it is using adobe Photoshop to create your own business cards in my first how to guide! If you don't have Photoshop you can download a 30 day trial from the adobe website here.
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Setting Up Our Photoshop Page
So first things first, we need to create a new photoshop file. There are many variances on the size of business cards (people have forums dedicated to the proper business card protocol), I decided I wanted mines to be a standard wallet slot size. The measurements I used were 85mm x 55mm. To set up our page we want to use the CMYK colour mode, 16 bit. In the box labeled resolution enter 300 dpi (we want these to be a high quality print so they look very snazzy for our potential clients etc). Once all that's done we should have our blank card on screen ready to get creative!
Applying Our background
I knew that I wanted my design to be very simple but effective, but I also wanted it to say something about me and what I do as this is obviously very important in the marketing industry. After looking at loads of images of very twee, over the top sewing machine imagery, fabric patch effect backgrounds etc I decided a nice brown paper texture would be classic but striking. I downloaded mines from deviant art which is an amazing resource for downloading textures, Photoshop brushes and all sorts of exciting goodies ( most of them free!) So after downloading my nice texture image I opened it in Photoshop, with both pages side by side I dragged my texture from the layers panel to my business card and it now has a nice brown paper background!
Placing Our Text
Next I decided where I wanted to put my text, I placed it on the left had side using a snazzy font called DYNAMO magician I downloaded from dafont (the best free online font resource ever!) I entered my name and title as a heading using the horizontal type tool from the toolbar. I done this on 2 separate layers so I could space the lines of text slightly further apart. I then added my personal information underneath this in a more conservative font Century Gothic. I again done this over 2 separate layers so I could space it out.
Standing Out with A Logo
I knew I wanted a logo on the front panel and was about to design something on illustrator when I found these awesome button brushes on deviant art I thought a nice crisp grayscale scattering of buttons would look understated but quirky! What is the relevance to fashion marketing I hear you say? well buttons are to clothes what marketing is to a business, buttons give a garment shape and fasten everything together, the same way marketing completes a brand. That's my reasoning and I'm sticking to it! Feel free to substitute the buttons for something more personal i.e if you sell farming equipment a retro tractor image would look awesome or if you were a journalist a gray scale typewriter etc...
I thought you might like to know how to use custom/ downloaded brushes in photoshop so I shall explain now: after downloading your brushes you should select the brush tool from the toolbar and click on this icon to open a dropdown menu, select load brushes and then browse your computer to open the brush file which will usually end with this extension .Abr our fancy brushes are now in our brush palette to select :)
I then created a new layer to add my buttons. I decided to have one central icon with a few smaller ones surrounding it. Adjusting the opacity of brushes can offer even more effects and finishes too.
When I was happy with this I set to work on the back panel, opening a new document as before and placing my texture in place: I have used the button brushes as bullet points to add a line of text giving my personal networking information, such as blogger, LinkedIn etc.
I hope this encourages you all to give making your own cards a try! Hope all of the instructions are clear, any feedback is welcome also :)
Until next time,
Scott
PS. Thanks to Enchantedgal-stock and mcbadshoes from deviant art for providing amazing free for use resources!
