Download my Free Business Card Templates below:

How to Design Business Cards + Downloadable Template

In this video, I teach you how to set up a business card as well as some tips and tricks in Adobe Illustrator for designing a simple business card that has a front and back element.

Why you should NOT design business cards in Adobe Photoshop

There are several reasons why you should not design a business card in Photoshop. If you click on my post where I describe the differences between Vector vs Raster (Illustrator vs Photoshop) in an infographic, it will describe it to you. But mainly you should design it in Illustrator for the following reasons:

  • The artwork is scalable to any dimension. If you have a design that needs to be blown to 4 x 8 feet, this is easily achievable. In Photoshop? 99.9% not likely going to happen.

  • It is very fast to edit.

  • The file sizes are low. If you do it in Photoshop, you are working in pixels and every pixel (especially if you have a ton of colour in there) will mean larger file sizes. And when you try to upload a 150 mb business card file to your printer, he will be looking at you like you are insane.

  • If you need to put a photograph of you into the business card (for example, you are a real estate agent), then import that photo into Illustrator by going to “File / Place”. Make sure that the photo is high quality and that it is close to the dimensions as possible. You don’t need to import a 11 x 17 photograph. Scale it down to something like a 2 inch wide photo at 300 dpi. And from there, if you need to scale it further, do that in Illustrator. The best bet is to have it at the exact dimensions to keep file size low.

Now, I’m not saying NEVER design a business card in Photoshop, there may be scenarios where you need to.

Must do’s when designing a business card in Illustrator

  • If you are designing a double sided business card, when you have finished the front side, save it, then save it again as the back, so that you have the template and card elements already there and you don’t need to recreate the wheel.

  • Make sure when you are done that all your text copy is converted to outlines. If not, your printer will throw it back at you and scream “I DON’T HAVE YOUR FONTS“. Or he may very well just email you back in all caps, but realistically, you will get a canned response from their automated system saying you need to convert them to outlines which means delay in production.

  • Save 2 copies when you are done. 1) an editable version in an .ai extension with the fonts intact (not converted to outlines) incase you need to make any text copy changes in the future like an address change. 2) convert all fonts to outlines which is the one that you will send to the printer. Name this file “bc_back_FINAL.pdf”.

  • Be ORGANIZED with your filing system! I cannot stress this enough.