How To Create A Colorful Business Card Template in Illustrator CS4 (+ free template)

The Outcome

The outcome of this business card uses a similar style to that I used in a recent brochure design I completed for MediaLoot; feel free to download it as a great companion to this business card!

The Resources

We don't need many resources in this tutorial, as we'll be making almost everything from scratch. However, to make things easier on your end, here are a couple of things that may come in handy! You can download the Color Swatch and Source File right here for free.

Step 1

The first step with any design is to sketch. So grab a pad and pen and get sketching! I roughed out a few different ideas, and have decided I want to go with the bottom one, both the front and back design.

Step 2

Open up Adobe Illustrator and create a new document. The size, really, is completely up to you. I'm going to use one of the many "standard" business card sizes; 55x85mm. Use a 3mm bleed (check with your printers, they may want more than this), and set your Raster Effects to 300ppi. If you're using Adobe Illustrator CS4, you could use the handy "Number of Artboards" feature, which basically allows you to have two artboards side-by-side; in this case, the front and back of your card. Once you have created your artboards, save the document. This is a ridiculous step, but worth doing. You could, if you haven't already, save this set-up as a template so you don't need to keep recreating artboards and new documents everytime you design a new business card.

Step 3

It's time to get to work on our design. Grab the the Rectangle Tool and drag out a shape to fill the entire area of your business card, from bleed to bleed. Remove the stroke and fill the shape with any color. We're going to add a subtle and slick-looking gradient to the design now. It's not going to be anything to overpowering, just something nice and simple to add that extra "oomph" to our final design. To apply a gradient to the shape, you simply need to click on the "gradient" in the gradient window/palette. Once you've clicked on this, you'd have noticed it automatically applies a black to white gradient to our shape. To change this, simply drag a color swatch of your choice onto the two ends of the gradient level. I've used two very light grays, and changed the gradient type to radial. This has added a lovely subtle gradient to our design. Copy the rectangle by hitting Cmd+C, and then paste it in place by hitting Cmd+F (this literally does just paste the shape in place). Use the Shift+Cursor-Keys to shift the shape along to the second artboard (the back of our business card design). This saves us creating the shape again.

Step 4

With this done, it's time to start creating the colorful and "happy" stripes. Grab the Rectangle Tool again and click somewhere in your document. Enter the measurements 10mm by 61mm and click OK. Change the color of your shape to something clear and obvious, and move the shape to the left side of your first artboard, making sure it's touching the edge of your artboard (not your bleed). The reason we haven't yet put it against our artboards bleed is because we want the visible shape (once the cards have been printed) to measure 1cm wide, the same length of that used in my brochure design. Using the Selection Tool, make