HOW TO DESIGN A TEXTURED BUSINESS CARD IN PHOTOSHOP

23
May'12

 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

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While you can actually pay business card printer to use

special textured paper, for your creative business cards,
there is a way to use Adobe Photoshop to simulate that
kind of textured style easily.

Final Image
Step

01
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

While you can actually pay business card printers to use

special textured paper, or even more exotic materials for
your creative business cards, there is a way to use Adobe
Photoshop to simulate that kind of textured style easily
without the added cost. In this tutorial, we will talk about
the process of how you can design a textured style business
card layout using Adobe Photoshop. Even if you are just a
novice in Adobe Photoshop, you should be able to easily
follow.

1. The very first step is of course, opening Adobe

Photoshop and creating a new document. Setting this up is
crucial as it will determine the compatibility of your
business card design for full scale printing. The standard
settings for vertical type business cards are listed below,
but you may want to refer to your business card printer for
their preferred settings.

a. Width: 61mm (55mm+6mm), the extra 6 mm are for the

bleeds.
b. Height: 96mm (90mm+6mm) , the extra 6 mm are for
the bleeds.
c. Resolution: 300ppi (minimum recommended for high
quality printing)
d. Color Mode: CMYK

Step

02
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

2. Once open, we need to setup the business card guides.

First, f you do not see Rulers in your document press
CTRL+R. With the rulers visible, drag a guideline from the
ruler to the canvass by just clicking on it and dragging the
mouse. As you drag the guideline, pay attention to its ruler
location and approximate a 3mm distance from the edge.
If you are having trouble seeing it, try zooming in by
holding the ALT key and using your Middle Mouse Wheel to
see closer. Set it just like the image below. Do this for all
the sides of the business card design.
Step

03
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

3. The guides should look like this:

Step

04
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

4. Great! Now we are ready for some textures. For this

particular business card, we are going to use an asphalt
texture. So we paste in a nice free asphalt texture like so.
Note that we scaled the size down of course to fit the
business card. Also, we placed the background outside the
bounds of our guides. This helps with the bleed as any
minor discrepancies in cutting will not matter because of
the excess space.
Step

05
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

5. Now, we darken our texture a bit. To do this, go to

Image ->Adjustments -> Curves. In the window that opens,
adjust the curve graph so that it looks a bit like the image
below. We are just darkening the texture a bit so that our
text and other graphic elements will stand our later.
Step

06
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

6. Good. Now we will add some accents to our asphalt

texture. Using the custom shape tool we add an arrow
shape into our canvass. To match the guidelines you see on
the roads, we used a yellow color for the shape here.
Step

07
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

7. Now, press CTRL+J several times to duplicate our shape.

Move the duplicates around to get a line of them across our
design. Do not worry about the spaces too much, we will
correct that later.
Step

08
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

8. Now, select all the shapes we created by CTRL clicking

on them on the layers panel. (Alternatively you can use the
SHIFT key, click on the topmost layer and then click on the
bottom most layer). Once selected go to the attributes bar
and click on the option “Distribute Horizontal Centers”.
Step

09
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

9. Once done, merge all the layers into one, by right

clicking on them and selecting “Merge Layers” in the
context menu that appears. Change the blend mode of this
newly merged layer to overlay to get a nice painted on
effect on the asphalt texture.
Step

10
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

10. Next, duplicate our merged arrows layer by pressing

CTRL+J. Flip it by pressing CTRL+T, right clicking on the
duplicate and selecting “Flip horizontal”. Position both
arrow layers creatively as you see fit. You can even rotate
them diagonally if you want. Here we just placed them
both pointing to an area like so.
Step

11
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

11. Great! Now, create a new layer on top of everything by

pressing CTRL+SHIFT +N. Using a soft and large black
brush, add some darker patches on the borders. This allows
the eyes to see more emphasize on the center of the
business card design. Once done here, NOW would be a
good time to save your document as a TEMPLATE. Once
saved as a template, save this again as the front or back of
your design, whichever you want to do first.
Step

12
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

12. Now here we want to do the company or description

side of the business card. So we type in the name of the
business as well as its supposed products using the type
tool. We have positioned them creatively to add a more
interesting and distinct effect.
Step

13
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

13. Next, we create a new layer and we use some shoe

print brushes from here () to add a more streetwise effect.
We then change the blend mode of this layer to Overlay as
well. This finishes up the front part of our business card
describing the services. Just save this front part as such.
Step

14
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

14. Now, load the template file we created earlier. Save it

as a new document marked as the back of the business
card. We now flip the positions of our arrows so that it
matches the front part. We now leave some space at the
center for the text.
Step

15
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

15. Then, type in the important business card information

for the back using the type tool. Make sure to vary the
color and sizes of the font for a more creative finish.

Step
16
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

16. Now, we just do the same thing with the shoe print
accents. We just create a new layer and paint up some
shoe print shapes. We change the blend mode to overlay,
AND we reduce the opacity to 50%.

Step

17
 irenethompson80
Member since:
Feb 2012

FINAL IMAGE
Great! With that we have now finished our textured and
creative business card design! Hope you learned a lot from
the different tricks that we did.