Today it is difficult to imagine a businessman and an entrepreneur without such an attribute of success as a business card, also called a business card. What is it for? It is clear that it indicates the name of its owner or company name, contact numbers, addresses for quick communication, etc. But business cards are important not only because of this information. A beautifully and soundly executed card can say a lot about its owner and his status, which contributes to a more rapid establishment of cooperation. However, ordering such products in companies specializing in printing is a very costly business (creating a layout, design, cost of paper, printing, etc.). In principle, if a card is needed very urgently, making business cards with your own hands will not be difficult. The only question is which approach to apply.
Do-it-yourself business card: some preliminary tips
The first and most important condition for creating a business card is maximum information content and brevity plus creative design, not to mention the quality of the paper.
You should not get carried away with informational content. The maximum that you can specify is personal data or company name and activity profile, phone, email and website (if necessary - postal address). The second condition is an easily recognizable logo. Third, quality printing on good paper.
Naturally, a do-it-yourself business card design can be created in at least two simple ways: make it manually or use computer programs. The first option looks a little more time-consuming, but as an example, consider it.
How to make a sample business cards with your own hands without using computer programs
When creating a card, one condition should be taken into account: the size of 5 x 9 cm is conventionally adopted as a single standard for business cards. This should be based on.
If you do not use computer applications, you will first have to cut the corresponding fragment from a sheet of thick cardboard or plain paper, then draw a logo, if any, and write down the necessary information. You can draw with pencils, felt-tip pens or paints. To write the text, it is advisable to mark the future sample of a business card with horizontal and vertical barely noticeable lines (it will be much easier to write the text, and the letters will be even and not exceeding the lines). When the main design work is completed, you can reproduce the samples using the most ordinary scanner or color copier.
Logo creation
Of course, you can come up with a logo and draw it manually. However, in terms of a professional approach, it is better to use special programs for the computer. Any graphic editor is suitable for this, but for simplicity it is better to give preference to, say, the online utility Logaster.
Both the logo and the layout itself are created within a few minutes, but the service is paid. If this option is not suitable, you can use many free utilities, which today are quite a lot.
Using a Word Text Editor
But we will assume that the logo is created and saved in some kind of graphic format. Now let's see how to create a business card with your own hands using the simplest tools of the Word office application. There may be several options.
The simplest is the use of ready-made solutions in the application itself. DIY business cards templates are easy to do. To do this, use the template available in the program or downloaded from the Office resource, change it as you wish, and then save it in the same format by selecting it from the drop-down list when saving.
On the other hand, a do-it-yourself business card in this program can also be created using the most common table. Only in this case should the size indicated above be taken into account. In addition, when using templates, indents for pictures and text are set automatically, and in the tables you will have to set such parameters yourself. When creating a table in which there will be several cells vertically and two horizontally, for a standard A4 sheet, indent page parameters should be set to 1.27 cm. Naturally, when filling in text fields, the vertical size of one field should not exceed 5 cm (horizontal 9 cm). Then you can enter text, fill, insert graphics in the form of the same logo, etc.
Finally, a do-it-yourself business card can be created using the usual insertion of a picture with cropping or resizing to the desired size. Stretching small pictures is not recommended, since the quality of the image itself will suffer. Now the most important thing: to enter text on top of the picture via right-clicking on it, from the settings you need to select text wrap and set the value to "Behind the text." After that, you can enter the necessary information, observing the proportions.
Actions in Paint or other image editors
Quite simply business cards are created in graphic editors. For example, in the same standard Paint application, it all comes down to creating a new file, setting the size for it, or immediately opening the image with resizing (Ctrl + W - proportional change, Ctrl + E - arbitrary) or just crop it.
After that, against the background of the picture, again, the necessary contact information is entered and additional design elements are applied.
Print
So, the business card layout is ready. Now it needs to be printed in paper form. There is no need to talk about professional equipment at home, so we will repel what we have.
For a preliminary assessment of the appearance, you can use the simplest laser printer. But for final printing, you will need at least an inkjet, and even better - a photo printer.
As for paper, it is probably already clear that standard sheets for office printing are not recommended in any case. It is advisable to choose a denser material. Not bad even for inkjet printers, paper designed to print photos on devices of a rank higher is suitable. You understand that the card must be tight and not deformed in the hand.
What is the result?
As you can already understand, the creation of a business card with your own hands does not present any special difficulties. Here you need to rely on your own imagination, the methods or programs used and the observance of some important conditions regarding the size and information presented on the business card, because, as they say, brevity is the sister of talent. But a business card should not be too pompous, because its style is more related to the business sphere, and not to the design art.