Business cards represent who you are in the business world. Weeks after you’ve had your face-to-face meeting, all the other person will have is the card. Will they remember who you are? Will they keep your card or toss it in the trash? Imprint your personality on your business card by showing your love of retro design on your card. Recently – Retro Business Cards became very popular, it looks like it is hard to create them, but in this tutorial you will learn the techniques and you will see the process. You are also going to learn how to create a print-ready business card in Photoshop. Designs made for printing have to be prepared in a special manner. Before sending to the printer, its best to make sure that your file is ready so you can avoid all the hassle of redesigning.

All of them are free to download, You can choose your own fonts but these are the ones which I used.

In this tutorial, we are going to design a standard rectangular card with the dimensions of 3.5 x 2. Files must have a resolution of 300dpi or higher. When you create a new file in Photoshop, the default color mode is RGB, which we will have to replace with CMYK. Now, open Photoshop and create a new file with the following specifications:

We need Rulers to help us with adding the bleed lines, To display the Rulers press CTRL+R. After you have set your document to show the rulers, you can set them to a non-printable line or ‘guides’ on your document. In this case, we use guides as bleed lines, which are the safe, printable areas on your business card layout that you will place your design elements within. Ok, so lets add the bleed lines. Go to View -> New Guide and place in the following settings:

Its time to start having fun and creating the Retro look!, lets begin with creating the Business Card’s Front Background. First, double-click the Background layer to un-lock it Go to the Blending Options and apply the ‘Grey Vellum’ Pattern (Find it by loading the Color Paper patterns)

Lets Adjust the pattern a little bit, Create a new Layer (CTRL+N), and press CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E – this will merge all visable layers into the new created layer. Name the layer, go to Image -> Adjustments -> Channel Mixer, and add the following settings:

Now we are going to create the Retro Banner. Start by creating a new layer, then choose the Custom Shape Tool (U), Load the ‘Banners and Awards’ Shapes and choose ‘Banner 3′ Create your Banner on the new layer (Name the layer, e.g: Retro Banner) and place it somewhere in the middle:

To give the Banner the old look, Apply the ‘White Textured’ Pattern (from the ‘Color Paper’ section):

Now I am going to teach you how to create the Dotted Stroke around the Banner. Choose a 4px Hard – Rounded brush and apply this settings:

Keep the brush you just made, now Stand on the ‘Retro Banner’ Layer, and While holding CTRL – Click once on the layer’s shape thumbnail on the layers platte. This will make a selection of the banner:

Switch to the ‘PATHS’ Platte and click the ‘Make work path from selection’ Option on the bottom:

Switch back to the Layers Platte, Create a new Layer, select the Brush Tool (B) and press ENTER:

Resize the new layer to make it fit to the Stroke of the banner and name the layer: ‘Banner Dots Stroke’

Create a new layer, select a 10px Hard Rounded Brush and use the brush to create the circles on the corners of the Banner. Name the layer:’Corner Dots’ and Group the two last layers from the top:

This is the final step with creating the business card’s front All you have to do right now is to add your desired text, and type in your company name and slogan:

Before we continue to the making of the back side of the business card, Group all the layers to one single group and name it ‘Front’ Dont worry, we will add the Retro/Vintage colors at the end!

Create a new layer above the ‘Front’ group and name it ‘background’ Fill the layer with any color using the Paint Bucket Tool (G) and apply the ‘Pebbled’ pattern (load the ‘Grayscale Paper’ patterns set to find it), this pattern will give the background a nice old paper look.

We are going to create the back side of the business card in one single step, so follow the images and notes carefully, start with your title:

Easy way to create the dots is to set up a hard rounded brush (see image below) and by holding SHIFT + moving the mouse – create a row of solid circles

Create a text using the ‘King’ font:

Leave room for the “Table” and type in your e-mail:

Create the table using the same process on the second image of this step, and make sure you group the dots layers!

Finally, add your company information in the table:

Group and name the layers (The name I used for this group is ‘Back’)

Basically, we are done! – All we have to do now is add the Retro colors to our great looking business card! In order to find great combinations of Retro and Vintage colors, I recommend you to visit www.ColourLovers.com I searched the words Vintage in this great website and found this cool combination of Retro and Vintage colors: Vintage Valentine Using this platte, follow the images to see where I applied each color and what Blending Options I used to apply a nice looking Letter-Pressed effect For the Front’s background, stand on the ‘Background Adj’ layer and go to Image -> Adjustments -> Photo Filer – and Apply this settings:

Stand on the ‘JohnDoe’ layer and apply the following Blending Options:

To save time and hard work, lets save the layer styles as a single Style, do that by Right Clicking the JohnDoe layer, Choose ‘Copy Layer Styles’, then click once on the Styles window and save the style:

Apply this style on the dots next to your slogan, and on your title (the title which on the back side of the business card).

Stand on the ‘SLOGAN’ layer and apply the same settings like you applied on the ‘JohnDoe’ layer only with a different ‘Color Overlay’ (#E49375) Save this also as a Style and apply this style on the following layers: ‘Banner Dots Stroke’ , ‘Corner Dots’ , ‘designer’ , ‘Table Dots’ – Group , ‘PHONE’ , ‘TWITTER’ and on the text layer with your adress.

You just finished making your own Print-Ready Retro Business Card!