Creating a Colorful Business Card in Photoshop

Every Designer definitely needs a Business Card or Information card of some sort, even if it’s just a piece of paper with your name and number on, ok well not just a piece of paper. A designer has to brand him/her self with uniqueness to catch a clients eye.
I have written a tutorial that is really simple to follow to create yourself a really colorful and vibrant business Card.

FINAL PREVIEW

Information about the cards:
Bleed Lines: 3mm and 1.5mm
Color Palette: PANTONE CMYK EC
Size: 90mm x 50mm at 300dpi – 1063px x 591px – 300dpi

Step 1:

Fill your background layer with any dark color, I used a Dark Grey(#1c1b1c) to Soft Grey(#343434) Radial Gradient, but you can seriously fill the background with any dark color. You should have something like this below.

Step 2:

Now that you have a background to work on, we will be moving on to the more time consuming steps, the Circles. Create a New layer(Shortcut: Ctrl + Shift + N) or (Layer>New>Layer) go to your toolbar and select your Ellipse Tool(Either press U or go to your Rectangle Tool and Click and hold down the mouse button till a little menu appears and select your ellipse tool.) Next we will be making 3 different sizes of circles, so first draw a Circle on your canvas; hold down Shift to make sure the circle is symmetric. Make sure you have a decent size circle for your first one; the first one is the largest circle of them all. Choose the color you want for your main circle, I chose white and for some I chose pink, it can be any color you want though.

Step 3:

Now that you have your big circle do the exact same thing as you did in Step 2 but, just make the circle a little bit smaller than the previous one, be sure to select the color that you want for that circle too. When you are done with creating your medium sized circle repeat Step 2 again and create yourself a small circle, choose the color that you want as well. You should have something like this below.

Step 4:

Now you have your circles that you can work with, here comes the lengthy part in the entire process. Choose a circle and select its layer, duplicate that layer and stack the circle with another color, now do the same with your other size circles as well. You Duplicate the Layer by hitting(Ctrl + J) or (Right Click on the layer and click Duplicate). Like I said this does take a while so be patient. Play around with the layers, changing their placing and visibility etc, Stacking the circles does take quite a while, Once you have proceeded to stacking quite a few circles, I would recommend adding some depth to them, so right click on one of your layers and click Blending Options. Choose Drop Shadow and Use the settings I have displayed below.
Without Drop Shadow:

Drop Shadow Settings:


With Drop Shadow:

Step 5:

Now that you have a nice stacking of circles, I want you to group all the circle layers. Create a new group by going to Layer>New>Group – you will see a folder appear in your layers tab now select all your circle layers and drag them into your new group. This helps to organize your different layers, especially if you are working with a big quantity of layers. Once you have grouped your circles, Right Click on the group folder and click Duplicate Group, now you have a duplicate of all those stacked circles, so now you move that around and rotate it or bend it, to fit to your scene, repeat that step a few times by duplicating the group and then moving it around to fill up your entire work space. This Is the outcome I got after Step 5. You don’t have to worry about the guide lines, just make sure everything inside of the guidelines are filled.

Step 6:

Time to work on the back of our Business Card. Go to File>Save As and save your file in a folder of your choice (Make sure you save it as a .psd). Now hide all your previous layers that you have created except the background. Go to Layer>New Fill Layer>Pattern – Name your pattern and hit OK – you will see that the background is suddenly covered in a pattern. Follow the Diagram I have below to find the Correct Pattern that I used for this Business Card called (Stone, it is a 80x80px repetitive pattern) You can hover over the texture to see its name. When you have found the Texture you just hit OK.

Step 7:

In this step we will be doing two things, we will be adding a Gradient Map and the Text. Select your top layer and go up to Layer>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map – The default should be Black to White, or White to Black. Make sure that your Gradient map Is Black to White and hit OK. Go to you Blending Options and set the Layers Blending Mode to Multiply. This will increase the contrast and decrease the Brightness. Now grab your Text tool or just hit ( T ) Click on the canvas, I selected the font Square721 BT with a size of 28pt(Points) and used this for the Name. Next I used Arial with a size of 11pt(Points) for the Job (Freelance Designer) I lowered the opacity of the layer down to 50% and lastly I used RNS Serial with a size of 7pt(points) for the Description(design.print.web) I also lowered the opacity of the layer down to 15%

Step 8:

In this step I used two of the groups of stacked circles, I made two of the groups visible and positioned them on the sides of the business card, so that they support the flow of the overall card, It gives you the feeling that the front Business Card’s circles wraps around the card and ends up at the back.

FINAL:

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that you learned something from it.



source:http://creativeoverflow.net