Close
Enter your
text here
Business card designed with gimp

Design Print Ready Business Cards with GIMP

Design Print Ready Business Cards with GIMP 1024 602 Nick Saporito

In today’s tutorial I’ll be demonstrating how you can use GIMP to design a print-ready US standard size 3.5″x2″ business card with a 0.25″ bleed and safe area, set at 350 DPI. These are the typical settings used by your average print shop, including online print services like VistaPrint and GotPrint. However, if you’re working with a print shop that uses different settings, just swap out my numbers with theirs as you’re following the tutorial.

Fonts

The first thing you’ll want to do, before launching GIMP, is download and install the font files I used in this tutorial.

The main font used for the name is Montserrat Heavy and the rest of the text used Tex Gyre Adventor Bold.

Logo Design Guide


Curious about the creative process that inspires me to come up with design ideas and how I go about executing them? Be sure to check out my logo design guide for a look behind the scenes at my systematic approach to coming up with design ideas.

Learn How To Design Logos

Business Card Template

Next we’re going to do is set up our document so that it’s 3.5″x2″, but with the bleed added it’ll be 3.75″x2.25″. We will then add guides to the document to account for these spaces.

GIMP setup bleed lines

At this point I would recommend saving the document as a XCF file so you’ll have a template ready to use whenever you’re designing business cards in GIMP. In fact, you can simply download a copy of this template here: business-card-template.zip.

Head Shot

Now that we have everything arranged, it’s time to start the actual design work. The first thing I did was add the head shot to the design. You can use your own image, your clients image, or you can use the example I used in the tutorial. Download the example image here…

150+ Logo Templates

Need a professional logo but have a limited budget? Or are you a designer looking to add to your inventory of design elements? Check out my bundle of 150+ high quality logo templates, all designed by Yours Truly.

Get Your Logo Templates!

Headshot exmaple

Click to enlarge

Contact Icons

In the final design you will see that I used contact icons for each piece of contact info. Those icons can be downloaded here: Free Contact Icons For Business Cards

contact icon pack preview

The social media icons that I used can be downloaded here: Social Media Icons SVG

Social media icons

 

Video Tutorial

Watch the following video for the complete step-by-step tutorial with voice narration. If you have any questions let me know, and as always, thanks for watching!

Become A Freelance Designer

Ready to start earning money with your design skills? Check out my freelancing guide to learn how you can get hired for freelance design projects, even if you have no experience or formal education!

Start Earning

Logos By Nick LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Nick Saporito

Nick Saporito is a Philadelphia-based graphic designer who specializes in branding-specific design. A full portfolio and information regarding services offered can be found at LogosByNick.com.

All stories by: Nick Saporito
You might also like
12 comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.